Sweet panorama with Eyefinity

One of the greatest things about the growing 5000 series of graphics cards from AMD is the Eyefinity technology, which allows for multiple displays to work with a single board.

This new tech uses the DisplayPort standard, which means at least one of the screens you’re connecting with needs to have that standard available.

Then, the other major requirements are the OS, either Vista or Windows 7 will do. But if you can satisfy those needs, then Eyefinity is probably the most effective multi-screen solution we’ve encountered to date. It works with up to six monitors at once, although some 5000 series cards only support three. Then, it’s a simple matter of hooking up displays. These can be a mix of different standards, but the base display connected to the graphics card needs to support DisplayPort. Mixing and matching is then possible – you can add to the original DisplayPort screen HDMI, DVI and VGA monitors with no problem.

Eyefinity also enables different screen configurations – landscape, portrait and variations on the two. The multiple screens can either be used independently, each showing its own feed, or combined to form one huge display. The possibilities are formidable.

What to do with all this real estate?

Eyefinity can be useful in many ways, not least of which is gaming – you can create a sort of IMAX-like experience, surrounding yourself in displays on which the game can wrap for a more immersive approach. Productivity can also benefit from the suddenly enormous amount of desktop space available – especially useful for designers and artists. Eyefinity further creates interesting new entertainment options. You can watch movies on the giant combined display, or have one show TV while the others play different streams and feeds.

The idea behind Eyefinity is to give users more options, on top of a genuinely impressive field of view.

Now playing

ASUS has a whole cadre of Eyefinity-compatible graphics cards. We especially recommend the EAH5850 TOP edition, which also comes with a bunch of overclocking features and DirectCU, the copper-based cooling solution. This card is a nice package that’ll really benefit from the Eyefinity treatment.

Of course, our favorite hyper-real graphics card, the EAH5970, also has Eyefinity, but that’s not saying much, since there’s very little that monster lacks.

We’ll keep you posted – more and more game titles are coming out with Eyefinity-optimized support, so it looks like the technology is truly catching on.