Anyone use eyefinity on their M17x yet?

Im wondering if anyone has done this yet, if there are any 5870 m17x rigs running around now. Basically I would like to triple LCD game with the internal for everything else and if the m17x can do this without having to use a spliter like the triple head 2 go then thats a HUGE plus for me.

 

The cards were just released 4 days ago, and not in x-fire mode. Only a single 5870 can be purchased. People are still waiting for thier M17x's that were ordered a month ago. Wait times are up to 6 weeks for delivery. Don't expect to get an answer in the next month.

 

I don't expect to see my next R2 until June. Hopefully it arrives around my birthday, that would be sweet.

 

Wow. I was expecting the same shipping I got for my dell.

 

Are the 5870's not in Xfire?? Cause i just ordered 5870 in crossfire? Does this mean i get 2 cards who can't work in Xfire?

 

There's your answer.

 

I'll probably be ordering the 5780s when they're released and I'm also pretty curious about how/if eyefinity works on the m17x. I will definitely be posting some results, but it would probably be late May at the earliest. This is assuming 5870xf is released in early May...

 

jeez. what do you do for a living!? lol

I have the R1 and i don't see the upgrade being worth while at least for a little while longer.

 

Well I am not interested in gaming on more than 1 screen but I am interested in multiple displays. With that said, I am running the next best thing to eyefinity: 3 monitors. Not at 1200 but less. I use one for my Linux full screen.

I should get some pics up.

 

So whats the latest on this subject?

 

well I never got to try it while I had my m17x, but still would like to know for my studio coming in.

 

I'd be keen to know how well the m17x works using Eyefinity as well.

As well as people's opinion/preference on 1920x1080 displays attached vs. 1920x1200 displays.

Personally I prefer 1200p as 1080p looks stretched for an extended desktop but they seem to be becoming more rare these days.

 

If it is available, and enabled. I wonder how they plan on people setting up multi-displays? I know the M17x has multi-output ports, but it seems alittle rediculous having to use vga, HDMI (do external monitors even come with HDMI) , and digital display port just to have the eyefinity option. Unless current R2 owners are provided with some sort of splitter I'm unaware of?!

 

Has anyone else actually tried this?

And may a mod move this thread into the M17x category? It would seem to fit there more.

If anyone gets this to work, could anyone give a try with 5040x1050 resolution?

 

Anyone? This is a key factor for me...

 

It is such a limited use that i doubt that you will get an answer

 

I too prefer 1920x1200.

While I do not know how the quality difference will be using an analog and 2 digital outputs, but I have read that it is supported. While I had my m17x I didnt have time to look for eyefinity options in CCC as I was just trying to get the GPU to become stable. in theory you should be able to plug an LCD into each input (yes there are HDMI external LCDs) and setup eyefinity. The hardware supports it, but no saying whater the Dell version does. Thats where someoen who has a 5870m m17x will have to chime in.

Why limit yourself to 3 1680x1050 LCDs(unless thats what you already have)?

I think this will be the main issue in getting an answer. I had the rig but was far from being able to get 3 external LCDs. Plus the 5870 m17x units havent even been out a month (actually in the hands of owners). Im sure in time there will be somebody that has either the necessary equipment already or the funds to try it out in a few months. When and if I can get the setup Ill try it on the studio I should be getting this week.

 

I think I can help with this question...

I have 3 monitors with HDMI/VGA connections and the Alienware M17x-R2 with Crossfire 5870 (nice computer by the way).

Does Eyefinity work? Yes. But it only works if it is not in Crossfire. Otherwise you won't see the option to set up the display group. I believe that it is a software issue. Dell's video drivers were updated around 5/3 and ATI updated its drivers to support Eyefinity and Crossfire sometime near the end of May. Hopefully the next update on Dell's drivers will include this or someone can give instructions on installing ATI's drivers and the Catalyst Control Center (which I think is the only way to actually see the display group option).

