AMD Eyefinity 24 Display Tech Demo On Linux

[haplo602]

how about video

so we can stretch things to big resolutions on 24 display yet "production" drivers have video problems and only support opengl 3.0 ... progress ...

[Apopas]

anyone else notice that a couple times there would be a little bit of desync/warping across quadrants?

Guessing that it's not quite smoothed out yet.

Of course as cool as this is, there's no way someone like me (or most people, I'd assume) could afford a setup like that.

I suppose you didn't want to quote my post here

[BlackStar]

Say the machine costs $1K + 6 x $250 a card + 24 * $200 a monitor (easily 21") = $7300
Say $200 for aluminum piping to create a literal rig and you are looking at $7500.

About an order of magnitude off.

These cards have 6 display port connectors each. They are workstation stuff (think FireGL) and there's no way in hell they are going to cost $250. $2500 is closer to it. Unfortunately.

A high-end workstation like this costs way more than $1K. I don't know the specs, but this probably has 2x quad core opterons, 16-32GB RAM, a motherboard with 4x full-length PCI-E slots and some insane PSU. I can't be bothered to calculate the exact cost, so lets go for an estimate of ~$4K.

No idea about the monitors, but the cheapest *good* 24'' starts at ~$300 (for a TN panel) or ~$500 (for a low-end IPS panel). I have no idea for what monitors they are using, so lets go for the low estimate.

This gives us a total of $21.2K, without counting the assembly cost (which could easily be another $10K).

I don't think I'll be buying one of those puppies any time soon...

[thefirstm]

They need to work on their hsync. (no typo)

[BlackStar]

Indeed. That's a good reason why they won't be releasing this capability just yet.

[lbcoder]

Actually, they are called "Radeon HD 5800". Those are not firegl. They are so-called "next gen" consumer grade video cards. The spec was developed for LAPTOPS -- with this in mind: 2 ports internal, 2 ports external, 2 ports docking station, total 6 ports. They're going to be fairly cheap.

And I have no idea where you are getting your numbers for display panels... "good" is a relative term, some very inexpensive devices are quite good for certain applications. You can get a decent 24" for under $200 easy.

And then, of course, your system specs... way too much. Let the GPU(s) do some work.

And $10000 for assembly? Are you completely mad? You can get any dumb kid to put it together for $20.... assuming that you wouldn't just put it together yourself. Why not?

About an order of magnitude off.

These cards have 6 display port connectors each. They are workstation stuff (think FireGL) and there's no way in hell they are going to cost $250. $2500 is closer to it. Unfortunately.

A high-end workstation like this costs way more than $1K. I don't know the specs, but this probably has 2x quad core opterons, 16-32GB RAM, a motherboard with 4x full-length PCI-E slots and some insane PSU. I can't be bothered to calculate the exact cost, so lets go for an estimate of ~$4K.

No idea about the monitors, but the cheapest *good* 24'' starts at ~$300 (for a TN panel) or ~$500 (for a low-end IPS panel). I have no idea for what monitors they are using, so lets go for the low estimate.

This gives us a total of $21.2K, without counting the assembly cost (which could easily be another $10K).

I don't think I'll be buying one of those puppies any time soon...

[tuxdriver]

What's all this obsession with ever larger screens?

I don't need big screens or a video wall with a huge display area. All I need is more pixels (and more desktop space) crammed into a normal-sized screen.

There was a time when there were 19" (18" visible) flat CRT displays that could display 2048x1536 resolution. Now that was really hi-res: 1.5 times more lines than Full HD (1536 lines of resolution) crammed into a relatively small screen. The picture quality was amazingly good, images,3D apps and games looked razor-sharp. The human eye is much more sensitive to the increase in vertical resolution (number of lines).The horizontal resolution only allows for a broader view.

Back in the day it was really easy to find cheap, but great quality 135+ DPI screens,but even that wasn't enough for me. I could clearly see aliasing even when using a 18" CRT at 2048x1536. Screens need to have at least 300 DPI to approach "print quality" where it's very hard to see aliasing.

I don't need or I will ever use anti-aliasing. Anti-aliasing doesn't improve the image quality. It distorts (alters) the image,making it inaccurate and uses loads of GPU resources.

To the monitor makers: How about increasing the pixel density of your monitors? A year 2000 CRT destroys every LCD monitor produced in the last 5 years. If you need to approach 'eyefinity' you need a lot more DPI. The highest you can get now is if you buy a 21.5" Full HD screen. Yuck. A height of 1080 pixels is way too low for any serious work.

How about making a 22" desktop monitor out of those LED-bacllight high-DPI laptop screens with at least 2880x1620 resolution? Now that would be acceptable.


And here's one thing about huge screens you may not know: huge screens are bad for your health.
Covering the whole field of vision is a really bad idea. Most people will experience vertigo,nausea,vomiting and all kinds of bad side effects if they use these monitors for more than a couple of hours.

Remember what happened during the demonstration of Super Hi-Vision (UHDV video) in Japan? That was really bad.

@ ATI: Just give us XvBA so we could finally use our graphics cards to offload bitstream processing,cause DXVA doesn't work at all under Windows XP.
Since we don't want (or use) Vista/Win7 ,Catalyst for Linux is our only hope.

[chithanh]

To the monitor makers: How about increasing the pixel density of your monitors? A year 2000 CRT destroys every LCD monitor produced in the last 5 years.

Not quite. There was the IBM T221 monitor (22", 3840x2400) but it failed to reach enough sales and was discontinued in 2005.

[BlackStar]

Actually, they are called "Radeon HD 5800". Those are not firegl. They are so-called "next gen" consumer grade video cards. The spec was developed for LAPTOPS -- with this in mind: 2 ports internal, 2 ports external, 2 ports docking station, total 6 ports. They're going to be fairly cheap.

I rather doubt we'll see desktop parts sporting 6 display ports but I'd love to be proven wrong.

FYI, AMD is already selling cards with 4 output ports. Yes, these are FireGL/FirePro cards and don't come cheap.

And I have no idea where you are getting your numbers for display panels... "good" is a relative term, some very inexpensive devices are quite good for certain applications. You can get a decent 24" for under $200 easy.

Here. Then again, I tend to be more picky than most people and have read all 372 pages of the linked thread.

And then, of course, your system specs... way too much. Let the GPU(s) do some work.

I haven't used X-Plane, but Flight Simulator X really can use the extra power (a mere Core 2 tends to choke at about 5-10% traffic settings, with 100% being full quality).

And $10000 for assembly? Are you completely mad? You can get any dumb kid to put it together for $20.... assuming that you wouldn't just put it together yourself. Why not?

No, it's just that I've worked with VR equipment and have some relevant experience. You don't build such a system without a specialized room, air conditioning and (hopefully) an electrical engineer supervising the assembly. Just think about the cooling and power requirements - you can't just mount the monitors to the wall, run a power strip and boot it!

$10K may sound high, but any company will pay those to have their asses covered in case of malfunction or faulty equipment. This is not something to be built with off-the-shelf hardware by the local nerd.

Edit @tuxdriver: well said, man, well said.

[chithanh]

FYI, AMD is already selling cards with 4 output ports. Yes, these are FireGL/FirePro cards and don't come cheap.

There is the Radeon 4850 X2 which costs less than 200 EUR and has 4 DVI outputs.
But it is not exactly silent.