rupertbear Posted November 22, 2009 Share Posted November 22, 2009 I read a review recently of this card which described a feature that enabled a display over 3 monitors. I haven't noticed any discussion of this in the flight sim forums yet and was wondering whether anyone has used a 5870 card for 3 displays. If so, how does it compare to the TH2go? If the performance is equal or better, then this must surely spell the end for the Matrox product. The 5870 on its own would be a much cheaper solution than a TH2go plus a high end video card. Any comments would be greatly appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maurice_King Posted November 22, 2009 Share Posted November 22, 2009 Considering the 5870 appears to still only be a Dual Output card I can't see how it would be the death nell of the TH2GO. If they are using software to split the Video out for either DVI Connector then I don't think it will be better than the TH2GO BUT then again technology changes so fast, it may well be a superior performer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrew22222 Posted November 22, 2009 Share Posted November 22, 2009 The local stores here in Vancouver don't have any versions of the 5870 in stock. There still seems to be a problem for me personally in that I have 3 X 24" Samsung 2443BW monitors but from all the reviews the 5870 needs displayport on one of the monitors to be a to make use of Eyefinity. Mine use DVI. I too looked at TH2GO but it won't run the three at 1920 X 1200 and anything less looks a little odd than what your eyes are used to so just seemed a waste of money. I guess it's an 'in between' time at the moment for multi display cards so even though I'm an impatient sod I'm going to have to wait a few months and see if ATI sorts out the having to use displayport or an adapter comes out that works properly and doesn't cost more than $50 ;-) Also looking out for what NVidia may bring out to compete as it's pretty close to Christmas. I'd go with either brand so long as it let me use 3 monitors. Andrew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgutteri Posted November 23, 2009 Share Posted November 23, 2009 HP makes a displayport -> DVI adapter for under $50, so it's definitely a hardware 3-display output. I definitely believe it's the end of the TH2GO product, and it has been discussed a bit already in these forums... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim_A Posted November 23, 2009 Share Posted November 23, 2009 I must say I've been less than impressed with the TH2Go's inability to drive my three Samsung 20" monitors at their native res, and particularly that it appears to be worse under Win7. Once versions of the ATI card become available, I'll be giving it serious consideration (they are listed for about £340 in the UK, but nobody has stocks...) Ideally I'd like to get it before the end of the year, when the VAT rate goes back up (how to kill a recessed economy in one easy lesson.... add 5% to the sales tax! ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgutteri Posted November 23, 2009 Share Posted November 23, 2009 In direct answer to the question, I think it does mark the end of TH2GO, due to the price. Buying a 5xxx series not only gives you a super quick GPU, but this feature as a bonus, rather than a near $700 addon which doesn't put out native resolutions, on top of the GPU upgrade. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hotspot Posted November 23, 2009 Share Posted November 23, 2009 I must say I've been less than impressed with the TH2Go's inability to drive my three Samsung 20" monitors at their native res, and particularly that it appears to be worse under Win7. fwiw tim_A, about last April Matrox emailed me a driver which allowed my TH2Go to drive three LG 22" monitors @ their 1680x1050 native res, albeit at 57mhz refresh rate and with 182.5 nVidia GTX280 drivers. This worked well, but on changing to W7 on a new PC I got screens blacking out when brakes applied which disappeared when a cfg tweak of removing the red writing on screen (brakes, stall etc.) was introduced, and I'm now using the latest published Matrox and nvidia drivers at native res with workaround tweak in place. I am waiting for the nVidia 300 series to see if they support three screens before changing to ATI cards, although I'm tempted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maurice_King Posted November 23, 2009 Share Posted November 23, 2009 Interesting Bill is that the Digital or Analogue version ? I wonder if that driver would assist in my res going higher than 3840 X 1024. Not that I am particularly worried since the higher the screen ress the harder the AA and AF have to work to give crisp images. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim_A Posted November 23, 2009 Share Posted November 23, 2009 I too had that update. But my Sammys are fussy and won't be driven at 57Hz -- it's 60 or nothing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maurice_King Posted November 23, 2009 Share Posted November 23, 2009 57 is 60 Hz once you take into account the slack time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim_A Posted November 23, 2009 Share Posted November 23, 2009 Not according to the Samsung. If you try to drive it at 57Hz it just displays the following error dialog "Not optimum Mode: Recommended mode 1680 x 1050 60Hz" The picture behind *does* appear to be displayed correctly, but a large proportion of the screen is taken up with this error dialog, which can't be removed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maurice_King Posted November 23, 2009 Share Posted November 23, 2009 What I'm meaning is Matrox says 57Hz which is in effect 60Hz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim_A Posted November 24, 2009 Share Posted November 24, 2009 Yes, but "in effect" does not appear to be close enough for my Samsungs. If you know of a way to have them not barf at 57Hz, I'm all ears... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hotspot Posted November 24, 2009 Share Posted November 24, 2009 Interesting Bill is that the Digital or Analogue version ? I wonder if that driver would assist in my res going higher than 3840 X 1024. Not that I am particularly worried since the higher the screen ress the harder the AA and AF have to work to give crisp images. Hi Maurice, Digital mate, if you want the file pm me and correction to my above post - I found yesterday that the W7 compatible nVidia drivers that I thought had loaded using the "device manager" last week had in fact not worked and I had still been on 182.5 - on loading the new driver again the resolution went haywire and I had to wind back to 182.5 - no sweat they are still adequate with no issues except with some OpenGL based proggies (eg AFX a smooth airport modification tool) which will only run on W7 with later drivers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maurice_King Posted November 24, 2009 Share Posted November 24, 2009 Nah mines analogue Bill so I doubt it would work. As for your issue Tim regarding the refresh rate this is probably one of the reasons I'm staying with CRT's even though the TH2GO will only accommodate 60Hz over the three it is sharper than the wife's Samsung LCD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim_A Posted November 29, 2009 Share Posted November 29, 2009 I have to say I'm slightly disappointed with the LCDs, but unless the lotto suddenly goes my way, I'm stuck with them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgutteri Posted February 17, 2010 Share Posted February 17, 2010 Hey Guys, Just letting you all know that ATI are updating their drivers soon to allow EyeFinity to work perfectly, including bezel adjustment. Overview of updates on anandtech just came out: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3743 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NaveenB Posted February 17, 2010 Share Posted February 17, 2010 I can tell you I have both a th2go I was running through a GTX 285 2GB and a 5970 now running Eyefinity, and it ATI card does not do the same level of supersampling antialiasing as the Nvidia, so there is a definite decrease in image quality, the Nvidia looked better but with about 8 fps less in all scenarios, given this I would say that eyefinity will replace TH2Go eventually, but until that supersampling issue is solved they are still competative. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgutteri Posted February 17, 2010 Share Posted February 17, 2010 That's a good point - that NVidia are better for FSX than ATI. Did you find the same thing happened in every game, or just FSX? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NaveenB Posted February 18, 2010 Share Posted February 18, 2010 It's about the same for X-plane, other that that I don't really have any other software. One difference is that with ATI and Display port you don't have to run the monitors at 57 mhz, they will all run at 60 so any monitor compatability issues are solved with Eyefinity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NaveenB Posted February 19, 2010 Share Posted February 19, 2010 Just an update Last night I installed new drivers into my 5970 and did a little tweaking. My holy grail performance wise was always Beechcraft Duke, Sitka (Tongass Fjords addon), building storms, 5040x1050x32, ENB bloom at 24 fps. I put the AA to 8x Multisampling(Supersampling kills this thing), 8x AF, Bufferpools = 0, and kicked off a flight. I was blown away, I was pulling between 40 and 60 fps, the image moves so smoothly with track IR you would have thought it was one monitor. I was so giddy I upped the Autogen to very dense and locked the frames to 30 and put a big smile on my face. I was getting 14 fps with the GTX 285 I would give the ATI card an 8/10, the performance is really good with the caveat of slightly reduced image quality. It holds 30 fps over Orbx terrain (not addon airports) with the above image parameters so I am a very happy camper right now...if only they could fix that supersampling thing... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rupertbear Posted February 26, 2010 Author Share Posted February 26, 2010 Thanks for all the really interesting replies to my first post on these forums - very encouraging. I was particularly interested in Naveen's experience in using 3 monitors with his 5970 in Eyefinity mode. Have any other simmers used a 5870 or a 5970 in Eyefinity mode? I'm due to purchase a new graphics card soon and am thinking seriously about the 5870. At the moment I'm useing a faithful old 8800GTX and a Matrox TH2Ggo Analogue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lupin500 Posted February 26, 2010 Share Posted February 26, 2010 Just an update Last night I installed new drivers into my 5970 and did a little tweaking. My holy grail performance wise was always Beechcraft Duke, Sitka (Tongass Fjords addon), building storms, 5040x1050x32, ENB bloom at 24 fps. I put the AA to 8x Multisampling(Supersampling kills this thing), 8x AF, Bufferpools = 0, and kicked off a flight. I was blown away, I was pulling between 40 and 60 fps, the image moves so smoothly with track IR you would have thought it was one monitor. I was so giddy I upped the Autogen to very dense and locked the frames to 30 and put a big smile on my face. I was getting 14 fps with the GTX 285 I would give the ATI card an 8/10, the performance is really good with the caveat of slightly reduced image quality. It holds 30 fps over Orbx terrain (not addon airports) with the above image parameters so I am a very happy camper right now...if only they could fix that supersampling thing... Same great experience for me, my 5970 doubled the frames that I had with the GTX 285. I use Bufferpools=0, FPS Limiter @ 30 and another tweak (FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.01) that gave me 2-3 FPS more. Many people don't buy this card because they read that FSX doesn't take advantage of a card with 2 GPU. I don't know if this is true or not. What I know, based on my experience, is that the 5970 performs really well in FSX and definetely beats the GTX 285. Supersampling is impossible for now but we'll see what happens with the next Catalyst. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NaveenB Posted February 28, 2010 Share Posted February 28, 2010 Hey Lupin, I added the fps limiter after I read your post with BP=0 and the Orbx autogen limits, and Wow, I am getting insane performance now! I have never had FSX like this before, I fly a circuit around Sitka with Tongass Fjords as a test of my performance and the 5970 eats it up at 5040 x 1050. I bought the thing because I saw a Tom's Hardware article that showed it getting better frames than the 5870 and I am very glad I did. For a lark I kept the same setting very high setting and did a circuit around Manhattan X in the default Bell and it was incredible! 20+ fps and smooth. Dropping back one notch on autogen and scenery complexity and it was pefect. For full disclosure I should say In Manhattan X the v-sync issue started to surface, but the smooth flight made up for it in spades. I am very very pleased... Oh yeah, I just uninstalled FS9, time to kiss the past goodbye, I can now comfortable fly FSX the way I want. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maurice_King Posted February 28, 2010 Share Posted February 28, 2010 I put the AA to 8x Multisampling(Supersampling kills this thing), 8x AF, Bufferpools = 0, and kicked off a flight. With those settings I'm not surprised I have a 9800 and run it flat out 25-45 depending on location and the settings in FSX are right up there too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drumsonly2002 Posted March 1, 2010 Share Posted March 1, 2010 NaveenB, are you running DX 9 or 10? This is a very interesting thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NaveenB Posted March 1, 2010 Share Posted March 1, 2010 I run DX9 I had a 9800 GTX + with my triplehead and it was a 9-12 fps slideshow, that's why I got the GTX285. Like I said there is a decrease in visual quality which become most apparent when looking at lines on guages, but otherwise the sim runs amazingly well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drumsonly2002 Posted March 1, 2010 Share Posted March 1, 2010 Thanks NaveenB. That is excellent information. Going to run the gauges on a second computer / monitors via FSXpand w/ FSUIPC. Thus gauges will be run through computer with a GT 8800 on a separate PC eventually. Not looking for perfection but performance. Plus, ATI may have better drivers by the time I finish my future PC. I find this all very exciting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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