ABT’s first look at Eyefinity’s New $30 active DP to DVI adapter

Eyefinity is AMD’s solution for multi-displays driven off of a single HD 5000 series card. It has been available since AMD launched the first of their over 16 million Eyefinity-enabled DX11 5000 series nearly a year ago.  Eyefinity is different and more economical than Nvidia’s competing 3-panel (2D) Surround in that it only requires a single HD 5000 series card to drive it instead of having to use two identical videocards in SLI (multi-GPU) mode.

Many gamers and productivity users already have multiple LCDs.  Certainly most households have HDTVs that can usually be found with HDMI, DVI or VGA connectors to connect to a PC in addition to their PC monitors.  Up until now, the primary issue with (the most popular) 3-panel Eyefinity is that two LCDs can be driven by the most popular DVI connector (or by using DVI>AGP adapters) but because there is limited bandwidth with the way Eyefinity is implemented, one of the 3 displays must either use a DisplayPort-enabled LCD or else one must generally use a rather expensive (read ~$100) active dual-link DisplayPort adapter that in some cases have been prone to flickering.

Announcing the new $30 active DisplayPort to single-link DVI adaptor

Today this has all changed.  AMD and its partners have just announced the $30 DisplayPort to single-link DVI adapter that promises none of the flickering that has plagued some non-native DisplayPort Eyefinity setups up until now.  ABT has got one of these inexpensive adapters from AMD late last week and we put our brand new  (mismatched LCD) Eyefinity system together for the very first time to give you some impressions of it.

The adaptors will come in two types; a full-sized DP-to-DVI adaptor  and a mini-DP-to-DVI adaptor which are electrically identical.  Ours pictured above is by BizLink.

The active single-link adaptor converts a DisplayPort signal to a single-link DVI/HDMI signal and is much less complex and less expensive than a dual-link port adaptor. These active single-link adaptors can also be run on the 3.3v@500mA power supplied with a DisplayPort connection and do not require any secondary power.  Best of all, these new adaptors are not plagued by the flickering that was even noticed on some (expensive) dual-link adaptors on the market now.  And using an inexpensive passive adaptor was always more miss than hit.  What is great about these new adaptors is that they just work – genuine plug and play Eyefinity for $30.

These new active DisplayPort to single-link DVI-D adaptors support resolutions up to 1920×1200 (WUXGA) and including 1080p HDTV which is fully compliant to both DPCP and HDCP to ensure the compatibility and transmission of 32-bit color video content.  Of course, gamers can now take advantage of Eyefinity technology with a single new adaptor by optimizing their experience with three DVI monitors without any additional software to install.

Setting up Eyefinity with the new adaptor

This editor has waited to audition Eyefinity for just this occasion.  DisplayPort LCDs command a premium and are not quite yet easy to find although they are becoming more common.  Samsung has finally launched its extra-thin bezel LCDs (MD230X3 and MD230X6) which are especially created for Eyefinity.  However, since we do not have the luxury of 3 matched LCDs, we put together the closest match out of what we have:

These 4 displays are available:

• 24″ – 1920×1200 (MVA)
• 24″ – 1920×1080 (TN)
• 22″ – 1680×1050 (TN)
• 30″ – 2560×1600 (S-IPS)

Clearly using the 30 inch display would be a big mismatch for gaming and we did not use it although we intend to try it in a follow-up Eyefinity article in a productivity situation.  Only the 24″ 1920×1200 SOYO is actually a PC monitor (we connected its DVI connector to our active single-link to DisplayPort adaptor); the other two displays are HDTVs with VGA connectors that we adapted to DVI and then connected to our Phenom II 955-X4/HD 5870 CrossFire PC as shown below:

Make sure that you have a large table to set your LCDs upon and set each LCD as closely as possible to the same height.  Here is what our LCDs looked like when we set them side-by-side, each at 1680×1050 resolution with the largest LCD in the center.  The combined 5040×1050 desktop now spans all three displays in Eyefinity and is most suited for super-widescreen gaming.:

Setting up Eyefinity is beyond simple.  Open Catalyst Control Center and make sure each LCD’s Desktop Properties are set correctly:

Make a group and follow the wizard.  You are done in less than a minute.

Now play a game.  There are close to fifty games that are either already setup for Eyefinity or validated for it. It is that easy!!

This editor was surprised by the utter simplicity of setting up Eyefinity – especially on badly mismatched LCDs.  There were no issues whatsoever; certainly none with flickering.  What was even more surprising was the level of immersion in Dirt 2 that Eyefinity allowed – even beyond using a single 30 inch display!  This takes into consideration even using mismatched LCDs and the wide black bars separating the screens!

We expect to spent a lot more time (playing games) with Eyefinity enabled and we will match up our LCDs better.   Hopefully we will be able to use 3 x 24″ LCDs  for Eyefinity (and Nvidia’s Surround) so that we may use the built-in bezel correction to make our gaming experience even more immersive.  Of course, we will follow up this article with a more detailed future review of Eyefinity which will also cover performance.

Conclusion

Eyefinity just got much more accessible to the already 16 million users of AMD’s DX11 Radeons.  Instead of having to buy a special display or having to spend $100 to try out Eyefinity, the cost of entry has just dropped to $30 if you already have 3 displays.  We also expect that AMD’s partners will offer “bundles” – possibly discounted packages of a videocard sold together with one of these adaptors much as games are already bundled with the cards.  Partners making these new active single link to DisplayPort adaptors include, PowerColor, Sapphire, Accel, Wieson, XFX, BizLink and more.  You can expect to find these thirty dollar DisplayPort adaptors beginning later this week from e-tailers.

This Eyefinity $30 adaptor comes highly recommended from this first time Eyefinity user! Stay tuned for a much more detailed future article on Eyefinity using our new active single link DVI to DisplayPort adaptor.  We want to give this product our “Great Value” award as it is just what AMD Eyefinity fans need.  We also want to make a prediction that there will be many more Eyefinity fans because of its new lower cost of entry.

Here are a few more images taken of a few Eyefinity-enabled games:

H.A.W.X.

BattleForge

STALKER, CoP

AvP2

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