We thought we'd start the week building snowmen and reading about the latest sporting infidelities, but things suddenly became a whole lot more interesting when Antal Tungler - AMD's technical public relations manager for EMEA - turned up at our labs with a goodie bag that Father Christmas himself would have been proud of.
And no, we're not talking about that frankly underwhelming Radeon HD 5830. No sir, Mr Tungler presented us with a Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition graphics card - and six - yes, six - 22in Dell monitors for use in a 2x3 Eyefinity configuration.
That means a massive multi-screen resolution of 5,040 x 2,100, powered by a single extreme GPU. Impressive stuff, folks, and as you can imagine, we were eager to get up and running just so we could finally see Crysis in all its glory.
Trouble is, nobody - not even Antal Tungler himself - had any experience in setting up a six-screen wall of 22in displays, and believe you me, it's trickier than it sounds. But, being the responsible publication we are, the HEXUS team took it upon ourselves to ensure the entire build process was filmed and documented to aid the enthusiast out there who will actually go out and buy six monitors and a £400(ish) graphics card:
We never did manage to get all six displays perfectly aligned, but after toiling for a while and going through a fair share of strawberry scones, we decided we were close enough. First impression? Well, like the three-way setup we built earlier, ATI Eyefinity makes for a truly jaw-dropping gaming environment - and it certainly has its uses in terms of productivity, too. It isn't quite perfect, though, as building the display wall was tedious to say the least, and the thick bezels on Dell's displays do their utmost to detract from the overall experience.
If AMD can find a partner to build six 22-24in full-HD displays with an ultra-thin bezel - or better yet, no bezel at all - combined with an easier-to-implement stand, it could have itself one of the most desired gadgets of the year.
Stay tuned for our full AMD ATI Eyefinity Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition review, because we actually have two cards for some CrossFire fun.
