Widescreen Gaming Forum

Thank you for the excellent write up/review,I was wondering if we're able to tri(quad?) fire the 5870 E6's or and mix&match these with a 5970 4gb card?

I was kind of hoping that the extra 1GB of memory would have made a bigger difference, but it seems my October 5870 purchase at a non-inflated price was still the smart thing to do.

I hope ATI and Dell are giving you some free goodies because you have helped to sell U2410's and now CF 5870/2gb's :cheers

The 5x1-P comments were the most interesting to me. That is the setup I think I will upgrade to in the future when bezels are even smaller, that and I think I will need a bigger desk :shock:

I do indeed get free goodies from ATI (all the cards :shock: ). Nothing from Dell, but that's okay. I'm actually looking to sell my U2410's, since I have six matching for 5x1-P. You interested? Would love to sell them over the forum and save the eBay fees...

And yes, you will need to get a bigger desk.

Thanks for the review Ibrin. Your comments about the 2GB 5870 versus the 2x1GB 5970 have cemented even more my plan to wait for the 2x2GB 5970. Given ATI's admission that the crossfire bridge isn't up to the demands of extremely high resolutions, I think that the 2x2GB 5970 is going to be a much smarter buy than two 5870 2GB cards. And it will be the same cost as well.

You may very well be right here. The $479x2 is right at the expected ~$1000 of the 5970 4GB. It would be interesting to see if the "internal CFX" offers a better experience than the E6 CFX. There is also the possibly better heat management and power draw on the 5970 4GB. Each E6 uses 6+8 pin. The 5970 4GB uses 6+8+8 pin, so you're "saving" a 6-pin worth of power.

When you're looking to pay this much on a GFX card, the extra $50 for a better thermal solution, custom hardware and less heat draw sounds pretty good. Didn't one of them use a custom low-voltage 5970 as well?

I'm trying to get a 5970 4GB, but the cards are expected to be in short supply and on limited quantity. Also, considering these are custom designs from ATI's partners, I'm not sure there are any reference designs that ATI can send my way.

It was actually hard to get the 5970, as ATI had low stock internally. They can't keep them on the shelves (so they tell me), and folks ask the question, "Why do we need to give a $600 video card to this site to test/review, when they already sell themselves?" Valid point. Considering one of the partners is doing only 1000 of the 5970 4GB cards for $1000 each, not sure it's worth it for them to send one my way. Would be nice though.

Thank you for the excellent write up/review,I was wondering if we're able to tri(quad?) fire the 5870 E6's or and mix&match these with a 5970 4gb card?

I haven't. I might try the 5970+5870 in the future. I don't have a 5970 4GB card, so I can't try that plus the E6 2GB.

I've got some other articles I want to write first from the testing I've already done. Honestly, I've been doing almost nothing but benchmarking for a couple of months. I'm pretty burned out on it at the moment.

I know folks on the forums have had problems with Tri-Fire. I will ask ATI about that. The next thing I'd "like" to bench/review/unbox would be one of the 5970 4GB cards.

I was kind of hoping that the extra 1GB of memory would have made a bigger difference, but it seems my October 5870 purchase at a non-inflated price was still the smart thing to do.

Looking at your rig specs, I think your choice was very good indeed. My goal wasn't to "sell the E6" but to get the truth out there. It's as much a benefit to my readers to prevent the "what ifs" and any false buyer's remorse, as it is to point you to a worthy upgrade.

That is really the goal of testing everything across the 5000-series spectrum and creating the Eyefinity Buyers Guide - to help people be comfortable and secure in the purchases they have or will make.

Excellent review, it helped me to choose my next GPUs - a pair of GTX 480. :mrgreen:

Great review, def. helped me make my mind up about 2x3 vs 5x1. Ibrin, did you by any chance measure the width of your setup in 5x1P? Looking at going 5x1P in the future (perhaps September, as a birthday present to myself), and my desk is only 65", so I was wondering if perhaps I needed to go with a smaller monitor, perhaps some 22's. Also, have you heard anything about whether or not there will be faster, more powerful E6 cards coming in the future? Or should I try to snag a couple of E6's (for crossfire) in the coming months?

Thanks!
-Erik

Excellent review, it helped me to choose my next GPUs - a pair of GTX 480. :mrgreen:

What swayed you?

Great review, def. helped me make my mind up about 2x3 vs 5x1. Ibrin, did you by any chance measure the width of your setup in 5x1P? Looking at going 5x1P in the future (perhaps September, as a birthday present to myself), and my desk is only 65", so I was wondering if perhaps I needed to go with a smaller monitor, perhaps some 22's. Also, have you heard anything about whether or not there will be faster, more powerful E6 cards coming in the future? Or should I try to snag a couple of E6's (for crossfire) in the coming months?

There is some variance based on how much you angle in your outer monitors. Putting them all "flat" with no angle is the widest. My 3x2 with 22" that had about 45" degrees on the angle were 51.5" inches across. Interestingly enough the 5x1-P with 22" were the exact same width.

The left-center and right-center monitors were 22.5 degrees off the center, and the outer monitors were 22.5 degrees off of those. The overall angle between the outer and center monitors was still 45 degrees, but with a more "curved" effect. Flattening it out a bit put them at 53 inches across.

Your bigger concern is depth. You need a good couple feet to make sure you're comfortable looking at everything. I will measure depth in a bit. I like the 22" 16:9 panels due to a smaller dot pitch and lighter weight.

You may want to consider an IPS panel, as turning it off-axis can produce some color saturation issues. I don't want to make any definitive judgments until I can address my depth issues (I'm getting a keyboard drawer so I can back up a bit). I did get better viewing when turning my monitors counter-clockwise, versus clockwise.

I haven't heard anything about a more powerful E6 card. But if I had, I probably couldn't tell you anyway. :wink: However the E6 is the last stock offering in ATI's 5000 series. You may get some overclocked/watercooled/custom cards from ATI's partners in the future. We're already starting to see those in other SKUs (4GB 5970, Eyefinity5 5770, silent 5570, etc.).

Awesome Job!!! Just ordered 2 of these cards.

Good review. I'm not too worried about 2 GB for now. My only conceivable upgrade is dropping a 2nd 5870 into my rig.

[quote]Excellent review, it helped me to choose my next GPUs - a pair of GTX 480. :mrgreen:

What swayed you?


I dont know, maybe the 2Gb VRAM was fooling me.

The NVIDIA solution for Surround is not hardware based, it is software like SoftTH.

Wow. Yet another piece of information I had no idea about, despite reading a number of 3DVS articles. That seems to answer the question as to why SLI is required for the technology--a single GPU probably couldn't cut it in terms of performance.

Every day brings me closer to a switch to ATI...

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