ATI Eyefinity Ecosystem - September 2010 Update
Just over a year ago, ATI unveiled their Eyefinity technology at a press event on the USS Hornet. The first card - the Radeon HD 5800 - launched at the end of September. We're almost one year out from the initial unveiling and launch, and ATI brought together a handful of media and gaming folks to talk about the current state of the "Eyefinity Ecosystem".
While some of the info (like their market penetration) was a bit of self-promotion (and what company isn't going to promote their success), there was one key announcement - the release of Active DisplayPort to Single-Link DVI adapters into the market.
Single Link Active DP Adapter
The big announcement of the conference call was the release of Active DP > SL-DLI adapters onto the market. While the products had been announced as "coming soon" by manufacturers such as Accell, we were informed that the products would indeed be reaching the market in September.
The new Single Link adapter is made to greatly reduce the cost and complexity of setting up Eyefinity. DP monitors are not needed, and this adapter is much smaller, cheaper and easier to use than the first Dual-Link DVI adapters that were available. Dual-Link DVI adapters are often hard to find, temperamental, and still cost about $100. Many users have trouble with flickering and blanking on their monitors, and even re-branded offerings from the same OEM behave differently.
The new adapter costs just $30, requires no external power, and in testing does not suffer from any of the blanking issues that drove original adopters to passive DP > VGA adapters. Considering the win-win-win of the Single Link Active Adapter, I posed the following Question to Evan Groenke, of AMD's Global Communications division:
A (Evan): "Firstly, the DL-DVI adapters already existed and were available from Apple in miniDP to DL-DVI form, as well as Dell had an adapter available around the launch time of the ATI Radeon HD 5000 series. With adapters already available we worked with the vendors to qualify their firmware with the ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series. Also the spec already has the capability to pass single link DVI outputs passively so at a first glance it is counter intuitive to create active SL-DVI when the spec can do it more cheaply passively. Another factor contributing to this is that the DL-DVI dongle is made from off the shelf ASICs (TMDS transmitter, DP receiver, etc.), whereas the SL-DVI dongle is a single new ASIC that combines all of these functions into a single piece of silicon.
The new demand for active SL-DVI-to-DP adapters really arose because of the way Eyefinity is implemented, so part of it was showing the vendors the demand for such a product to make the adapters in the first place. That could only happen when people had seen the positive reaction to Eyefinity. In essence, the fact that these adapters are here now is tantamount to and as validation of the success of Eyefinity."
Installation
The installation couldn't be simpler. You plug the adapter into the DVI cable, and then plug the DP connector into your video card. If hot plugging while your PC is booted, you need to attach the adapter to the cable first. There are no drivers to load, and it is not dependent on any particular version of the Catalyst driver set. There is also no external power needed.
Support
Being a single link device, it support signals up to 1920x1200 at 8-bit color.
Performance
The part just works. I'm running a pair of Eyefinity6 cards in CrossFireX. I am using Mini-DP > DP cables to my five monitors in portrait. I grabbed a DVI cable, and swapped the cable+adapter for my mini-DP cable in the first connector. I booted, and it worked. BIOS screens loaded (it's an electrical adapter - no drivers), as did Windows 7. I swapped resolutions, and ran through five different profiles:
- 5x1-L (Extended)
- 5x1-P (Extended)
- 1-P + 3x1-P (EF Group) + 1-P
- 3x1-P (EF Group)
- HDTV off of port #6.
In the last two configurations the monitor connected to the adapter was off. The adapter had no problem with switching resolutions, configurations or orientations. It also had no problem being taken out of the active profile, and being turned back on. I've never had to use a DP adapters, as I bought DP screens for my Eyefinity rig.
I did have blanking on the 10.3 and 10.4 drivers (so I know what it looks like). But my blanking issues were fixed with Catalyst 10.7 I had no blanking or flickering with any resolution or configuration change. Over reviewers such as Rage3D (see page two) have had similar success.
Availability
The new adapters will be available from manufacturers such as XFX, PowerColor, Wieson, Accell and Sapphire (and more). The parts will be available from online retailers such as NCIX, Memory Express, Micro Center, and Amazon.com (among others).
Additionally, GPU vendors will be including the adapters with certain Radeon 5000 SKUs as part of a bundle. While pricing hasn't been revealed by any of ATI's partners, we expect somewhere between the base price of the board and the additional $30 of the adapter.
Additional Pictures
