Gaming and Productivity Impressions

There is simply no replacement for displacement, or in this case square footage.  Productivity will be increased, as long as the user does more than surf the web or watch videos.  This is actually somewhat the opposite of productivity in most cases.  For example, let us take a look at what all I have going on when writing an article.  I often have multiple PDFs open which cover the product I am writing about, then I have several web pages open that either cover the product I am writing about, the technology behind it, or past iterations of the technology for reference use.  I then have IRC channels open to bounce ideas off of other writers and editors, as well as friends who may or may not be experts in that particular field.  I then have the actual article itself that I am writing about, plus any kind of image manipulation program that I will use for photographs as well as cropping slides and PDFs.  Tabbing back and forth with one monitor was troublesome at times, and even when I upgraded to two monitors I found that I could again use even more space.  For me three monitors are the sweet spot.  Everything I need is already up and quickly accessed with simply moving my eyes to the necessary monitor.  This is exactly the excuse needed to please the boss when it comes to justifying the expense.

open-case.jpg

A bit crowded and a little dusty.  If triple card Crossfire X was used, then a different style case would be needed.  Some cleaning and slightly better organization with cables would help keep things a bit cooler.  The extra time spent organizing a case and its contents would be well worth it in the long run.

The real reason anyone wants Eyefinity is of course gaming.  Not every game will support Eyefinity, and even some that officially do may not do it well.  But when you get a game that supports it like it should be played, then be prepared for a perma-grin and non-stop giggling.  The games which benefit most from Eyefinity seem to be simulation type games.  This means driving and flying games for the most part.  First person shooters are probably the second best examples for Eyefinity, and in games that support it a user will have a much wider field of vision, which can give a huge benefit on the battlefield as well as open maps.

The DiRT series has supported Eyefinity from the beginning, and they have probably one of the best overall implementations.  It also helps that the graphics engine used for the series is very forgiving to hardware, and the minimum framerates are typically not terribly far away from the average.  Either the “over the hood” or “inside the cockpit” display give the best experience, and the environment wrapping around into your periphery increases the immersiveness of this title dramatically.  Trees whipping past at 100 MPH helps to increase the sensation of speed as well.  I had two non-gamers sit down and drive around, and in this environment they did not have any ill effects in terms of motion sickness.  There was a lot of laughing involved though.  The only issue I have with DiRT 3 with Crossfire/Eyefinity is that there is a tremendous amount of micro-stuttering with this title.  Playing on one screen gives a very smooth experience.  Going to three feels very choppy, even though the average frame rate is well within the 40s and 50s (with minimums going down to 37 fps).  Apparently this is not an issue with NVIDIA Surround at similar resolutions with GTX 570 and 580 cards.

Eyefinity is almost tailor-made for flying sims.  Using “Wings of Prey” I was able to use Eyefinity to give a much wider and more representative view of flying.  Having grown up in a family of private pilots, I have first-hand experience in actually flying an aircraft.  While the experience is not duplicated on Eyefinity, it does create a more natural feeling.  Having access to side views instantaneously helped improve abilities such as finding the airfield, entering the pattern, the final approach, and landing.  It also allows finding of enemy aircraft a whole lot easier.  Zooming about at tree-top level going 400 knots is again a visceral experience when using Eyefinity as compared to just staying with one monitor.

Other games such as Doom 3/Quake 4/Prey 2 had to have certain DLL files swapped out to get Eyefinity to work, and often the graphical overlays on such games are not scaled correctly.  They do work though, but it takes some getting used to.  Other modern games may not have support at all, or if they do (such as Defense Grid), the menu system is not scaled correctly and even though it works in game, it is nearly impossible to get to where you need to go through the menu system.

While Eyefinity is certainly not perfect, and we have yet to see wide support for the technology, it is improving month by month.  Not every game will take advantage of the technology, and certainly in the case of PANTONE, they have not provided updates to address the limitations of their product in Eyefinity.  Between the gaming pleasure I have received from Eyefinity, as well as the huge amount of extra space I actually use for productivity, I couldn’t be much happier with how this has all turned out.  Not everyone can afford to implement Eyefinity, but a user can certainly stretch their budget and make some good decisions to get it off the ground. 

Due to the heavy load placed on the video card in Eyefinity, I would not recommend using just one video card (unless that card happens to be a HD 6990).  The HD 6870 and HD 6950 should really be in the sweet spot of performance and price in multi-GPU applications.  For those wishing to go all the way, then dual HD 6990s are the best out there.  Personally I am quite happy with my flashed HD 6950s.  Hopefully we will see progress in terms of driver quality and support, as well as 3rd party support with hardware and software.  For the time being though, I am having a blast with it.
 

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