Ventuz Forum

Does anyone have a recommendation for a Graphics Adapter that would support desktop spanning over 3 x 1360x768 in portrait mode (so the resulting screen area would be 2304x1360 px @ 60 Hz) WITHOUT TEARING?

I've once tried this with an AMD FirePro V4900 (ATI FireGL), however the tearing was completely unacceptable.

Nvidia explicitly states that the "no tearing"-feature works from the Quadro 5000 upwards. I haven't been able to find out the equivalent threshold for ATI/AMD adapters.

Any hints or recommendations would be very welcome.

sq

hi squiggle

we are using datapath x4...and do the portrait rotating and everything in the datapath...we dont have any tearing problems with tearing and fire pro. do you use active or passiv display port adapters?

greetz

christian

Hi Christian,

sorry for the late reply -- we ordered a DatapathX4 right after reading your recommendation but I wanted to test it before replying. The tests are done and we're pretty happy with the Datapath -- well worth the money I'd say.

POSITIVE:

• (relatively) inexpensive solution, fairly easy to set up (once Datapath pointed us to the correct drivers ).
• No tearing -- this makes me very happy indeed!
• The first card we tried (ATI) on top of the tearing completely choked on trying to feed the 3 outputs in an Eyefinity-group (2 x DVI 1 x DPtoDVI (active) IIRC). Now we have a run-of-the-mill NVIDIA GTX570 running everything easily from one output.

NEGATIVE:

• The Datapath-outputs apparently aren't synced -- one or two outputs are often ~ a frame off. This even varies from output to output over time. For our particular content this isn't a show stopper but it's definitely something to consider.

Anyway, thanks a lot for your tip,
have a great day,

sq.

Hi,
usually the outputs should by synced.
There are two things you should check.
All four outputs need to have the same timing. Even if you don't use all outputs, make sure they all have the same setting. There is an option saying ` copy output one as default` or something like that.
If the outputs are set up correctly, the four coloured boxes should turn from red to green.

Next thing is that the input timing needs to have at least the same frame rate like the output does have... If so, also the coloured box here will turn green.
If input rate does not match the output rate, there will be frames dropped or frames shown twice, that's what my explanation looks like .

We used the x4 sometimes with ultra narrow displays or with softedge projections.

We will do some more detailed and precisely measurements in the future, also to verify the delay and stuff like that as we do have quite a lot of them.

Cheers,
Tobi

Hi Tobi,

thanks for the hint -- we'll check this asap!

sq.

Hey,
we checked the outputs of two datapath with an oscilloscope, all seems to be perfectly synced if you have "green boxes" on all field .

Cheers,
Tobi