I connected the three monitors using the HDMI, VGA, and DisplayPort ports. Since I didn't have a DisplayPort monitor, I had to get an active DisplayPort/DVI adapter. You can see the requirements if you go here: http://support.amd.com/us/eyefinity/Pages/eyefinity-dongles.aspx

Hopefully that helps. Just a word of warning: I'm definitely not a computer person and it may be a long time before I check in again. If I get the chance to add a picture of the setup, I will do that.

 

hmm, great first post!!!

You going to get a ton of questions for pictures. So, I'll start...wheres the pictures.

Thanks again.

 

Anybody have anything new to add to this?

 

I got my M17xR2 last week with Xfire 5870's. I connected a second monitor to the VGA port. I had to disable xfire to get eyefinity to work (there is no option to group monitors while xfire is enabled). It was pretty easy to do. The initial setup had the monitors backwards (21 instead of 12), but it asked if the display was correct and when I hit NO, it switched them for me.

One thing to note...the displays really need to be the same height to work well. My second monitor was taller than than the laptop screen and the mis-match really distracted from the coolness that was happening. I didn't check to see if they were both forced to be the same resolution, but I am guessing they were.

 

I agree with this part. I'm using a dual monitor setup on my work computer, with the RH monitor rotated to portrait (for viewing lots of code at once). Unless you're extremely lucky and the vertical height and resolution is the same with both monitors, you'll end up with spots on the edge of one screen where you can't move the mouse to the other screen. You get used to it, but it's still annoying.

 

Here's proof it works:

YouTube - Alienware M17xR2 Proof of ATI Eyefinity with Bezel Compensation

Sorry for the crappy quality n such, i'll post more tomorrow

 

Very nice. Are the games running in crossfire or did you have to disable it?

 

cross fire has to be disabled if i want to use eyefinity

 

by the way-any other m17x-r2 customers hook up 3 monitors yet? im having problems with the OSD.exe( see video description )

 

wow...that's awesome, but what kind of fps are you getting at that rez using just one 5870?

 

Is it possible to run 2 external monitors and the laptop LCD?

I haven't had any luck no matter how I hook them up.

I see all 3 monitors in Windows and CCC but can only use 2 at a time.

 

Hey Defter - What monitors did you end up getting?

 

I was able to get it going. Standard VGA to VGA cable for main screen, DP active adapater to digital connect on left, and HDMI to digital connect on right. So I had to buy special cables for the latter two. Running on my old Dell's e228wfp so I am getting 5040 by 1050. Setup wasn't bad once the monitors were detected.

Framerates in star craft 2 was around 20 FPS on medium so not too awesome. Need more power to use it in real live games.

 

Note I do have a error that flys up on bootup with all three monitors going but all that happens is OSD crashes ... so no big loss there.

 

Sorry to bring up an old thread but this was the most recent one I could find.

What are the chances that we will ever see crossfire support for eyefinity on out laptops? I thnk desktops got it a while back, and I have read there are bandwidth issues on the crossfire cable, so I wonder if it will ever happen for us? I hate the thought of buying a dual card beast but having to run a single card just to use eyefinity.

What do most peole use it for? Just windows desktop/surfing/etc or do people actually play games with it? If games do you only use it for those games that do not work with crossfire?

Man it's a hard decision between using a neat feature and gimping the performance in games, or just living with one display but having the best performance.

 

Shameless bump. I know there are probably only a few users of eyefinity but this would be my greatest chance to find someone who knows about it.

I did some testing and I can confirm that eyefinity (2x1) works with crossfire as I just played a few games and noted the GPU utilization and GPU temps. I don't have my displayport adapter cable yet so I can't test the 3x1, but if I don't get an answer I will test it when it comes in before I buy 2 more displays. Maybe this only works with 2x1 since everything I've read says you have to run on one card with the m17x. Or maybe it was changed in a recent driver update? There is a lot of mis-information out there, I read on another forum that eyefinity does not work with any of the 5870m in single or CF modes, they wrote that on 11/9 and obviously that is totally false.

The games I tried were:

half life 2 (wanted to try an older game that would likely run with great FPS) -worked great and still 70+ FPS with everything maxed I believe.

