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  • Sapphire Radeon HD5450 Video Card Review
  • Sapphire Radeon HD5450 Video Card Review

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    Eyefinity Technology

    Modern GPUs are extremely powerful, so much in fact that the only benefit you get from upgrading video cards is the ability to game at increasingly higher resolutions. Of course the fun doesn't stop there especially considering multi-GPU technology via CrossFire or dual GPU video cards that provide even more power.

    It really begs the question as to the next step in video display technology. Simply put larger monitors and expanded resolutions. As of this article 30" monitors are still rather expensive so what happens if we take 3 smaller and less expensive monitors and hook them up to your computer. Well in the traditional sense you would have a triple monitor desktop with each monitor still being a separate entity.

    This is where Eyefinity comes in to play, Eyefinity allows you to take those stray desktops and link them together so instead of having 3x 1680x1050 monitors you will have a single 5040x1050 desktop. In normal desktop mode you won't really see much of a difference however when you are gaming this extra resolution translates into an increased field of view and a total wrap around visual experience.
    The Sapphire HD 5450 supports up to 3 monitors for use in Eyefinity configurations.

    Supported resolution for Eyefinity depends largely on the monitors and video card you happen to be using. In the case of a HD54500 the supported resolutions will look something like this.
    Maximum Display Resolution
    D-Dub(VGA): 2048 x 1536 @85 Hz.
    DL-DVI-I: 2560 x 1600 @60Hz
    HDMI:1080P
    Display Port: 2560 x 1600 @60Hz
    Eyefinity: 4800 x 900 @60Hz

    The 900 maximum vertical resolutions in Eyefinity mode may bother some, but just imagine how much you could see with 3 times the horizontal screen resolution as it wraps around both sides of your head