FIGURE 7. Vista SPA test score. (Source: JPR)

Usually it’s the HDD that drags down the score; we were shocked to see the graphics, especially the X1900, only get a 3.0. OK, so it wasn’t the fastest machine in the world, but was it fast enough?

Good enough?

The R690 can’t run Shader Model 3.0 (whereas Intel claims their GMA X3000 core does, and Nvidia says their GeForce 6100/6150 does too). However, according to the buzz on the web AMD’s core is significantly faster than those chips as it has four pixel shaders running at 400 MHz, which eclipses the two shaders employed by Intel and Nvidia, even though they run at a higher clock speed. But since we didn’t have any of those other motherboards to test, we don’t know for a fact.

Time to get real

As mentioned elsewhere in this issue, we’ve been testing “S.T.A.L.K.E.R,” so we thought what better test than to see if it would run on this rig. Well, there’s running and then there’s running. It did install, and it did run, but the frame rate was about 20 or less. If you moved the mouse you could count a second or two before the image caught up. Time to check to see if we had the latest Dx9 drivers.

The Dx9c driver didn’t help, nor should it have since Vista is supposed to come with it, but we had to make sure.

So as good as the R690 is, and it’s damn good, it’s not for playing “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.,” and we doubt any IGP would.

We moved the main monitor to the Dell, which is driven by the Radeon X1900, and at 1280 x 1024 “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.” ran fine. When we cranked the resolution up to 2580 x 1600, the performance was again slow and latent. At 1600 x 1200 it was barely acceptable.

We want to see more

All of that was good fun, but the thing we started this whole exercise over was to test the ability to run multiple displays. The plan was to run two displays from the R690 and two from the AIB Radeon X1900. Up until now that’s not been possible—you could either run graphics from the IGP or from the AIB but not both simultaneously. And in addition to that, AMD has provided two display outputs form the R690.

Sooooo, we hooked up four monitors. And to max it out we thought we’d use high-resolution monitors. It took some jiggering to do it but we got it working—remember kids, just say no to Vista Basic.

Through force of habit we went for display properties with a right mouse click on the desktop, and it brought a large menu of options, with the last one being Personalize. So Personalize replaces the familiar Setting tab in XP. We made a note.

Then we set up the four monitors, and it was amazingly easy. During the process we thought, uh-oh, we probably should be doing this through ATI’s Catalyst control panel, but it turns out that wasn’t necessary (however, there are other tricks in there we’ll talk about shortly).

The screens consisted of the 30-inch Dell 2580 x 1600, a Samsung 1600 x 1200 (rotatable), an ancient, but still one of the best 1600 x 1200 Nokia CRT monitor, and an old 1280 x 1024 ViewSonic LCD.

And, just to prove that the extended desktop was truly extended across all those display, which is 7060 x 1024, we spread an A380 across the screens.

FIGURE 8. Now that’s a stretched jumbo. (Source: JPR)

In case you didn’t notice (and it’d be easy not to), the second from the left monitor is the Samsung, rotated so it’s supplying 1200 x 1600 resolution. That’s important if you’re into multiple displays because one of the important benefits of such a rig is to be able to have a portrait mode display for documents and/or web pages.

Getting a little more serious, we put various applications in each display, as shown in the following photo.

FIGURE 9. Do more by seeing more all at once. (Source JPR)

Now let’s review. We’ve built a very powerful system that can directly drive four displays at once for about $1,000—that’s very impressive and will change the landscape of the market. Also, this is a system based on AMD’s power miser CPU and an equally power-efficient chipset, so if you’re an art studio, a design center, or a trading room, you won’t have to have an extra air-conditioner to use these things.

Bumps and confusion

In setting up the monitors, one of our early configurations was to have the Dell on the R690 with the ViewSonic. But since there’s only a 128-MByte allocation of “hyperMemory for display, the Dell display could never get to full resolution. It may be possible to jigger it around to work, but we put a fair amount of time on it and threw in the towel.

Microsoft has tried to imitate the look and feel of Apple, and they’ve accomplished some of that goal in the worst manner. Whereas you used to be able to click on Word (for example) by clicking on Start and sliding up to it (assuming you hadn’t put an icon on your desktop on in your tray). In Vista it takes four clicks—just like a mouse and with no right-mouse functions.

Bonuses

The AMD’s 690G chipset is the first to have an HDMI port, which allows output of HDCP-encrypted content to a big-screen TV. AMD says the HDMI port is capable of resolutions up to 1920 x 1080 in interlaced mode (1080i). We didn’t have the R690V versions so we couldn’t test it, and were curious if one could run the DVI output and the HDMI out at the same time. The techies at AMD told us you could, but it would be in a clone mode—i.e., the HDMI screen would have to show the same thing the DVI screen showed. That doesn’t seem like a handicap and even suggests some presentation oppor-tunities in large meeting rooms or auditoriums.

What do we think?

A whole of lot bang for the buck. This is a classic example of Moore’s Law at work, where we can now put together a system for $1,000 or less (not counting the displays) that would have cost more than 2X that a few years ago.

We’ve been big advocates of multi-displays (and never under-stood why the display companies haven’t promoted it), and this system is a prime example of how to have one on the economy ticket.

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More Mt. Tiburon Testing Labs reports

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