The Best, Most Bezel(less) screens for Eyefinity

[inferKNOX]

@ bubje
So just to clarify, it's working for you with a passive DP->VGA adapter?
Max resolution for VGA is 1600x1200 though, isn'? So it's a no-no for HD.

Because of all the mixed responses, I just thought to drop AMD/ATi some mail about it and this is their reply:

I understand that you are interested in setting up Eyefinity 3 and would like to know the requirements.
An active DisplayPort adaptor is required if you are using more than 2 monitors.
Unfortunately, the passive DP adaptor does not supply the power required for a third display.
Eyefinity information and supported hardware can be found at the following link:
http://support.amd.com/us/eyefinity/Pages/eyefinity-dongles.aspx

So that confirms it. A passive would work for 2 monitors, but not when there are 3 on the card.

Okay, so back to the topic, what are your recommendations for the best screens to use in Eyefinity?

 

[bubje]

Yes it´s working for me with this one:HP DISPLAYPORT TO VGA ADAPTER(http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/me/en...1-3895844.html)
it supports up to 1920x1080.It´s not really passive ´cause it has a active chip inside.
Amd is talking about dp-dvi,for that you need a active adaptor
As i said ,this is working great for me and also saved me more or less 80 euro

 

[inferKNOX]

All things considered, I think that a DP->VGA adapter is the best option then for one wanting to have Eyefinity at 1920x1080.
I'm going to look for DP->VGA adapters that support 1920x1200 and be done with this mess, lol!

 

[digibucc]

I would have to disagree inferKNOX...

personal experience and all except for one response(bubje) from those I have asked have negated that. only one person I have heard has gotten a "passive" DP->VGA" adapter to work properly.
for me it worked, sometimes. it would take forever to activate the screen and would get the resolution wrong often. after gettting the active dell one it works like I would expect it to.
not telling anyone not to try it, go ahead - but i personally think it is a waste of time. just spend the extra $60 and get the dell or apple adapters.

and not that I don't take bubjes word - i do... but the ratio of those who it has worked for vs those it hasn't 1/hundreds , tells me the chances are not good that any of us will be as lucky as bubje.

 

[HookeyStreet]

Do you 'forget about' the borders after a while?

 

[digibucc]

yeah you really do. they are useful when working obviously, i keep it on extended so that there are three separate desktops (and i use DisplayFusion, which gives me a separate taskbar on each screen, which only shows the apps on that screen).

when gaming i switch it to Eyefinity which gives me a res of 5760x1080. I do not like bezel compensation - i'd rather have a bit of fish eye and some doubling then lose an inch of screen to the borders.
but as you asked - yeah you forget about them. the only issue that comes up for me is when i have to move my mouse across the entire thing in an RTS or something.

GTA series looks amazing. it has the least stretching of the games I have tried, meaning it actually gives you almost 3x as much viewable area, rather than just stretching the existing viewable area and giving you an extra 30% or so. that's what most games do.

 

[HookeyStreet]

yeah you really do. they are useful when working obviously, i keep it on extended so that there are three separate desktops (and i use DisplayFusion, which gives me a separate taskbar on each screen, which only shows the apps on that screen).

when gaming i switch it to Eyefinity which gives me a res of 5760x1080. I do not like bezel compensation - i'd rather have a bit of fish eye and some doubling then lose an inch of screen to the borders.
but as you asked - yeah you forget about them. the only issue that comes up for me is when i have to move my mouse across the entire thing in an RTS or something.

GTA series looks amazing. it has the least stretching of the games I have tried, meaning it actually gives you almost 3x as much viewable area, rather than just stretching the existing viewable area and giving you an extra 30% or so. that's what most games do.

Sounds awesome! I cant view the pics of your setup atm because Im at work

Im really starting to miss PC gaming

 

[bubje]

Well i must be lucky then ,but i´ve seen some people on amd/atiforum and on widescreengaming who were using the same dp-vga adaptor and had it working.
That´s why i bought this one because after paying 250.-€ for my 5850 i didn´t want to spend another 120.-€ just to connect my monitors.
(http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/me/en...1-3895844.html)
PS if you want a dp-dvi get this one : http://www.accellcables.com/products/DisplayPort/DP/dp_dvid.htm .(130-€)
A friend has got this one and works perfect, cause some of the apple ones dont work

 