Burnout paradise - ran great, reduced FPS from 60+ of normal to 40s, which was still totally playable.

BFBC2 - it worked, but only got about 1/3 framrate of normal (60 down to 20). Even when I lowered every setting down to min it only managed 30fps. This one was disappointing but I didn't expect to run it well anyway. Maybe it's due to the crossfire bus running out of bandwidth at that resolution? I wanted to try lowering resolution but there wasn't any lower ones showing on the list (like 2560x720 or similar).

Edit* I also tried Sacred 2 - wow, it worked great, a bit of a hit on the FPS (60 to 40) and the GPU usage wasn't at 100 each but still over 100% combined.

After all this testing I am excited at the possibility of using eyefinity with crossfire, but only if 3x1 works because those darn bezels right in the middle of the screen sucks in games

Edit 2* I decided to verify that my cheap display I'm looking at (have one already and am happy with it, Acer p215h) would work with analog as I only tested HDMI and internal display above. This time I went analog on the Acer and used my desktop Asus for the HDMI, that is the best I could do to test it out without using the displayport. I did finally get it to work but the display had trouble showing 1080p over the analog connection. It kept wanting to either have a max resolution of 1440x900 or I could force 1080, but at 30 hz (interlaced I guess). I finally was able to test a game out and it did indeed work.

 

I've already got an active DP adapter... just need the monitors. The ideal would be to have two accompanying displays that were about the same size and resolutions as the m17x's monitor. Anyone know if there is a 17" monitor avaiable that is at lease 1650x1080 (probably the highest I'd want to push games at with these GPUs)?

 

Lol, I have the 3 displays but am waiting for the DP adapter to come in.

I am almost certain you can not use eyefinity with the m17x display as one of them. I already tried this and couldn't get it to work (granted I only had HDMI and VGA available until my DP adapter comes in). If you can wait a couple days I will confirm which way it is once my adapter arrives.

 

I just wanted to let you know I was wrong in my assumption above. You can indeed run eyefinity with the m17x display as one of them. I only tried it one way (on the right side) but I see no reason why you couldn't configure it any place you want, right, middle or left side. I used HDMI, displayport, and the m17x display. I know it did not work using analog, hdmi, and m17x display because that is what I tried before I got my displayport adapter.

Now I'm off to game comparisions with and without crossfire + eyefinity. Can't wait to see which ones work great and are playable at this resolution!

 

Any more news on m17x + crossfire + three external monitors? (With the m17x display disabled.)

I've ordered a m17x with crossfire and am thinking about a 3x1 portrait setup. Let's suppose money was no object - would it work with the Samsung MD230X3? The panels take VGA, DVI & DP - would I need any further cables or adapters?

And yes I know that's a crazily expensive monitor setup, I'm open to suggestions if there's a better setup that'll work with the m17x.

 

After using it for a while now I can say it works really good. I created 4 ATI profiles, for eyefinity and single screen with and without crossfire. It makes switching back and forth from the taskbar very quick and painless. I built up a spreadsheet of which games to play in each mode so I don’t have to remember them all.

While crossfire “works” with eyefinity (I could see both cards in use) they always perform much worse than one card. This means that most of the time I am running my system gimped, only using one card, and switching to single display/crossfire combo on certain games that do not run well in eyefinity. I am hopefull that somehow I will find a way to make it work better because I’ve also had similar results with WoW in single screen mode and others are saying crossfire works great for them with that game. I hate to start messing with drivers since my system is very stable and my games run good. I don’t want to end up with BSOD’s, lockups, or other weird game issues from switching drivers around too much. If while in eyefinity I could just get a 10-20% increase in FPS from using crossfire I would be thrilled and not feel like I wasted money on a dual card machine. I have read that maybe the crossfire cable is limiting due to the bandwidth required at 5760x1080 so who knows there may never be a fix for it.

I am using 3 cheap Acer 21.5” displays so I went the opposite way that you are heading in. In games and in windows it works great. I have not tried portrait mode as I’d have to invest in some adjustable stands. The only issue you could run into is even though your displays have all three inputs you could have problems with the displayport being finicky. Probably not, but just a slight chance. My cheapo displays only had HDMI and VGA, and I ended up using HDMI, VGA and displayport to VGA. I had troubles with my dsiplayport to HDMI adapter, kept blanking out on me and turning off. It was such an annoyance I went the VGA route and it works perfect.

 

Great news, thank you.

I'm sorry to hear about the Crossfire problems. I'm hoping that's a driver issue. And yes, exactly, I don't expect much but I would like two cards to be faster than one! Currently in Australia it isn't possible to buy the m17x with only one card so I will be having words if the second card ends up worthless for multiple displays.

And yeah, I said what the hell and bought myself a present. I got the Samsung setup. Can't wait!

Thanks again for your help.

 

Sounds great, post of some screen shots of your setup once you get it up and running. You can either post here or PM me if you want a 2nd person to try something to verify results. I have fiddled with PCI link powersave settings and every setting in the catalyst control center and have found nothing that makes crossfire performance better than a single, when running multi screen gaming. I googled "eyefinity crossfire stuttering" and found many desktops had the same issue, but it seems many were able to resolve it. I found nothing that worked for me (yet).

If you ever find a solution I would greatly appreciate letting me know!

A little "trick" I found that made my experience better, I used velcro on the sides on the displays to hold them in place better. This actually does two additional things 1) keeps light from behind the screens from slipping through the crack (like from the laptop, window, anything) and 2) you can align them perfectly! I've seen people with and without special stands have problems getting them matched up perfect, velcro did it for me.

*edit*
I wanted to add another note about my findings. GPU-Z logging confirms crossfire is working in eyefinity. The load is not shared equally though. It looks like once one card gets to around 70% it starts sharing with the 2nd card, and eventually max's out at 100% and 50%. So I can see both are not being used completey but I would still think you could get equal performance as 1 card and maybe a bit extra (rather than 2/3's performance). The clocks and temps of both cards are also normal, not downclocking or overheating or anything like that.

It seems to be a driver problem to me. Even if the crossfire cable is bandwidth limted I would think you could pass some info across it above and beyond one card. Even 10-20% boost would be good, better than a performance reduction lol.

 

The monitor setup I'm getting has little doohickeys to bolt them together but velcro is a clever idea.

What version driver do you have right now? I'm going to have a go at using modded files because the latest Dell driver doesn't seem to be the 10.12 ATI driver. I see there are BIOS updates for the cards too. (I'm still waiting for my m17x to ship, and I won't get my monitors until January it seems.)

I saw something elsewhere about overclocking the first card and underclocking the second card and causing a deliberate frequency mismatch seems to help the crossfire eyefinity performance issue. I shall try this out if the drivers don't do the job for me.

I may not be able to test all this for a while, it's possible the monitors will arrive while I'm travelling in January, but I will post all results (positive and negative).

 

No need for modded drivers (unless you just mean non-dell ones). Anything 10.10 and after we can use right from the ATI site. The Dell one is older but honestly I never had any major problems with it and I noticed no improvement when I went to the 10.10's. At one time I had flickering in some games with crossfire but now I can't remember which driver that was since I've been back and forth so much, lol.

I was on the 10.10's until yesterday, and now I'm on the 10.12's, both have the eyefinity/crossfire performance issue. I have been using the latest application profiles (separate download from ATI). I acually may try the old Dell driver just to see how it works. I remember reading that at one time you could not even choose crossfire while in eyefinity, so it may be even worse off than I am now.

Interesting about the overclock/underclock idea but man that could gimp the system in all the non-eyefinity games that work well already. I had no luck getting the software overclocking tools working, I tried ATI OC tool, MSI and EVGA or whatever and never could get them working right. I loved the nvidia control panel it was so much better IMO, so I have stuck with flashing my overclocks, and that would be a pain (and dangerous) to go back and forth with.

Good luck & happy travels! I won't hold my breath for any solution but I would gladly reward ($) someone if they did find one that actually worked.

Another interesting tidbit. HWInfo32 (using portable version) does not like eyefinity apparently because if I start up the sensors tab (has the temps) my screens get reconfigured and I can't turn them back on until I restart the computer. One of the displays disappears until reboot. Quite odd.

I also read it could be a direct3d vs opengl thing, but I confirmed that xfire is also slower in furmark (which is opengl) while in eyefinity so that was a dead end.

 

Oh, useful to know I don't need modded drivers! I'm used to Toshiba land where you must use their drivers... which run 2+ years behind the vendor drivers for the cards.

Haven't played with ATI clock tuning. It's pretty easy with NVIDIA even with the mobility cards. Sad to hear it's difficult with ATI.

I will definitely be updating this when I have more data. Thanks a million for your help so far!

 

I'm not sure I buy the theory that the crossfire cable is the main problem because of the bandwidth required at the higher eyefinity resolutions.

To test this I wanted to lower the resolution in eyefinity mode to the point where it was actually less total pixels than my standard single screen desktop. That way, if on a single screen the crossfire cable works good (as it does) then why wouldn't it work when much less pixels are being drawn across three screens. I hope that makes sense. The purpose of this is just to prove if eyefinity itself is the problem or just the physical cable. If it is eyefinity itself, maybe it can be fixed in software with tweaks or new drivers. If it is the cable there is nothing I can do to fix it.

At 1920x1080 (my external display resolution) there are 2.07 million pixels on screen

At 2400x600 (the lowest resolution I could get to run across all three displays, yes it was not 16:9 times 3 but that wasn't the point) there are 1.44 million pixels on screen (30% less than above)

First I ran Furmark at 1920x1080 just to get a baseline with and without crossfire. Crossfire off it averaged 39 FPS over 60 second benchmark test. Crossfire on with the same settings it averaged 80 FPS over the same test. Not bad, 100% scaling which is awesome.

Then I ran Furmark at 2400x600, which should require 30% less bandwidth than at 1920x1080 with the same settings, taking the bandwidth limitation out of the picture. Crossfire off it averaged 81 FPS. Crossfire on it averaged 79 FPS.

What this says to me is that if the cable bandwidth is the problem wouldn't crossfire work great when below what 1920x1080 requires? Which it does not, it actually performs a little worse with the max and min FPS much lower during test. This test makes me hopeful that crossfire performance can be improved with a patch, tweak, new driver etc.

Another thing I noticed is that the performance of eyefinity on one card at 2400x600 was on par with the crossfire at 1920x1080, so eyefinity isn't a dog by any means. Whith 30% less pixels the single card eyefinity actually keeps up with the crossfire single screen test.

Man, you'd think I would have something better to do on Christmas, lol.

 

Interesting results, and yes, concur with your conclusions.

My own tests will definitely have to wait until February, there's no way I'll have my m17x before I leave for two weeks in the US. Good old Dell Australia cancelled my order because the Bluway burner was no longer available, and insist that they've created a new order with a different config but I can't find any record of it and even their Sales team can't tell me what order number it supposedly has. Rather naughty of them to cancel my order yet keep my money...

 

Can someone give me a quick rundown on how to enable eyefinity? I have the m17x r2 with 5870 xfire. I have two external monitors, one in the vga and the other in hdmi with an hdmi to dvi cable. I have the catalyst 10.11 drivers running and I am only able to group 1 extra monitor with the laptop display.

Any help on how to get the 2nd display into the group? Want to run both external displays with the internal one.

One other question, is it possible to use the internal display with both the external displays as extended desktops. So three seperate desktops not one desktop streched across all screens as in eyefinity.

Thanks in advance for any help provided.

 

In desktops at least, you HAVE to use the Display Port to enable 3 monitor Eyefinity. Otherwise you can only use 2 monitors no matter how many ports you have.

I'm guessing its the same requirement for laptops.

 

I assumed that was the case. For anyone that have used the display port to DVI, will this work with just the d-port to dvi cables or do I need to get the active converter?

 

I'm pretty sure you need the active converter, otherwise you'd experience lots of lag.

 

Yep, got it worked out. Picked up an accell dp to dvi active converter for 30. Works great.