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Page 1 of 7   When we for the first time encountered DirectX 10 graphics card, it was signed by NVIDIA. It was legendary GeForce 8800GTX that was, in some way, ahead of its time. Although, a lot of us were excited about new DirectX 10, while biggest surprises were Stream Processing and unexpected performance increase offered by new NVIDIA GPU. G80 is the GPU on which NVIDIA based its entire product lineup in past few years. ATI on the other side had "bumpy ride" since they didn’t enter the DirectX 10 era with too much pomp. These days situation is drastically different, compared to 2006, so the fact that G80 is still base for a lot of NVIDIA graphics cards aren’t exciting news anymore. Nevertheless, ATI over the past few years presented a lot of new features, and despite the fact that they weren’t first with DirectX 10 accelerator, they were first to present DirectX 10.1 compatible graphics card that competition stubbornly refused to implement and support. After that ATI implemented better manufacturing processes, first 55nm and than 40nm manufacturing process. Even implementation of new generation of memory was done without a hitch. All in all, DirectX 10 era was very interesting, but it has come time to present you first and, at this moment, only DirectX 11 graphics card that marks the beginning of DirectX 11 era.
Since HD3XXX series ATI used, so-called, "Sweetspot" strategy when presenting new products. Idea is simple: instead of presenting new series with top-class product (that are in most cases inaccessible to majority of the population because of the price), use product that will be accessible to much wider audience. Because of this strategy, HD 3850, HD 3870, HD 4850 and HD 4870 become popular among gamers. Same strategy is used again so we got a Radeon HD 5870 in our test lab. HD 5850 and HD 5870X2 model will come later, and will replace current HD 4XXX series products. ATI estimates that this transition to HD 5XXX generation should be over in first quarter of 2010.
Eyefinity
For some time, it was anticipated that AMD will present "something new" in its graphics card portfolio. With a launch of 5xxx, they introduced new technology, named Eyefinity. Basically, this is multi-display technology, in some aspects similar to already known Matrox solutions, but without additional high costs. For end-user, this means that he/she can play games on multi-display setup, which can be extraordinary experience.
Bear in mind that resolution is not the biggest problem. Position can also be very important. One of our favorite demonstrations was done by Crytech and their new engine. There were three 1920x1200 displays, which formed a picture that was almost 6000 pixels wide. Best feature of this monitor configuration was the fact that two side displays were used for display of additional parts of the scene because of wider FOV (Field Of View), feature that was implemented in Microsoft Flight Simulator in his time. Central display is reserved for, well, central view, but side ones can come very handy during intensive gunfights. Unlike Flight Simulator, where this technology was implemented only for that game, this setup will work with “80 percents of the games” out of the box. Ten percent will need few lines of code in the next driver version, while last 10 percent will need some small intervention from game developer itself. The list of tested and working titles is quite long, and it is expected that most of the new games will work out of the box. There were other game demos shown, everyone impressive in its own way. There were presented some of DirectX 11 titles like Dirt 2, new Colin McRae, Battle Forge, H.A.W.X., Alien VS Predator, etc...
Did we mention that new tech demo from Crytech on three displays was done on a system with only one card? In most games, with Eyefinity enabled, new resolutions will be shown in game menu. For example, you can play Crysis Warhead in something like 2400x1200, 3840x2048 or even 5760x2160. We checked with guys from AMD, and theoretical maximum is 8000x8000 pix per one card, making it more than enough for 6 full HD 30-inch monitors system. When there is enough GPU power to support all the available screens, almost every content looks unbelievably good and eye catchy. Eyefinity combinations, that were presented, worked great in scenarios of various work environment configurations, video playback, windowed and 3D full screen applications. One more demonstration caught our attention, mainly because of 6 Samsung displays used at the same time. Samsung, official AMD launch partner, presented new line of 23inch monitors with small panel frames. At the same Samsung provided mounts for all those monitors, so they can be configured in desired layout. Our favorite layout was made out of 4 displays used to display BattleForge with additional two displays on sides used for much more serious things, like stock reports.
Don’t forget that all this was backed-up by just one graphics card. There will be "special" Eyefinity cards with 6 mini display ports, but most of the regular models will support something like two DVI's, one Display Port and one HDMI. Eyefinity supports these different video outputs without breaking a sweat. To further spice all this, UI for display configuration in Catalyst Control Center is intuitive and easy to configure. New feature will be available only for Evergreen graphics cards, while owners of older graphics cards will be left out on cold. That is a shame, since our estimation is that there will be many games that can work on multi-display configuration even with older cards, but problem can be presence of only two video outputs, not in lack of GPU power. On the other hand, Eyefinity is supported on Windows 7, Vista and Linux, which are good news.
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Graphics cards 
