ATI Radeon 5870 Eyefinity6 Review - Aspect Ratio Analysis

If you look at some of our early benchmarking, where I tested every step from 1024x768 to 5040x1050, you can see a number of instances where aspect ratio made an impact on performance. In one particular article I looked at how 1280x720 compared to 1920x480. The first is an "HDTV" widescreen that was (and still is) popular on laptops. The second was the lowest possible Surround resolution from the TripleHead2Go - 3x640x480. The interesting thing is that both resolutions have 921,600 pixels - exactly. We did find that moving from widescreen to Surround made a noticeable impact on performance.

Those were the days of DX9 when the biggest impact to performance seemed to be resolution and (based on our finding) aspect ratio. Now we are in a DX10/11 world where SSAO and Tessellation bring their own impacts. Do these impacts overshadow any issues with aspect ratio? Are today's graphics cards so power that aspect ratio is no longer an issue?

I used 3x1920x1200 (16:10 Landscape Eyefinity) as a baseline, and then tested two variations. They are 3x1200x1920 (16:10 Portrait Eyefinity) and 3x1920x1080 (16:9 Landscape Eyefinity). You can see the data below.

In general it ends up being a mixed bag, and largely based on the game. For the most part, the differences are within 10% of the baseline and tend to show improvements in both variations. The first five titles do show a drop in performance in 3x1-P. I have a couple of theories on this:

• Batman - Even though the game is Hor+, the screen caps I took from the demo prove it to be Vert-. So, the 3x1-P is actually showing more than the 3x1-L in 16:9.
• Battle Forge - In this demo, the action is concentrated on the center of the screen(s). The outer edges are the non-descript and non-textured walls of a chasm. There isn't much to tax the system there and it almost appear that those areas help to boost the scores (much like staring at a wall in an FPS helps your fps). When you set the screen to 3x1-P, which is a very large 16:9.5, you end up with the action focused on a super high resolution with very large models and set pieces.

If the game isn't providing a great deal of imagery (and high-impact imagery at that) in the outer screens, then you will probably see a performance drop when moving to a 3x1-P mode.

One thing was confirmed out of this - there is an issue with CFX scaling in Portrait mode in DX9. You will notice how the DX9 Heaven takes a huge hit to performance as CFX is disengaged. Also, we see minimal boots in Half-Life 2 (another DX9 title) with CFX, when compared to the single card performance. This issue is being discussed in the review discussion thread.

ATI Radeon 5870 Eyefinity6 Review - CrossFireX Scaling: 3x1 Eyefinity

Forum Moderator Paradigm Shifter asked if I could do some scaling charts for the Eyefinity6 vs. E6 CFX performance. I've set them up into three groups. They are scaling with widescreen, 3x1-L Eyefinity and 3x2 Eyefinity. Hopefully these will be a couple more pieces of analysis to help you make buying decisions.

This is the 3x1 Eyefinity scaling data. At Eyefinity resolutions you start to see more scaling. The scaling in many games is quite impressive.

ATI Radeon 5870 Eyefinity6 Review - CrossFireX Scaling: 3x2 Eyefinity

Forum Moderator Paradigm Shifter asked if I could do some scaling charts for the Eyefinity6 vs. E6 CFX performance. I've set them up into three groups. They are scaling with widescreen, 3x1-L Eyefinity and 3x2 Eyefinity. Hopefully these will be a couple more pieces of analysis to help you make buying decisions.

This is the 3x2 Eyefinity scaling data. At Eyefinity resolutions you start to see more scaling. The scaling in many games is quite impressive.

ATI Radeon 5870 Eyefinity6 Review - CrossFireX Scaling: Widescreen

Forum Moderator Paradigm Shifter asked if I could do some scaling charts for the Eyefinity6 vs. E6 CFX performance. I've set them up into three groups. They are scaling with widescreen, 3x1-L Eyefinity and 3x2 Eyefinity. Hopefully these will be a couple more pieces of analysis to help you make buying decisions.

This is the widescreen scaling data, along with a few notes.

Half-Life 2 doesn't "scale" well, but it's already pushing 150-200fps at these resolutions. Not much more room for any scaling.

ATI Radeon 5870 Eyefinity6 Review - Hitting 60fps

While our testing is designed to stress the card as much as possible, we all realize that games have quality settings for a reason. So, beyond seeing where the breaking point is for any individual card, I wanted to provide some insight into what image quality you can expect and get 60fps at 5760x1080 (3x1920x1080) Eyefinity.

Note, it is simply not possible to hit 60fps in some games at this resolution. In those instances we shot for 30fps.

Batman: Arkham Asylum - Turning off AA allows you to hit 60fps with a single Eyefinity6. I also hit 57fps with 2xAA and lowering the settings to "High" from "Very High." The only difference this makes is to turn off Ambient Occlusion.

Battle Forge - etting AA to 2x, and setting Shadow Quality, SSAO and FX Quality at High (from Very High) will get you 30fps in Battle Forge. I could only get in the mid 50's if I set it to 4800x900, turned off AA, stopped forcing DX11, turned off SSAO and set everything to Medium. Battle Forge is simply a 30fps game (with any amount of eye candy).

Dirt 2 - I cracked 60fps at 4800x900 @ 2xAA. I took everything set at "Ultra" down to "High", except for Water. This allowed me to maintain the tessellated water in DX11. I also lowered Post Processing from High to Low. With plenty of options, there are a number of variations available to suit your taste.

Far Cry 2 - 60fps can be attained with 0xAA on Very High quality settings.

GTA IV - I worked for a while to get an fps improvement on this benchmark tool. Even cutting the settings to 1/2 or 1/3 of max, and I had only increased 2fps to 30fps total. I'm sure that lower settings would make an impact in the real game, but I'm not seeing it here. I'm also do for a re-format and re-install. Don't think I will be carrying over GTA IV into the benchmark lineup, given its limited impact.

HAWX - I was able to get 65fps by turning each of the DX10 effects down a notch. This means Shadows and Sun Shafts at Low, and SSAO at Medium.

Heaven Demo - It is not possible to hit 60fps with this benchmark on a single GPU at Eyefinity resolutions. Considering it is meant to test/tax your system, that is to be expected. 40fps+ can be hit with 0xAA and 1xAF, but that looks downright horrible. Here is what I was able to achieve with a reasonable quality:

• DX9: 4800x900, 2xAA, 4xAF, low shaders - 34fps, med shaders - 28fps
• DX10: 4800x900, 2xAA, 4xAF, low shaders - 32fps, med shaders - 26fps
• DX11: 4800x900, 2xAA, 4xAF, tessellation enabled, low shaders - 23fps, med shaders - 20fps

Half-Life 2 - The Source Engine hits 60fps in HL2 at max settings on one Eyefinity6 card.

STALKER - 60fps will be tough to achieve and still utilize all the DX10/11 goodies they are tossing at you. 30fps may be a better goal (on a single card), like with Crysis before it. Two cards and you might get the lofty 60fps, but not with max settings and certainly not with Eyefinity. I was able to achieve this balance of performance and quality, basically doubling fps. You can get a few more fps by dropping to DX10 and reducing SSAO even more, but it's only 1-2fps for a lot of quality loss. High Preset, DX11, 4800x900, 2xAA, DX10.1 style MSAA, HDAO SSAO, Ultra SSAO, Use DX10.1, Enable Tessellation, Contact Hardening Shadows:

• Day - 25fps
• Night - 23fps
• Rain - 25fps
• Sun Shafts - 20fps