[digibucc]

yeah that link doesn't work, it didn't before either. it has the ... in it which cuts out part of the URL. I would be interested in which one it is though...
edit: here is the one i got working, DP->DVI

maybe i did just get a cheap one. the reviews said it worked, but highlighted some of the same issues. I didn't want to pay either but it was worth it imo. when the "passive" adapter was working it took an extra 5-10seconds to activate the monitor whenever i changed modes.

there are also the disadvantages to using analog at all ... though they will only be slightly mitigated as DP is still analog... albeit a higher quality analog. what is good is using DVI on the monitors, as a lot of monitors are touchy with input and aren't properly activated by VGA ... that could also have been the source of my issues now that i think of it...

either way you get it to work, eyefinity is awesome and everyone should try it

 

[bubje]

Oops sorry my bad with the link
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/...iv.HTML#Overview - DisplayPort to VGA Adapter that should work

or http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/me/en/sm/WF06c/A1-329290-64265-3965876-3965876-3895841-3895844.html

 

[inferKNOX]

@ digibucc
Have a look here: http://www.widescreengamingforum.co...&t=17468&sid=435f5f415e10d659019aafff991de6a6
from what I see, it seems to have been a early driver and/or BIOS issue that caused some to experience trouble with the DP->VGA.
I honestly believe that by now with the new drivers, plus new BIOS I already updated to, it shouldn't give trouble.

Getting a $100 adapter is just not feasible for me, and after reading up on the DP standard itself, and reading several success stories (on this particular one) I'm confident there's a high probability I'll have success with the Bytecc AP-DPVGA: Directron (US) | eBay (UK)

 

[digibucc]

@ digibucc
Have a look here: http://www.widescreengamingforum.co...&t=17468&sid=435f5f415e10d659019aafff991de6a6
from what I see, it seems to have been a early driver and/or BIOS issue that caused some to experience trouble with the DP->VGA.
I honestly believe that by now with the new drivers, plus new BIOS I already updated to, it shouldn't give trouble.

Getting a $100 adapter is just not feasible for me, and after reading up on the DP standard itself, and reading several success stories (on this particular one) I'm confident there's a high probability I'll have success with the Bytecc AP-DPVGA: Directron (US) | eBay (UK)

yeah idk. can't disagree

this machine is my work though, not just play. the card was part of a work upgrade so me personally spending just $90 to allow for 3xscreen gaming was worth it. and the difference it has made in productivity has been more worth it than i imagined.

I just have enough to deal with already, I wanted the simplest guaranteed solution. After the adapter I tried didn't work - and when it did was slow and iffy, I rmad it and got the Dell one.

Also - I think my monitors are not very good with a VGA input. I think that may have a LOT to do with my frustration. DVI/HDMI work great but VGA takes longer and is simply not as good. so regardless whether it started DP or not, a DVI input is best for me.

but for sure . do it , let us all know - and then there are more known cheaper solutions available. it's only a good thing.

edit: was just looking through newegg, and saw in my history that the bytecc is the one i tried. again i could have got a bad one, or it is my monitor fussy with VGA. or both. either way it got real hot and barely worked, and then didn't work at all after about 20 minutes. But if others say they have it working continuously i can't disagree.

 

[inferKNOX]

So you used this one: http://www.byteccusa.com/product/adapter/AP-DPVGA/AP-DPVGA.htm
Apparently there is one that is an updated and better version: http://www.byteccusa.com/product/adapter/AP-DPVGA-005/AP-DPVGA-005.htm
Sadly the latter is not available in UK where I'm shopping from. :'(
However, the former got quite a few people happy.

What I believe is ATi released it's normal 5xxx cards with drivers that were not completely ready for Eyefinity for the end users to be testers to help iron out all the bugs in the drivers, so that by the time they released the Eyefinity6 card, it would counter nVidia + be relatively bug free. I think people, being unsure about the adapters, then attributed the driver bugs to be adapters.

I say this after reviewing that thread and from my experience as a PC technician, that the problems were mostly driver based, with a few boiling down to failure/inadequacy of the adapters.
From what I understand the 10.3 were the drivers that finally made the magic happen in terms of Eyefinity coz they were also the driver that accompanied the Eyefinity6 card. So since the majority of driver based bugs are out, I estimate a probability of about 80% that even the 1st adapter in this post will work, and at £12.50, it's worth a try.

