14 DAY TRIAL // Though the real competition between NVIDIA and ATI, business unit of AMD, is happening, right now, on the DirectX 11 front, there are two fields that the two rivals haven't, so far, been able to tackle at the same time. ATI, for instance, has its Eyefinity technology, whereas NVIDIA has 3D Vision. A solution capable of enabling both, however, has not yet emerged, which means that what Sapphire recently demonstrated may just gain traction faster than one might think.
ATI Eyefinity allows a single video card to extend the viewing area to three monitors instead of one. This feature is part of the reason why ATI has sold so many DirectX 11 adapters. On the other hand, NVIDIA has the 3D Vision, which can convert games and videos into 3D. When it comes to triple-display scenarios, though, the only way to enable such a thing is by taking two GTX 400 identical cards and configuring them in SLI.
Sapphire managed to get an ATI Eyefinity card to display 3D on three monitors at once. The display area was of 5760 x 1080 pixels and 3D support was enabled by a third-part 3D driver from iZ3D. The capability was shown off by means of three Zalman Trimon screens, which can make do with cheap, polarized 3D glasses.
Unfortunately, there is no telling what funds such a setup would demand, though they shouldn't be much higher than the regular 3-monitor setup.
“This technology demonstrates that games and applications can be displayed in 3D on multiple screens, and run smoothly, without the need for multiple graphics cards or expensive shutter glasses,” said Bill Donnelly, the Global PR Director for Sapphire. “This approach uses low cost glasses, and can be run on any system with an ATI-based Sapphire graphics card that has ATI Eyefinity support.”