New Year's Resolution: 5760x1080

OK, so I have been rocking this new resolution for a while now, but I couldn't help the choice of title; it's an oldie, but it always makes me laugh (geek humour, eh?). Besides I only just got around to writing about this and it's now 2014, so I should be able to safely use the joke, right??? Anyway, as you can see from the above picture, I have been able to set up my primary gaming system with multiple displays, using three Iiyama ProLite E2407HDSD monitors. I swapped out my Iiyama X2377HDS B1 for the three 2nd hand displays, which meant downgrading from the lovely IPS panel, but I felt the gain in immersion was worth the drop in colour reproduction. However, the IPS panel hasn't gone to waste; it's now attached to my secondary system: Phoenix.

Each of three panels only have a VGA and DVI inputs, while my 6950 only has two DVI ports, one DisplayPort and one HDMI port. Looking into the requirements for Eyefinity, I discovered that I would need to purchase an active DisplayPort to DVI adapter for the three displays to work in conjunction with each other. My understanding of the reasoning for this is that there are only two timers present in the output circuitry of the card, which prevent the signal for a third display being synchronised with the other two. Interestingly, it's not possible to use the HDMI port in an Eyefinity display group; not a problem for me, as my HDMI port is connected to my flat panel TV. AMD actually provide a list of tested and supported adapters and in the end I opted for a Startech model, the DP2DVIS:

Here's a picture of the graphics card in my machine, with each output connected to a display: the two DVI and the DisplayPort connected to the Eyefinity displays and the HDMI to the TV:

Configuring the Eyefinity display group in the Catalyst Control Centre was fairly simple. However, I wanted to be able to use the displays in a non-Eyefinity configuration, as this means application windows can be maximised to any one single display, as opposed to across all three, which is the behaviour for an Eyefinity configuration. I also wanted to make switching to the TV a simple task as well, so for each possible configuration, I created a profile and a corresponding shortcut: ctrl+alt+d for the default configuration, ctrl+alt+e to switch to Eyefinity and ctrl+alt+t for the TV.

Performance Testing

Clearly, driving three displays puts more strain on a system; in fact, I noticed that Battlefield 3 became unplayable and I dropped the graphics from "high" settings to "medium" to restore playability. I thought I'd try to benchmark the difference between games running on a single display and three. Unfortunately, by the time I got around to benchmarking, I no longer had Battlefield 3 installed as I have moved onto Battlefield 4, so I opted for the following tests:

• Unigine Heaven Benchmark 3.0
  • DirectX 11
  • 8x Anti-Aliasing
  • 16x Anisotropic Filtering
  • Shaders: High
  • Textures: High
  • Occlusion: Enabled
  • Refraction: Enabled
  • Volumetric: Enabled
  • Tessellation: Normal
• Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead - I changed the settings I used for this test, raising them to make it a more difficult test. Instead of listing all the options, here's a screen shot of the settings I used, for both the 1920x1080 and 5760x1080 tests:
  
  
  
• Crysis - here's another screen capture of the settings I used in the Crysis benchmark tool. When it came to running the tests for the Eyefinity display, I had to launch the actual game first and set the resolution to 5760x1080 before I could run the benchmark as the tool didn't have the appropriate configuration. So, I'm not 100% convinced that this test is entirely reliable, especially after seeing the results; 1920x1080 seemed to run for a shorter duration than 5760x1080. In fact, I noticed that the 5760x1080 benchmark seemed to be running noticeably slower, which made me think there's some issue me testing at that resolution.
  
  
  
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - here's the settings used for the tests. Note I didn't install any of the Eyefinity fixes in order to benchmark the system. As I understand it, they are designed to fix UI elements that don't render properly at that resolution. The configuration below shows the 1920x1080 resolution; for the Eyefinity test I had to click "default" and let it automatically detect 5760x1080, as this isn't an option in the menu. After this, I simply ensured the rest of the options matched those used when testing 1920x1080.
  
  
  

The Results

First up, a GPU bound synthetic test the Unigine benchmark.

