AMD Goes All in on Eyefinity with the Catalyst 14.6 Beta

Non-uniform display arrays for everyone…

AMD 14.6 Usecases

With the release of the Catalyst 14.6 Beta driver today AMD is offering support for a whole new set of Eyefinity configurations and devices. First off AMD’s Mantle API is now available for use on laptops with AMD’s Enduro technology. For those of you that may not remember Enduro is AMD’s counter to Nvidia’s Optimus graphics switching technology that allows users to disable their discrete graphics and use only their laptop’s integrated graphics in non-gaming scenarios. AMD is also introducing performance optimizations for two newly released games: Watch Dogs and Murdered: Soul Suspect.

AMD 14.6 UI

But the headlining feature of this driver release is support for mixed resolution Eyefinity configurations. This means that you can now use monitors of different resolutions and physical dimensions to create a single display surface through Eyefinity. This might not seem like that big of a deal but it means that you can now cobble together whatever array of displays you can manage to find and put together an Eyefinity setup rather than having to use three or six monitors of the exact same display resolution and physical size. AMD has also redesigned their Eyefinity display configuration interface inside of their Cataylst Control Center to reflect these new possibilities and make creating an Eyefinity display group more intuitive to end users.

AMD 14.6 Alignment

AMD has a couple of interesting ideas for how gamers are going to put these new capabilities to work. They’ve also given users the option to adjust their Eyefinity setup based on how their monitors physically align.

AMD 14.6 Color

AMD’s also giving users the ability to control the color output of their graphics cards on a per display basis for HDMI and DP displays. This gives multi-display users another tool in their arsenal to combat the visual differences between displays when they are displaying the same image.

AMD 14.6 Linux

AMD did mention a couple of improvements for Linux users namely support for Ubuntu 14.04 and a more intuitive driver install process.

As drivers go the 14.6 Beta has a big features list and it’s gratifying to see that AMD is still paying attention to the Eyefinity users even though it’s a technology that’s more or less taken for granted by users these days. I for one can’t wait to see what the community does with the ability to mix and match displays; it’s going to be hilarious.S|A

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Thomas Ryan is a freelance technology writer and photographer from Seattle, living in Austin. You can also find his work on SemiAccurate and PCWorld. He has a BA in Geography from the University of Washington with a minor in Urban Design and Planning and specializes in geospatial data science. If you have a hardware performance question or an interesting data set Thomas has you covered.