Next up, we have some 5x1 Eyefinity action with Total War: Shogun 2 and Metro 2033. Metro 2033, when cranked up to its higher quality settings can severely tax even today’s highest end graphics cards when using a single display. However, Total War: Shogun 2, which was recently patched to offer DX11 support, draws more modestly on GPU resources and is relatively playable on high settings even with a single 1GB Radeon HD 6850-class card.
5x1 Eyefinity: Total War - Shogun 2
Using the game’s medium quality preset, Total War: Shogun 2 was perfectly playable on the 5x1 Eyefinity setup using a pair of PowerColor Radeon HD 6870 2GB Eyefinity 6 Edition cards. At medium quality, and a resolution of 5400x1920, the game ran at about 50 frames per second according to FRAPS.
5x1 Eyefinity: Metro 2033
As you probably expect, we had to dial the settings down a bit on Metro 2033 to get playable frame rates in the game on 5x1 Eyefinity. As we showed you earlier, on a single 1920x1200 screen, with High Quality settings, 4XAA and 16X aniso, Metro 2033 ran at just over 60 FPS with the PowerColor Radeon HD 6870 2GB Eyefinity 6 Edition cards in CrossFire mode. With 5x1 Eyefinity and a resolution of 5400x1920 though, we had to run the game at medium quality settings, with adaptive AA and 4X aniso to hit a consistent 33 – 40 FPS (a benchmark run would report 33.36 frames per second). As you can see in the video though, this game still looks great at those settings.
Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com