The average and maximum frame rates are almost exactly what you'd expect given there are three times as many pixels to render: the 6950 is around three times slower rendering at 5760x1080 compared to 1920x1080. However, the minimum frame rate is much worse at the higher resolution; performing approximately five times slower.

Moving onto the real world tests, we should hopefully see some variation in performance depending on the title:

Looking at the frame rates, Arma 2 at 5760x1080 only seems to exhibit half the performance of 1920x1080. However, the frame times and percentile graphs show how much greater the variation in performance is at the higher resolution. Moving onto Crysis, I decided to included these results, even with the reservations I had about them:

The average frame rate here is halved when jumping up to the high resolution, with the minimum and maximum frame rates dropping by a third and almost two thirds respectively. Interestingly, the frame times and percentiles show that the variation in performance at both resolutions is pretty similar. Finally, let's see the Skyrim results:

The frame rates show that the higher resolution provides under half the average and maximum performance, but the minimum frame rate drops almost a quarter of 1920x1080. The frame times and percentiles actually show both resolutions don't really exhibit much frame variation.

Conclusion

It's clear that driving three displays really taxes my system; I've had to drop graphical details to keep frame rates at a playable level. However, I think the extra immersion offered by having my peripheral vision filled by the additional screen more than makes up for it! In addition, I've found that being able to turn my head slightly makes up for the lack of free look in certain titles.

I'm upgrading my PC with a new motherboard, CPU, memory and case and hopefully this will see an improvement in frame rates across the board; particularly in Arma 2 and 3 (which I bought during the Steam Winter sale), which are both CPU intensive. I'm holding off from a GPU upgrade for now, as I'm trying to see whether I'll be staying with AMD or splashing out for an Nvidia card.

Security Conscious: Google Two Factor Authentication with 3rd Party Sites

I'm sure many of you are aware that Google offer an option to enable two-factor authentication in order to access their services. If aren't familiar with the system, or simply haven't enabled it on your account(s) already, then I strongly recommend that you read Google's guide on the subject and enable it for any accounts you may have registered.

I have been using the two-factor authentication mechanism for some time now in conjunction with Google's own Authenticator app. One particularly nice feature is that if you have the Barcode Reader app installed, you can quickly configure the reader for each of your accounts by scanning a QR code generated during the set up.

But Wait... There's More!

I recently logged into my Dropbox account in order to remove some devices that I no longer used and I noticed that there was an option to enable two-factor authentication. At first I thought it would consist of a message sent to me (via email or SMS) whenever I attempted to log in, but I discovered I was able to use the Google Authenticator app here too; I simply scanned the QR code when presented, input the code displayed on my phone and my account was secured!

It didn't stop there either; I was also able to secure my Guild Wars 2 account using the exact same method! I wonder if there are any other services/companies out there using this authentication mechanism that I may have missed? I know that Blizzard now offer their own free app to authenticate to Battle.net, but I'd rather have a single app to install.

Upgrade: New Monitor

I've just had a new display delivered to replace my old Dell 1907FPt, which was an old 4:3 display that had a maximum resolution of 1280x1024. I bought an Iiyama X2377HDS B1, a decision I came to after several hours research and deliberation!

I didn't have a massive budget, around GBP 150.00, so the higher resolutions (2560x1440 or 2560x1600) were out of the question, nor could I consider a 16:10 ratio display (1920x1200 instead of 1920x1080). However, all I was really after was a nice widescreen model, preferably with an IPS panel. In-Plane Switching (IPS) technology provides better colour reproduction than Twisted Nematic (TN) panels, but at the expense of LCD response time. As I would be occasionally playing fast paced games, I had to ensure that if I did manage to find an IPS display within my budget it didn't have an appalling response time. To complicate matters, it became apparent that the response time listed by manufacturer and review sites wouldn't always be a measure of the same LCD transition; some mention black-to-white transitions and others grey-to-grey.

