ATI CrossFireX vs. NVIDIA SLI New Games Performance

[Kor]

So the Darksiders patch in the new ATI profiles is busted. Crossfire works now, but turning on AA makes all the textures disappear. Quality QA right there.

 

[Matrices]

Stuff

I stand corrected on Civ 5. I only tried the demo (I simply don't "get" these sorts of games, with the singular exception of Rise of Legends) and everything seemed fine in Surround mode, but obviously I had nothing but two tiny units.

 

[bubbachuck]

here, here. i got a 5970 because i had heard that the era of multi-GPU was "now" and was sorely disappointed with freezes, glitches, etc. it pisses me off because the people pushing these vid cards are the same review sites that are pocketing the money that ATI/nVidia gives them to make garbage claims about how great Crossfire/SLI is. I can't speak for current SLI, but current Crossfire is buggy as a mofo.

but if you think about it, with what nVidia and ATI are pre-occupied with, it's not too surprising multiGPU support is so shitty. nVidia is in a mess right now and could not even be here by next year, ATI is trying furiously to release the next line of vid cards (allegedly). it's no big shock that they're pulling resources from the multiGPU R&D team...which is the smallest % of customers they have. and most of these customers are so obsessed with that extra few % of performance that they'll pay out the nose for multiGPU once the next gen comes around anyway.

 

[eddieck]

I can't speak for current SLI, but current Crossfire is buggy as a mofo.

SLI is overall a much better experience (with regards to drivers and compatibility) than CF.

 

[mafa]

SLI is overall a much better experience (with regards to drivers and compatibility) than CF.

And physx rulez

 

[jarablue]

To me it just costs too much money to invest in PC gaming these days. Don't get me wrong, I prefer pc gaming to console gaming but cmon...you pay how much money to get an SLI rig? And once you spend the 400$ + on sli, ATI or nV may not even ever support the tech they say is built into whatever flagship model they have.

Too much money and not enough support to warrant the expenditure on the setup. That is why consoles are gaining ground.

Really though. Look at the timeframe given in most pc setups. 6 months and what? More hardware pushed out the door and the stuff right behind it never was fully written for? Crapola if you ask me.

ATI and nV need to work a lot harder supporting the shit they push out IMO.

 

[brown_dog]

The thing with crossfire is that amd has to wait for customers to be extremely frustrated with crossfire support/performance before they update their drivers.

 

[DrDoU]

I have not read through all or the reviews or post.Were there any problems with AMD drivers?

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I have not read through all or the reviews or post.Were there any problems with AMD drivers?

So we are your Cliffs Notes now?

From reading the review, I think AMD CX drivers were better than SLI drivers, as they actually worked in Civ 5. Both ahve released new CX/SLI profiles since this review was written though, so the SLI conclusions may no longer be relevant...

 

[dexster]

.......
Too much money and not enough support to warrant the expenditure on the setup. That is why consoles are gaining ground.
.....
ATI and nV need to work a lot harder supporting the shit they push out IMO.

+1

its support from software companies as well, which prefer to pump out console ports as pc games to get more return on their investment
considering what hardware is available, pc games are seriously lacking in quality

nvidia has lost its way - unsure what to do... but im in no rush to upgrade my gfx card anyway as my 2xgtx295 seem to be coping ok
remarkable?, considering i have not being able to get a driver to work properly since 191.07
the super support from nvidia is overwhelming

then people wonder why consoles are popular

 

[convexion]

Jeez, I think a lot of you aren't very tech oriented to begin with. Mucking about with settings and forcing apps to do your bidding is part of the fun of PC gaming!
Are any of you old enough to remember DOS? If you think CFX or SLI is a headache you haven't seen anything yet.

I also own consoles but that's because I consider myself a gamer first and foremost with no loyalties to any one company.
However, nothing brings a dopey smile to my face more than playing a good game on my PC. And I would never sacrifice my PC to purchase another console.
NEVAH!

Crossfire and SLI are both excellent when you get them working. Your dual GPU setup will last a hell of a lot longer than a single card of the same generation.
I'm still on a 4870x2 and haven't seen any compelling reason to upgrade yet as all games running in CFX run very well.

 

[djbess]

And physx rulez

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Jeez, I think a lot of you aren't very tech oriented to begin with. Mucking about with settings and forcing apps to do your bidding is part of the fun of PC gaming!
Are any of you old enough to remember DOS? If you think CFX or SLI is a headache you haven't seen anything yet.

I miss the days of customizing my autoexec.bat and config.sys files to maximize available base ram in order to play games.

That being said, the average attention span is a fraction of what it was back then.

Growing up, PC gaming was for those of us with smarts, and we were rewarded by having in depth and engrossing games much better than what was available on consoles.

Consoles were reserved for child-gamer-lamers.

These days - for some stupid reason - the impatient dumb child gamer-lamers get all the attention...

It's sad.

 

[{uZa}DOA]

I have to say as a long time SLi and Tri-SLi user/fanboy the performance gains vs. cost effectiveness has only been there one time for me over the years. That was with my 7600GT's.. Back in those days I played a ton of CoD, UO, and CoD 2.. I would average double the frame-rate.. But, this was more bragging than anything. I mean back then a 7600GT could push 50+ frames on CoD and with SLi I enjoyed 120+... But other cards along the road just never seemed to wow me like the old 7600gt days. Tri-Sli 8800GTX's, SLi 8800GTS 512 G92's, Tri-SLi GTX260 core 216's and GTX 285's in Tri-SLi.. I finally just sold all my cards and bought 1 ATI reference design 5870's. The days of spending triple the amount for bragging rights are over it seems....

 

[Ryoohki360]

I have a SLI rig since august and it's been been a butter smooth experience for now... 0 problems with any of my games run great and fast (2x460gtx 1g OC to death).

I mean, i'am noooo way going to console.. games aren,t even in HD anymore (look at the new COD, on PS3 is like 954x554 and XBOX is 1004x602). Can tell you that upscale crap like this look very bad on a 106' 1080p projector setup

 

[Flopper]

around 100fps 5760x1080 BC2 6850x2 900/1100
10.10e worked well.
much smoother than the days of my early 4870 crossfire attempts.

 

[lupo]

ATI are great cards but until they get their CUDA api worked out I'll be sticking with nvidia.

 

[Red Falcon]

ATI are great cards but until they get their CUDA api worked out I'll be sticking with nvidia.

Aside from scientific apps, what good is CUDA? What apps besides the crappy Badaboom have been released to utilize CUDA?

 

[Gorankar]

Aside from scientific apps, what good is CUDA? What apps besides the crappy Badaboom have been released to utilize CUDA?

Almost nothing anyone uses on a day to day basis.
It does not matter anyway, CUDA is proprietary, it will only ever run on Nv hardware. OpenCl is what AMD will be using. Given some time to mature, it will also be what devs not in Nv's pocket will eventually write apps for, since both Nv and AMD support it.

Edit: oops, damn RedFalcon, you got pulled a necromancy on me and I did not notice til after I posted.

 

[Red Falcon]

haha, wasn't too big of a necro-res, only a week or so, but thanks for the info.