EDIT: that being said if ANYONE knows where to buy the Bytecc AP-DPVGA-005 in UK, PLEASE say so immediately! It's been almost guaranteed to work by most users and is cheap too.

 

[inferKNOX]

Woot!
I found the Bytecc AP-DPVGA-005 at Aria (UK) for £17.35 inc. VAT (£22.04 incl Delivery) and am hoping to have it bought for me!!
Gonna try to mail the eBay seller (post #61) and see if they can organise the Bytecc AP-DPVGA-005 to see if we can get it cheaper there, for the UK guys that is.

Edit: £20.32 incl VAT at cables-leads with free shipping.

Edit2: btw don't forget to give suggestions on good Eyefinity screens.

 

[TekBoi]

This is what I'd do...

Sorry about resurrecting a dead thread, but I didn't see anything about it in the forum rules. So... I've thought about this quite a bit, and the contender is the biggest resolution monitor you can get right now: a 2560 X 1600 (about 4 megapixels) resolution monitor, it requires TWO DVI inputs, and as of this posting, it's going for about $1300 on newegg.

However, if you opt for a different approach then everyone else on this forum, you'll get a better picture. Here's what I'm suggesting: Buy three (that's what you need to beat the current contender in width) monitors than can swivel vertically. Get em at 1920 X 1080 as they are the cheapest right now. And get em displayport so they can natively be scaled as one monitor. I found an NEC display with a tiny bezel and a native displayport input. I also found a ZOTAC card with three native displayport outputs (not mini-displayport on most card, which require an adapter).

This is what I found as of this posting:
3 X NEC EA231WMI-BK ($265 X 3 = $795)
1 X ZOTAC ZT-40407-10P GTX 460 ($240)
Altogether: About $1000 for a 3240 X 1920 res screen.
That's over 50% more pixels (6.2 vs 4)!

That's three hundred dollars cheaper than that 30" behemoth, plus you get more pixels, plus I'm calculating the video card in the mix. I think it's a no brainer if you have the dough. I didn't post any links cuz yaal are resourceful.

 

[HalfAHertz]

Sorry about resurrecting a dead thread, but I didn't see anything about it in the forum rules. So... I've thought about this quite a bit, and the contender is the biggest resolution monitor you can get right now: a 2560 X 1600 (about 4 megapixels) resolution monitor, it requires TWO DVI inputs, and as of this posting, it's going for about $1300 on newegg.

However, if you opt for a different approach then everyone else on this forum, you'll get a better picture. Here's what I'm suggesting: Buy three (that's what you need to beat the current contender in width) monitors than can swivel vertically. Get em at 1920 X 1080 as they are the cheapest right now. And get em displayport so they can natively be scaled as one monitor. I found an NEC display with a tiny bezel and a native displayport input. I also found a ZOTAC card with three native displayport outputs (not mini-displayport on most card, which require an adapter).

This is what I found as of this posting:
3 X NEC EA231WMI-BK ($265 X 3 = $795)
1 X ZOTAC ZT-40407-10P GTX 460 ($240)
Altogether: About $1000 for a 3240 X 1920 res screen.
That's over 50% more pixels (6.2 vs 4)!

That's three hundred dollars cheaper than that 30" behemoth, plus you get more pixels, plus I'm calculating the video card in the mix. I think it's a no brainer if you have the dough. I didn't post any links cuz yaal are resourceful.

Sorry to disappoint you, but you need another 460 for the 3rd monitor. Nvidia cards currently can output only to two monitors, even if they have 3 outputs there are only 2 links. Or at least this was the case until recently. Don't know why it says it can run 4 monitors on zotac's site. Maybe they added a dedicated i/o chip?

 

[inferKNOX]

I'm thinking of selling my T260 since they're no longer made and getting 3x Samsung Syncmaster P2770H monitors (ea. @ 1920x1080).
Unfortunately, my shopping destination is South Africa and that's all that I'm seeing that is a viable choice both in price and availability.
I just wish I could get 3x 1920x1200 monitors and also ones that swivel...

@TekBoi: When I made this thread it was intended to be a sort of... database where people would chime in with their ideas, so that we all get an idea of what are the best monitors for an Eyefinity setup, not to get recommendations for a personal purchase.

 

[TekBoi]

nVidia

I'm sorry I brought up the notion of nVidia. Eyefinity is an AMD thing... my bad.