New MacPro: monitor combining?

[Cubemmal]

I'm wondering if the NMP will support monitor combining, aka Eyefinity or nVIDIA surround but Apple style. They have their own custom hardware and software so it's entirely possible they'll support this. However considering Apple's rate of innovation along these lines I kind of doubt they'll do it. Thoughts?

Gaming on a nMP spanning three monitors would be amazing.

 

[OrangeSVTguy]

I've been looking around for a Nvidia Surround like feature solution for my 3 displays and found nothing.

 

[slughead]

I doubt it'll have Eyefinity or Crossfire. These are complicated technologies to be developed for a single machine line which will likely have the lowest sales of any other Mac line (I doubt we'll be seeing xfire/eyefinity in an iMac ever). We will see though!

If the nMP is truly maxed out with the W9000 (7970), without xFire it's going to be seriously neutered

You would be better off with a used Hex Core with a GTX780 --likely cheaper too. At least that supports SLI in windows.

 

[deconstruct60]

I'm wondering if the NMP will support monitor combining, aka Eyefinity or nVIDIA surround but Apple style.

" AMD Eyefinity technology is a solution developed by AMD that allows consumers to run up to six simultaneous displays off of a single graphics card. This is a unique feature of AMD graphics products that cannot be found on any other consumer graphics solution at this time."
http://www.amd.com/us/products/tech...gy/for-consumers/Pages/what-is-eyefinity.aspx

Eyefinity probably not. DisplayPort v1.2 perhaps so. It could be possible with a W9000 equivalent card. It supports up to 6 displays on 6 mDp outputs. It depends upon how those are muxed into the probably 4 ports coming out of two TB controllers.

They have their own custom hardware and software so it's entirely possible they'll support this.

On a actually W9000 card there are 6 physical ports. Apple's card has a different connection to the outside world but the AMD space there is a non custom hardware solution (past the card itself).

Gaming on a nMP spanning three monitors would be amazing.

Like folks can't do that now? There are 3 output ports on a 5770 or 5880 card now.


If just willing to use the two GPUs present could drive 6 monitors relatively easily.

 

[Boomhowler]

So, what would the benefits be with Eyefinity on osx? What's the difference to how just using 6 screens with two cards as it is?

 

[Cubemmal]

Like folks can't do that now? There are 3 output ports on a 5770 or 5880 card now.

If just willing to use the two GPUs present could drive 6 monitors relatively easily.

It has nothing to do with just driving screens, it's combing the screens into one large one - see below.

So, what would the benefits be with Eyefinity on osx? What's the difference to how just using 6 screens with two cards as it is?

Most (all?) games are written for a single monitor, don't know whether that is convenience or necessity. The problem is that you only get a single screen forward view when playing. On the hardware side companies side step this issue with Eyefinity and the nVIDIA equivalent (I forget the name at the moment). This takes multiple ports/cards and combines them into one large virtual screen, with the hardware splitting up the signal and presenting one enormous screen to the OS. Once this is done every game can be played across multiple screens for surround effect (three screens is usual). The normal restriction is that the screens have to be the same size.

On OS X it's a little different, if the game supports windowing mode then you can try to manually span multiple monitors. Whenever I've done so it fails, the game will usually try to manually reset itself (successfully) to one monitor. An example is Lord of the Rings Online. Try it - it won't work even though it seems like it should be fine.

If Apple was really great about this they would let us do such a thing with the dual cards (monitor combining), and play games spanning multiple screens. My guess is they won't. Further, what will happen in the Boot Camp Windows drivers? Spanning probably won't be supported there either.

 

[OrangeSVTguy]

So, what would the benefits be with Eyefinity on osx? What's the difference to how just using 6 screens with two cards as it is?

It's combining all 3 monitors to act as one bigger high resolution display. The menubar for instance only displays on 1 screen if you have more than 1 hooked up. I use Surround since I have Nvidia GPUs in Windows and all 3 displays acts as one monitor. The taskbar spans all 3 displays as if it's one.

 

[Boomhowler]

It's combining all 3 monitors to act as one bigger high resolution display...

Ah, I thought it already worked that way but you are right about the menu-bar. I don't get why they don't put this in the screen-options for the OS itself, choose how the summation of the x-number of screens should work and wether the menubar should span the whole "superscreen", be repeated on all or simply exist only on the "main" screen.