Triple-GPU Scaling: AMD CrossFire Vs. Nvidia SLI

[Crashman]

Just Curious why it's not the 6970 you are comparing being it's cheaper than the 570 now?

It's explained in the article and at least eight times in this thread.
1.) The 2GB cards were initially priced to compete with the 570, and that's when the cards were ordered
2.) These are the cheapest current models from ATI and Nvidia to support 3-way configurations
3.) Nobody offered to supply a triplet of 6970's, though we're willing to test when you're willing to send
4.) The 6950's won in 2-way and 3-way, so a faster card isn't needed
5.) The 6950's are cheaper, so the win is more significant
6...7...8...the only reason to change cards would be to reduce ATI's price advantage. Do you, like the rest of the people who made that recommendation, work for Nvidia?

 

[cburke82]

It's explained in the article and at least eight times in this thread.
1.) The 2GB cards were initially priced to compete with the 570, and that's when the cards were ordered
2.) These are the cheapest current models from ATI and Nvidia to support 3-way configurations
3.) Nobody offered to supply a triplet of 6970's, though we're willing to test when you're willing to send
4.) The 6950's won in 2-way and 3-way, so a faster card isn't needed
5.) The 6950's are cheaper, so the win is more significant
6...7...8...the only reason to change cards would be to reduce ATI's price advantage. Do you, like the rest of the people who made that recommendation, work for Nvidia?

Alternate explanation for the apparent lack of ability to comprehend what you keep having to repeat:

They dont work for Nvidia they work for AMD... Stay with me here lol

They work for AMD and want to see the 6970's tested so we can all see a complete and total beat down of the 570's and not just a win lol

What do you think about that ?

 

[foogoo]

God i wish sli and crossfire would have just been gimmicks and died off. I would rather have a single card, single gpu solution. I've had 2 crossfire setups (2 x1900 xt's around their release date and 2 4850's) and wasn't particularity happy with either. I bought 1000w pc power and cooling psu's, high end mobos for the extra pci-e lanes, and custom cooling for both setups and still wasn't happy with them. They really didn't overclocked and the little they did showed very little performance gain. Stutter with the 4850's was terrible and the x1900's became outdated rather quickly. Now, I'm not bashing amd/ati because they really do make competitive, quality products but the fact of the matter is dual card/gpu setups are more trouble than they are worth and are often disappointing in my experience anyway. Its always drivers this, power that, hdmi audio problems here, no dual gpu support there. Instead of 2 gpus on the same board or 2 separate boards, why not one single gi-hugen gpu with twice the transistors on one board? They make dual high end gpu solutions on one 16x pci-e slot already so power/bandwidth cant be the problem. If anything a single huge gpu would be moore efficient. With one large gpu i feel compatibility and performance would be much better. Everything i said could be completely wrong also, I just had to get that off my chest. I feel better thank you for your time.

 

[dertechie]

Be careful with the 1GB 6950s. The 2GB cards have the VRAM to work at 4+ megapixels (30" or Eyefinity setups). The 1GB cards would most likely choke at 5760x1200. If you're going for a triple card setup, eat the $60 and get the expanded RAM.

The boys down at [H] did something like this with 6950s, 6970s, 570s and 580s at 5760x1200, and found the 1.25GB in the 570s to be a bottleneck at those resolutions.

 

[Mousemonkey]

I dont know much about the 5XXX series cards I have only been gaming on a PC for 2 months now so admittedly im a noob lol. However in my amazing ability to not be happy with what I have I ended up using 3 AMD cards in a month lucky for me frys allows returns lol. So in the first month I used a XFX 6870 a Diamond 6950 and a XFX 6950. All three installed quick and easy with no issues and played Crysis just fine. So maybe the fact that ATI is no more and AMD took over there will be less issues? All I know is reading your post one would think using a AMD card is a guaranteed nightmare with drivers and stability wile I have seen the exact opposite. I think the fact that someone who has never built a PC before chose AMD cards and was able to very easily get things up and running means something.

Did/do you run the the 6950's together in Xfire?

 

[cburke82]

Did/do you run the the 6950's together in Xfire?