To help whittle down the choices out there, I tried to find some good recommendations, or "best-buy" articles from trustworthy sites and I had pretty much settled on an AOC i2352Vh, another cheap IPS panel. However, when searching for monitors on Amazon, I happened across the Iiyama. I managed to find a site that had tested response times for both the AOC and Iiyama, of which the latter actually performed better for all the transitions tested. That, coupled with the fact I had used Iiyama displays previously at work were the deciding factors.

I was very excited when the monitor arrived and took a couple of pictures while unpacking and assembling it:

Once the display was connected to my PC and I had configured it, I was very impressed; I have played a bit of Half Life 2: Episode 2 and Battlefield 3 and both looked stunning. Obviously, that's not particularly scientific and I will be doing a bit more analysis of the screen over the coming weeks no doubt, but my initial impressions are good.

There are only two problems that I have with the monitor currently, both relate to the stand. First, the stand isn't height adjustable, which was something I was aware of when buying; having a fully adjustable stand appears to come at a premium. Secondly, when I'm typing at full speed, the whole display wobbles as the vibrations of my keystrokes travel through the desk! Fortunately, this problem does not occur while playing games. Overall though, I am extremely happy with my purchase and I'm glad to have managed to achieve my original target of a wide-screen IPS display.

Post Upgrade Woes - Part 1: Display Corruption

As mentioned in my previous post, following my GPU upgrade, I experienced some odd behaviour. Strangely enough, the computer worked perfectly directly after the upgrade; I was even able to jump into a game of Skyrim (and be wowed with the massive increase in performance, I might add). However, when I logged into another account, strange artifacts appeared on screen, the screen flickered off and back on and, finally, the whole rig spontaneously rebooted!

Extremely worried there was an issue with the card, I logged back into my account; no artifacts appeared and I was able to run FurMark for an extended period without any problems. However, logging out and back into the secondary account immediately resulted in the same problem. After the machine rebooted again, I tried logging in as the "Admin" account I have configured; same problem. This time I was able to see a message briefly pop up on screen, which I later tracked down in the Event Viewer:

"Display driver stopped responding and has recovered"

Researching online brought up a host of reasons why this message might appear, but considering the issue only occurred in certain user accounts, I was fairly certain that some remnants of the previous card's drivers were causing the issue, and that running the driver installation in my user account had not cleared up other accounts on the system. To test my theory, I booted into safe mode, logged into the "Admin" account and used the msconfig tool to stop the AMD/ATI Catalyst Control Centre from starting when logging in. Sure enough, I was able to reboot and log into the "Admin" account with no problems at all.

After a bit more reading around I discovered a tool named "Driver Sweeper" that some people claimed to have helped them with similar problems. I'm very sceptical about installing any sort of 3rd party utilities on my machine; usually they don't uninstall properly, don't work, or you get more than you bargained for (i.e. ad/mal/spy-ware)! However, given the number of times the tool was referenced on forums, I decided to give it a go.

Once Driver Sweeper was installed, I executed a scan for video drivers and it located several files that I hadn't been aware of and even the installation files that are extracted to C:\ATI! After clearing away all the driver remnants, I rebooted and performed a fresh install of the AMD catalyst drivers in the "Admin" account, before rebooting and testing that I could log into each of the three accounts on the system without issue. This test proved successful, with no re-occurrence of the artifacts or rebooting, and I was safe to use the system normally again!

Poppin' Them Thangs...

In order to recondition an old Dell workstation for use as an OpenNMS server, parts were harvested from several other machines that were lying around. During the process of testing the various memory modules on offer, the machine had to be powered off and on repeatedly and, after a while, it simply ceased to display any output on the attached monitor.

Attempts to reseat the graphics card didn't have any affect and upon closer inspection, it was clear the graphics card was dead:



As you can see from the image of the card in question, the capacitors have clearly "popped"; their tops are bulging outwards. Also, you can see that the electrolyte has vented through the top of the capacitor in the centre of the image.

Luckily, there were plenty of other machines lying around to harvest parts from!