Recently, my colleague Neal Robison blogged about AMD’s Gamers’ Manifesto, the guiding principles that define what AMD does for the gaming industry and game developers. Another example of our commitment to our technology partners is the latest AMD Display Library SDK that supports ATI Eyefinity technology.

With the launch of the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 series graphics cards and the introduction of ATI Eyefinity technology, AMD has enabled a new level of immersive Direct3D and OpenGL gaming.¹ By sharing the APIs and technical knowledge, game developers can now fully exploit the potential of ATI Eyefinity technology and enable games to:

• Enumerate ATI Eyefinity Modes for both normal and bezel-compensated conditions
• Discover the overall topology of an ATI Eyefinity display mode, including which pixels are visible and which ones are “behind the bezel”
• Identify the user’s main display
• Determine the number of viewable pixels in an ATI Eyefinity display mode

As part of the SDK download, AMD has provided a whitepaper that introduces high level concepts for designing games with support for ATI Eyefinity technology. The “Gaming with Eyefinity” whitepaper explains that the updated SDK can be used to:

• Seemlessly support common ATI Eyefinity display resolutions, configurations and aspect ratios in games
• Move or scale menus and HUDs to avoid crossing bezel boundaries, allowing games to take full advantage of the visually immersive quality of ATI Eyefinity.
• Design games to be aware of the user’s preferred ‘Main’ display for menus and cut scenes
• Be aware of bezel compensated display modes and adjust accordingly

The APIs discussed here are included in the latest version of the AMD Display Library (ADL) SDK along with documentation and sample code. The SDK can be accessed from the AMD Developer Central.

Shane Parfitt is a Product Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

1 ATI Radeon™ Premium graphics cards that support ATI Eyefinity technology consist of models ATI Radeon™ HD 5450 and higher. ATI Eyefinity technology works with games that support non-standard aspect ratios, which is required for panning across multiple displays. To enable more than two displays, additional panels with native DisplayPort™ connectors, and/or DisplayPort™ compliant active adapters to convert your monitor’s native input to your cards DisplayPort™ or Mini-DisplayPort™ connector(s), are required.  ATI Eyefinity technology can support up to 6 displays using a single enabled ATI Radeon™ graphics card with Windows Vista or Windows 7 operating systems – the number of displays may vary by board design and you should confirm exact specifications with the applicable manufacturer before purchase. Systems using multiple ATI Radeon™ graphics cards can support a maximum of 8 displays (total across all cards in system) with a maximum 6 of those displays being used together in a display group (also known as a single large surface mode).