Not yet so I guess there is still time for me to hate AMD lol. But I guess thats what this article is about. I read somewhere AMD was re focusing itself to produce better drivers. And at least in part this article seems to support that. Obviously AVP shows that there are still some games that the AMD cards clash with. The post I was replying to was not very specific about the bugs and driver issues being only with cross fire, maybe i misunderstood what they where trying to say. However with the scaling results here a pair of 6950 will run you about $150-200 less than a pair of 570's and is very compairable if not slightly better is some games and the poster said that AMD cards would have to really beat down the Nvidia cards to make them worth it, well in my book if they are even but 200 less thats good for me add in the fact that they can sometimes perform better for cheaper and thats a real solid win. Now if tom's unlocked those bad boys we would have seen a $200 savings and a massive beat down lol

 

[Mousemonkey]

Not yet so I guess there is still time for me to hate AMD lol. But I guess thats what this article is about. I read somewhere AMD was re focusing itself to produce better drivers. And at least in part this article seems to support that. Obviously AVP shows that there are still some games that the AMD cards clash with. The post I was replying to was not very specific about the bugs and driver issues being only with cross fire, maybe i misunderstood what they where trying to say. However with the scaling results here a pair of 6950 will run you about $150-200 less than a pair of 570's and is very compairable if not slightly better is some games and the poster said that AMD cards would have to really beat down the Nvidia cards to make them worth it, well in my book if they are even but 200 less thats good for me add in the fact that they can sometimes perform better for cheaper and thats a real solid win. Now if tom's unlocked those bad boys we would have seen a $200 savings and a massive beat down lol

You do know that game is an AMD/ATi backed title? And as such is the one that they should not be having issues with, regardless of the amount of AMD/ATi GPU's used.

 

[cburke82]

You do know that game is an AMD/ATi backed title? And as such is the one that they should not be having issues with, regardless of the amount of AMD/ATi GPU's used.

True but again in this test Nvidia had the advantage to begin with. There card in this test is more comparable to the 6970, I know why tom's used the 6950 and it makes sense, Im just saying how bad would these test have looked if the AMD card was the one priced the same as the 570's. So again the comment I was replying to stated that the AMD cards would have to beat the Nividia cards by a large margin to make them worth wile. So im saying based on savings they do as well as if they tested the cards priced at the same level it looks like they would have. I understand that people are comfortable with what they know and ATI/AMD had alot of issues and Im sure Nvidia has never had a major driver issues ever (sarcasm) But this test Is a good showing for a new product line. And sometimes company's that make mistakes can come out with a new product line that fixes those mistakes. It seems as tho AMD got one right this time. As the article said when you look at the whole picture one 570 beats one 6950. BUT 2-3 6950 do as well or better in most of the test here wile taking less power and causing less heat. So the conclusion is at least at this time that 2-3 6950 will save you money on the cards themselves will not require quite as beefy a PSU and cause less heat WILE give compairable if not better performance all wile costing less. I dont see where anybody could give AMD crap at least for this particular product line. 😱

 

[dragonsqrrl]

[citation][nom]misfit410[/nom]Just Curious why it's not the 6970 you are comparing being it's cheaper than the 570 now?[/citation]
Not sure what you're talking about, but the HD6970 definitely isn't cheaper then the GTX570. The MSRP's still set at $370, in comparison to the $350 GTX570, and for the most part newegg pricing seems to reflect this $20 price discrepancy.

The absolute cheapest GTX570's are currently available for $325 without MIR, while another is available for $290 with MIR. The absolute cheapest HD6970's are currently $340 without MIR, and $320 with MIR.

 

[cburke82]

The 6950 is not the cheapest 3-way crossfire configuration. There are some 5770s with two connectors to allow up to 4-way crossfire, and the same goes for 6850s, and 6870s. I suppose if you're strictly talking about reference designs though then yes the 6950 would be the lowest option considering the 5800 series is being phased out.

Guess they want to review the new stuff. If there going to do the old stuff whats the point.

 

[cburke82]

Good article. I have wanted to pick up another 5850 and Cf my system.

I believe the cross fire scaling gains only apply to the 6XXX series cards but I could be wrong. Not to say adding another 5850 wont improve your performance just that this article does not explore the older cards scaling

 

[dallaswits]

AMD/ATI /bow

 

[littleleo]

Im guessing by the reply that you work at some sort of computer/electronics store? I recently purchased a XFX HD 6870 Diamond 6950 and XFX 6950 (ought the 6870 wanted more swaped for the diamond didnt unlock stable so I purchased the XFX lol). All 3 cards worked great so Im guessing that there is no need for special drivers. I think there is a possibility that AMD does ship there cards closer to max clock speeds however. I say this because all 3 cards where perfectly fine but if I used MSI Afterburner to OC them INSTANT artifacting. So if you get alot of customers that are into OCing there cards being as the three cards I just bought all had that issue to some extent im sure that is not coincidental. But im sure Tom's most likly does most tests at stock settings so therefor no issues. My unlocked 6950 worked fine in all games however I did get a few little green spots wile playing Crysis so I went to stock mem speeds.

