Before we get to what is, the primary attraction of Eyefinity: gaming, we thought it would be useful to add a few notes on how we found the Desktop experience of running Eyefinity.

In it's most basic sense there are just two forms of desktop real estate afforded by Eyefinity: Extended or multiple monitor. That is you can either have one large screen (made up of up to 6 smaller screens) or you can have each monitor setup as a single entity. We feel most users will have Eyefinity as a single large screen and drag a window to each screen as per below:



We couldn't say productivity went up by any specific measurable amount as you can only really concentrate on one screen at any one time but instead of minimising and maximising windows on a single screen, a simple twitch of the eyes is all that is required to switch from one application to another, be it MS Word, Photoshop or a movie so in that respect it was very useful.

It takes some familiarisation though so be warned. First and foremost having such a long desktop with no increase in height leads your brain to perceive items to be 'squashed'. Obviously this isn't the case but having so much width can play tricks on the mind. You could if your screens allow (and are matched), run Eyefinity in Portrait mode which would give you greater height at the expense of width but this setup doesn't look nearly as good and the screen bezels become much more of a hindrance. Running 6 screens will only exasperate this issue as instead of having the bezels to each side of the centre screen, there will be one bezel directly in your line of sight whether you go for portrait or landscape mode. This isn't, of course, any fault of AMD's it is just a physical limitation of current display technology and until screens no longer have any bezel at all, black lines are something the Eyefinity user will have to endure. Below are a few desktop backgrounds to show the effect Bezels may have on your enjoyment of a three screen arrangement:







While in use, we felt that having multiple monitors were more of a gimmick than an enhancement to productivity. An expansion of one’s e-peen if you will but going back to a single screen setup after having 3 desktops proved more difficult that we expected after enjoying the expanse of Eyefinity for a week so much so, my 2560x1600 30" screen seemed decidedly restrictive - something I never thought I would hear myself say!