Thinking of moving to nVidia

Need peoples opinion.

I'm entirely pissed off with the AMD. Here's a brief synopsis of my problem:


A few months ago I had a 5870, was very happy with its performance, and delighted to use it on a single 1920x1200 screen.

A while later I figured Eyefinity would be great, so I bought 3 brand new 24" 1920x1200 samsung monitors. Very happy with it, great purchase.

Some games struggled with the 1GB 5870, so i decided to get another - this is where the problems began. Crossfire worked fine on a single screen, but not at all acceptable on Eyefinity.

I stuck with it for a while, tried multiple drivers and whatnot, still no joy. Games were laced with microstutter, even when my framerate was high. It was a horrible experience.

Next, I decided to buy 2 x 6950 2GB cards. Very nice cards, single screen mode is brilliant, eyefinity was the same. The bloody microstutter was still there, in every game.

Recently tried Deus Ex, with or without crossfire enable at 6056x1200 I am only getting 30fps on average. Sometimes I might get 40fps. Battlefield, L4D2, etc are hight fps but microstutter is so horrible.

I have a very high-spec machine, tried the usual re-installs of windows, clean driver installs, etc etc etc. No joy.

I'm so pissed off.

So I'm thinking of abandoning ship and getting 2 x GTX 580s and go for NV surround.

What do ye think?

 

I think sell one 6950 enjoy less problems with a single card and wait a couple of months to see what the next gen has to offer.

 

you can give me your cards

If you plan to use the multi monitor and is getting all those problems, you should give a try to nVidia, anyway you can wait the next gen cards from ATi

 

Yeah, I'd be glad to go to nvidia, but i'm afraid I would be spending €800+ for 2 GTX 580s and suffer a similar problem.

Selling one 6950 is a good plan. As I have to disable crossfire most of the time.

 

Well 4ghz cpu might help with some more fps esp with a xfire setup. Will one gpu be enough for 3 screens?

If it were me i'd sell 2 of your screens and sell one gpu. Oc to 4ghz and unlock the 6950 to a 6970 if you havent already.

But some might argue 3 screens is they way forward. I'll stick to a decent £300-£400 24inch n fastest single gpu.

 

Have thought about going that direction, but trust me, it's VERY hard to go back to a single screen after eyefinity.

EDIT: have my processor at 4GHz with at the moment, still no difference, and have unlocked the card to 6970, was too noisy so dropped it back to stock BIOS

 

I agree, sell one card and use single card for now. You will get less FPS, but you will have less problems.
I once had Crossfire and sold one card too.

SLI has less multi gpu problems, bu they are still here and bottom line is single card is still recommended over SLI/CF

related article: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/radeon-geforce-stutter-crossfire,review-32256.html

 

Rather then SLI or Crossfire its recommended Trifire or Tri SLI to decrease stutter.

 

Think I might just sell one card and put the money towards a 2600k + new mobo?

 

Yeah at the moment I'd wait and see how the HD7000 performs before going Nvidia, and also before changing over your CPU & motherboard see how the Bulldozer performs. Even if you don't want a Bulldozer, its likely Intel will drop their price a little if the Bulldozer is a real performer...

 

Its a single card you want, as microstutter is one of the drawbacks of Xfire/SLi, so you would get it with 2x 580's.

 

do you play with vsync and triplebuffer on?

 

I play bfbc2 one hour per day and have no microstutter.
Try these settings and tell us about.
antialiasing 1xmsaa
anistropic filter 1x
vsync off
hbao off
With these settings at 5760x1080 have 120 fps avg and no microstutter.

 

Hi zpaf, those are the settings I am using. With xfire enabled I get about 60-90 fps, with a single card I can get 35-60 fps.

 

i know your pain bro, i went triple screen too when i bought my 3way 470, and to be honest i was able to use very few games with it.

i think you'll have the same problem by going green. you'll have less driver problem but you'll quickly run into Vram limitation at this resolution. you need at the very very least 1.5gb of vram, and if you want to see it coming for some time you'd better go for 3gb version.

then come raw CPU/GPU power, to be able to crank details all the way up in this resolution you'll need one hell of a setup :

let say to max crysis 2 in 1920x1200 you need a 580, so for a triple screen you need 300% of that power right ?

but the problem is, if you make a 3way sli of 580 you only get 240% of a single one, so you'll need to add a 4th one, and yet you'll only get 280% of the performance of a single one, when the 4th gpu decide to work that's it...

and that's not all, now you need to feed those 4 gpu, you'll need a top notch CPU/mobo/ram, and still you'll need to OC it big time.
and then you'll notice the heat it generate, my 3way sli was going 100° on air cooling in a HAF-X, imagine 4way 580 so no choice but to go watercooling and add another 750$ to the bill.

so you can see, 6 screen eyefinity and 3 screen surround are more usefull to have a huge desktop than to run games for the moment ... :/

 

slckb0y,

Thanks for the heads up from the Green Side. Good to know that the problem exists with other setups too.

I have a buyer for my second 6950, so I'm going to keep it, save the dosh and wait for the 7xxx series.

1 card will have to suffice for now.

 

There's something u could do and the best, that would cost you nothing at all :

if i were you, i'd keep my second 6950, you already got 2GB cards, that's already more than Nvidia 580 so, flash both 6950 into 6970, look for the tutorial on top on this forum.

it's 99% harmless as long as you fellow every step. then use AtiTrayTool and OC them both as much as they can handle with max fan speed (when gaming you'll notice it much less), you'll have the equivalent of a 6990 for 2/3 of the price.

i think you could get around 25/30% more performance, enought to get 45fps to 60ish.

and in very last resort, always think heavy stuff on a single GPU like SSAO and anti aliasing will only cost 3 times more at the very least in triple screen.

sometimes lowering a single eye candy can make a lot of difference

 

Ok i would say you had too much money in your pockets and didn't bother researching a bit before buying your hardwares .... You just threw your money into "high tech - powerful stuff"

 

Go nvidia! u wont regret it.

 

Holy quack triple SLI 580 :eek3: