Eyefinity Different Resolutions
Giovanni Sealy
Just set up my new system. I am trying to set up the eyefinity with 3 monitors each with a max resolution of 3840x2160. However when setting the eyefinity to active it will combine them at a resolution of 4096x2160 which causes each monitor to push it's display past the viewing edge of each monitor making it nearly useless to use. I have tried a few things including the eyefinity pro app and can't resolve the issue.
So if I could set the Eyefinity resolution to 11520x2160 or 5760x1080 it would fix the issue. My previous GC (gforce 3060) had no issues with using those resolutions when spanning my displays, so I know it is possible just don't see a way to do it with the current software for this Radion card.
Pretty much I think it is the fact that eyefinity only does the Auto setup. Previous versions of the eyefinity allowed you to change resolutions. I think for my issue it is that windows is using the generic monitor settings which in uhd 4096x2180 is the max that a lot of monitors can do, but my displays do not support that resolution. The Nvidia drivers when using their screen spanning it allows you to chose the resolutions still. So I don't know if it due to lazy programmers or if they are adopting the general trend that API/OS companies are by removing any ability for users to 'SET' their own parameters.
After few hours of research, I found something inside an iRacing forum. Actually there is a Pro version of Eyefinity available in your AMD/CNEXT/CNEXT folder located in your program directory. And by using this one I have finally manage to have correct resolution. What is strange is that it is as simple as the classic one to define... you click and it set the 3 screens resolution itself. But with correct resolution for me this time. I hope it will work for you too !
I had all ready tried that app, probably read the same forum post you did that referred you to it. I do not know why it worked for you tho, since all it does is sorts the displays and shifts pixels to correct for bezel width. Which does not actually change the monitors resolution, it just shifts your pixels on the left or upper portion of each screen selected. Now in older forum post and some of the AMD guides they show the pro app changing resolutions with advanced options, but that was with an older set drivers (2019 I think) So you might have older drivers loaded.
AMD Eyefinity technology allows two or more displays to be combined into a single large desktop. When displays are combined the desktop resolution and workspace area increase per the number of displays in the group, with each display showing a portion of the desktop. The final resolution is the horizontal and/or vertical sum of the individual monitors.
Before you start creating an AMD Eyefinity display group, please use Windows Display Settings to configure and arrange your displays in the desired order. For help, please refer to: How to Configure Displays in Duplicated and Extended Modes
The onscreen guide will show a grid representation of the display group and one of the physical displays will have a blue background. Click on the box in the grid that matches the location of the highlighted display.
In this example, the display on the left has a blue background. Click on the left most box in the grid to confirm its position.
Once the first displays position has been confirmed, another display will appear with a blue background. Click on the box in the grid that matches the physical position of the display. This process continues depending on the number of displays used in the group. However, the last display's position will be applied automatically.
After an AMD Eyefinity display group has been created it can be customized using Try Advanced Setup. This will launch Radeon Additional Settings making the following AMD Eyefinity Multi-Display options available:
NOTE! In order access the Try Advanced Setup option the displays must already be configured in AMD Eyefinity mode. For information on how to create an AMD Eyefinity display group, please see section: Setting Up AMD Eyefinity Display Group.
By default, the Windows Taskbar extends across all displays in a single row AMD Eyefinity display group. In a multi-row AMD Eyefinity display group, the Windows Taskbar extends across the bottom row of displays. The Position Windows Taskbar option allows positioning the Taskbar on a single display.
When the displays in an AMD Eyefinity display group have different resolutions, the desktop image may appear stretched or cropped. You can change how the desktop image is shown across your displays by resizing the AMD Eyefinity display group.
After applying the Fill preset using the Resize Desktop option, the Customize Eyefinity Desktop Resolution option should appear providing a selectable list of supported resolutions for your AMD Eyefinity display group in the Custom Resolution drop-down menu.
NOTE! The Current Desktop Resolution is displayed along with the Minimum Resolution and Maximum Resolution. The minimum and maximum resolutions are automatically determined based on your displays and cannot be changed.
Officially there is very less information, and searching on internet gives you bits and pieces which is not sufficient enough to understand how exactly eyefinity works. This is also acceptable since not everyone has all kinds of monitors to test around.
Well, it totally depends on the use case and available hardware, but yes configuring eyefinity is a challenge and requires a lot of setup before you can really make use of it. If you ask me, it seems that eyefinity is best suited for sim games like Dirt Rally, WRC where you need a wide angle cockpit view to really feel the immersion.
Yes, you can enable eyefinity and play any game that supports wide resolution like GTA5, but it will take a toll on your Graphics card and to support the eyefinity resolutions, you might have to compromise graphics and physics quality which I believe is the point of playing games like GTA.
People have been using multi monitors for more than two decades and almost all offices have multi monitors for their employees to work. The setup is quite easy - You just need to plugin with the supported port and the system recognizes it automatically. You go to the display settings section and just rearrange based on the physical layout and you are done.
The ideal condition would be to have 3 identical monitors. You will not get any stretching, cutoff issues and all will work seamlessly. You might need to rearrange them based on their physical location on the desk.
But there is still one small issue with this ideal setup - Bezels. Whatever the manufacturer advertises, bezels are not going anywhere. For a straight line you may not notice, but with 3d graphics and tilted lines, you will observe that the lines are not aligned properly. And when bezels are big(in case you are using cheap monitors :-P), this distortion feels apparent and is quite a big distraction when you are gaming.
To overcome this, AMD has provided a utility for bezel correction. But somehow they are not proud of this and have hidden it from the main menu. You have to navigate to the AMD installation directory and open eyefinitypro.exe. There are some options available like the layout method, offsets and re arrangement.
In this case it will be (1280+1920+1280)x(1024) i.e 4480 x 1024. The vertical size is 1024 which is good for your side monitors but the middle has 1080 physical pixels. There is a difference of 56 pixels. If you chose fit in the layout mode, you will see black area at the bottom in the center monitor coz it will only utilize 1024 pixels vertically. And with this you will realize that even though all three monitors are around same size physically but because of different native resolution, the actual display area will not match. Thus you will have distorted lines as you go from top to bottom.
Apparently there is no way to actually preview how it will look in reality because it also depends on your physical size of the monitor. The layout preview that you see in the eyefininty tool just works on the resolution parameter. It does not have any information on the actual physical size of the monitors which some what makes this totally unintuitive.
If the PPI is same for all the monitors, irrespective of their sizes or native resolution, you can get a working eyefinity desktop. Yes, there would be empty areas or some cut off depending on how you arrange the monitors, but you will get un-distorted lines which means functional enlarged view.
AMD hid their Eyefinity configuration tool while NVidia proudly shows it up front in the main config window. The reason is clear - NVidia does a better job. NVidia calls it Surround. The options are somewhat similar, like display arrangement and total resolution. However, I observed that NVidia surround takes very little time to configure.
Heck, this six-way Eyefinity rig makes that look like a lukewarm glass of skim milk. The extremeness vibes merely from sitting in front of it will bleach your clothes into neon hues and make you sweat drops of energy drink.
In order to get a clear sense of what the various options have to offer, I decided to try several different display configurations. I started, as you might have guessed, with the flat wall of six monitors shown above. This was the standard-issue display configuration that the two gents from AMD came and installed in our office.
After playing with this setup for a while and understanding its strengths and limitations, I became convinced that a different display configuration might just be ideal for me, with my preference for first-person shooters. I pulled the six-display setup off of my desk and replaced it with a trio of monitors that was, in many ways, just as glorious:
The card
The Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 distinguishes itself from the vanilla Radeon HD 5870 by sporting 2GB of video memory, six Mini DisplayPort outputs, and the clever use of superscript. AMD cited a suggested e-tail price of $479 for this beast upon its introduction, but most current listings at Newegg are at $499.