Eyefinity 6 - Not User friendly - the continuation

I got to understand the Eyefinity 6 a bit better today. If I had used 6 Displayport LCD's I would not have had the issue I ran into when using 6 DVI LCD's. As it went I ended using 2 Displayport LCD's, and 4 DVI. I had to use my Bizlink Dual-Link to displayport  active adapters on 2 of the heads to get them going.  I originally tried my Apple DL to mini displayport adapters  since those are also active and while they lit the monitors in windows, they were enabled at 640x480 and no other mode was available. Overall M-series displayport products work with most adapters out there. They ship with Bizlink adapters because they overall worked the best with the product and they don't officially support anything else, but they work with all the apple adapters, though the analog apple adapter is bitchy in my opinion. You're better off with monoprice then apple any day.

On M9188 we can use adapters that are 'passive' I guess. At least single link DVI to displayport. The Analog to displayport have to be active since they have to convert digital signal from card to analog and the Dual link DVI to displayport is active.  I just found an article that kind explains/highlights the problems I was having with the Eyefinity. Slowly I am adding displayport monitors in my team. Most of my employees have anywhere between 4 and 8 displayport LCD's at this point. The bBench where I happened to setup the Eyefinity has no displayport LCD's. I had to put 10ft cables on 2 on the bench next to it.  The bench where I test 16 heads has 16 LCD's all DVI/Analog and nothing else.

Connections problems aside their interface to configure monitors in windows is non-intuitive. Instead of helping client make a desktop it lets mostly Windows arrange monitors. So while you boot on the first/second head of the card, these became heads 5 & 6 in windows and then the  monitor layout I got in the only 6 headed stretch mode offered was just strange. I'll have to play with it some more, but I find it hard to configure. The Powerdesk interface to configure one or two M9188 is quite friendly and reasonably intuitive.  I've never had newbies using it who have a hard time using the interface to get where they want to be.  The questions I get usually are on the stranger features for niche markets, like edge overlap.

The Eyefinity offers a limited number of configurations with their 6 heads. The merge options are 2x1, 1x2, 3x1, 4x1, 2x2 and 3x2 and then I believe the choice of modes for those configs are also limited. I only had 3 resolution choices with the 3x2 .

With a M9188, you can do just about every permutation of a rectangular/square shape that windows supports with 8 heads. So things like 2x1, 1x2, 3x1, 1x3, 1x4, 2x2, 4x1, 1x5, 5x1, 6x1, 3x2, 2x3, 1x6, 7x1,1x7, 8x1, 4x2, 2x4, 1x8 can all be done with our interface. additionally I could do 2 x 2x2's or 2 x 4x1's or 1x4's or even a 2x2 plus 2 independent displays plus 2 displays cloned if that was the layout I wanted.  We also offer standard resolutions which most monitors support today, as well as all the resolutions supported by the monitors connected.

So assuming I'm using 1680x1050 monitors for each of those layouts listed above I will have a minimum of 8 resolutions offered for those layouts and I can mix and match. Well stretched surfaces all have to be of the same resolution, but if I had a stretched surface it could be a different resolution then independent surfaces and clone surfaces.  As well if you have 2 M9188's you can do the same types of configs up to 16 heads. Including setups like 3x3, 4x3, 3x4, 5x3, 3x5 and 4x4. Additionally if you cabled your 4x4 wall all wrong you can just move the display for it to work in your layout without having to recable it.  There is flexibility as to where which input of the card is in comparison to the other. 


This is probably not the last time I rant about the Eyefinity 6, I'll get a chance to play with it some more and see if there is anything I like about it. I suppose it might be fun to game on it in 6 heads. I'm so outside the gaming loop I would have no idea what game would use it.

The one thing the other co-worker who tried the Eyefinity 6 before me did was to try it with several Triple heads to go displayport edition. Sadly he wasn't able to find 6 to try to get 18 heads, but he thinks it's doable :) That's just cool. I would have no use for the config, but I love that it can be done.

Disclaimer: The opinions on hardware/software on this blog and the other related to the Eyefinity are mine alone and not related to the company I work for.

To see my later rant on the EyeFinity 6 click here.