I recently drove out to AMD's Markham offices for a two-hour tour of Eyefinity, the hardware maker's consumer-oriented multiple-display technology. It was an eye-opening experience.
Designed for PC gamers with a bit of room to spare in their dens, Eyefinity allows users to connect up to six displays to a single card-like the ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 edition (listed at US$448.99 on AMD's website)-to create a viewing environment akin to those you might imagine enjoyed by Wall Street stock brokers and NASA flight controllers.
You can use almost any monitors you like, but the setup I was shown employed Samsung's MD230X6 displays, special 23-inch screens designed specifically for multi-display setups. They feature extraordinarily thin bezels-just 7.6mm at their narrowest-to minimize the potentially jarring break between screens, and come with a stand that supports all six monitors on a single pedestal. Cost: US$3,999.99. (Alternatively, you can opt for Samsung's three-monitor offering which delivers an ultra-widescreen experience for about half the price of the six-screen set.)
Evan Groenke, my host at AMD, emphasized how simple it is to set up a multi-display system, and actually allowed me to configure the one I was viewing myself. You can plug the monitors into the card's ports in any order you like; AMD's software will help you sort them out. What's more, you can easily fine tune the experience, altering picture position on each monitor so that diagonal lines appear to flow under bezels-like looking at an image through a window frame-rather than break apart from one screen to the next. It can take a few minutes to get everything just right, but the process is straightforward and intuitive; no manuals necessary.
Once everything was in place I had the opportunity to try a few games, including Medal of Honor, F1 2010, and Civilization V, all of which have been optimized for multi-screen systems by their developers.
The field of view presented in each of these games was unlike anything I'd seen before.
My peripheral vision in both Medal of Honor and F1 2010 was greatly increased; I could see things to my left and right that otherwise wouldn't have been viewable, such as soldiers trying to flank me and cars coming up to pass. Meanwhile, Civilization V afforded me the ability to view much larger swaths of the world map without losing any of the detail in the area upon which I was focused. I found I had to lift and reposition my mouse a couple of times to move my cursor all the way across the screen, but if you have a pointing device with high enough DPI sensitivity this shouldn't be an issue.
The key to the Eyefinity experience-and what makes it so different from playing these games on a similarly sized flat-screen TV-is resolution. With six monitors in place I was viewing these games at 5760-by-3600 instead of 1920-by-1200. It's not like moving closer to a screen; it's expanding the range of vision. You don't see the same thing you would see on a single screen only bigger; you see what's going on to the left, right, and above what you would normally see on a single screen. Simply put, you see more. Five times more, to be exact. It's a significant enhancement.
I've included a few pictures of what I saw in AMD's showroom, but they hardly do Eyefinity justice. Like a 3-D movie, it's the sort of visual experience that traditional images and mere words can't replicate.
Eyefinity has uses outside of games as well. Mr. Groenke showed me a few different configurations that would make hardcore multi-taskers drool, with different applications running on each screen. My favourite setup saw me playing Medal of Honor on the bottom three screens-think of it as massively widescreen-with Twitter and two full Internet Explorer windows filling the top three screens.
Sadly, this technology demands a couple of very precious resources-space and money. Not everyone has a home office with enough room for a 69-inch window into their games. And even if they do, they probably wouldn't be willing to dish out $4,500 on the required hardware-and that's just for the graphics card and the screens; the rest of the computer is sold separately.
However, if money is no object and you happen to have a technology-obsessed PC gamer for a spouse, it could make for a rare and spectacular holiday present. Even if he or she has all of the latest gadgets the moment they're released, Eyefinity is so unusual-and, if we're being honest, so over-the-top-that it probably isn't even on his or her radar. It's an extravagant Christmas gift for the gamer who has everything.