Eyefinity vs. Surround, the winner is...

I've had some time to try AMD's Eyefinity, after having used NVidia Surround for a couple of weeks. My goal was to find which would work better for switching between a 3x1 1920x1080 monitor setup for work and a 5760x1080 for play.

The winner is Eyefinity.

Surround does have some redeeming features. It has a more intuitive user interface, and the bezel alignment tool is outstanding. Eyefinity offers more options and more control, and most importantly, a very useful hotkey facility for quickly and reliably switching between different screen arrangements and resolutions. The learning curve is a bit steeper, setup requires more effort, but in the end, it works better. Surround is less reliable when switching between screen resolutions. It does some unexpected things, moves the task bar unexpectedly, doesn't do as good a job as Eyefinity when it comes to making the switch seamless.

The context of my use is limited and should be judged accordingly. This is for a Win 7 machine. Don't know if it would be the same result on Win 8.1 or 10. I'm 95% work (3 display) mode, 5% game (1 virtual display) mode. Somebody with the opposite ratio might find Surround easier to live with.

Why do you need to split the screens into three?
Surround lets you maximize windows to any one of the three screens.

ATMINSIDE said:

Why do you need to split the screens into three?
Surround lets you maximize windows to any one of the three screens.

Click to expand...

I found it to be inconsistent in its behavior while in that mode. The taskbar would move, arbitrarily, between the left and center screens, with no rhyme or reason as to why. The applications on the left and right screens could be maximized on those screens, but I'd lose about 10% of the vertical, because a maximized window in Surround doesn't extend down below to the taskbar's position, even if the taskbar is not on that particular screen. There were other minor but weird episodes with applications moving in unexpected ways. Not terrible, but when I'm working, with a dozen apps going at once, those kinds of surprises knock me out of my zone. I want to focus on what's in the windows, not chasing them around trying to get them to stay where I want.

Eyefinity lets me jump back and forth very smoothly between the two modes I want, and everything behaves exactly as I expect.

If I had to, I could live with Surround, but Eyefinity does it a bit better for my particular situation and it doesn't force me to sacrifice or change my work style.

Understandable issues, just wanted to ask