The customer that bought these, if I'm remembering right 5870s was not doing any sort of crossfire, just 1 card 1 machine, and at stock speeds. He called the manufacturer's tech support and they told him to change the Ram, he did... same problem. They told him to change the motherboard, he did... same problem. They told him change the power supply, he did... same problem. They told him to reload the O/S., he did... same problem. He RMA'd the cards back by then it had to go the the manufacturer and after 3 weeks they sent him the same cards back saying they repaired them. He installed them and same problem. I know I'm at a loss and if anyone has any idea's I'll be happy to pass them on. In the mean time he has over$800 in these cards which have dropped in value a lot and he can't sell them. He has sworn to never buy another ATI/AMD, I'm just puzzled.

 

[cburke82]

The customer that bought these, if I'm remembering right 5870s was not doing any sort of crossfire, just 1 card 1 machine, and at stock speeds. He called the manufacturer's tech support and they told him to change the Ram, he did... same problem. They told him to change the motherboard, he did... same problem. They told him change the power supply, he did... same problem. They told him to reload the O/S., he did... same problem. He RMA'd the cards back by then it had to go the the manufacturer and after 3 weeks they sent him the same cards back saying they repaired them. He installed them and same problem. I know I'm at a loss and if anyone has any idea's I'll be happy to pass them on. In the mean time he has over$800 in these cards which have dropped in value a lot and he can't sell them. He has sworn to never buy another ATI/AMD, I'm just puzzled.

What was the manufacture? I know AMD makes the cards but all the differend brands each have there own warantees and customer service. And what was the problem he was having? All I know is after this AMD card I have Im a fan. Its not the best card out but i can play all the games out right now at max or very close to max settins ( Metro 2033 I only have to turn off DOF and 4X AF instead of 8). Part of that is the unlockability of the card so I guess I love this card because AMD made a boo boo lol. Any card that I looked at from Nvidia was scoring less in benchmarks or it was scoring higher but was alot more expensive. So I guess I would go Nvidia if I had all kinds of cash but then again this article makes me like my card more because it will be a better card than the 587 when I crossfire it

 

[Guest]

What do you use for a test monitor? just wondering

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]675R[/nom]What do you use for a test monitor? just wondering[/citation]30" Dell

 

[killerrabbit]

I just bought 2 x 6950 Asus (overclocked by factory with 10mhz) for my i7 920 rampage II extreme computer... I have to say it must be many years now since I had a ATI card in my computer for several reasons: like shitty drivers, wired artifacts when playing games etc.. So during the last ~8 years this will be my third attempt to run ATI's graphic solution now, and my old GTX 285 went out of the computer.

Well I am "happy" to inform you that apparently ATI has not learned *** during these years, after booting up with the newest ati drivers 11.2, I could not even get the catalyst control center to work, and I got a error message each time I logged into Windows, the USB equipment I had took 5 times longer to get it regoniced and so I could even type the password with my usb keyboard to enter Windows! After a lot of cleaning computer from drivers and making sure all old nvidia drivers where gone (which they were) etc I finally got it to somewhat work with 11.1 drivers. I do not know if ATI is supposed to tell which graphic card I am running in catalyst, but all I get is "6xxx" as a number for my graphic card. I also had problems during the driver install/reinstall that the computer lost information about which hard drive to boot from, the raid array got reset to standard sata drives and had to be reconfigured etc before I finally got the cards to "working" state I think.

If I ever dare to flash the cards to 6970 after this headache I already got from this I do not know...
I don't know if I imagine some microstuttering as well now in crossfire mode or if I'm just to angry still and seeing things, but I will have to wait and try out some more tests with the card later when I have cooled down.

Anyway, this was my third and final experience with ATI, while their numbers in theory and test might win over nvidia with a couple of FPS, and a couple of [currency] cheaper - Nvidia atleast always work and don't give this much headache!

Wouldn't be suprised to find my girlfriend gone out of the house when I get home after spending 10 hours swearing at my computer after this.

Next grapic card is without doubt Nvidia, forever and always.

 

[Crashman]

I just bought 2 x 6950 Asus (overclocked by factory with 10mhz) for my i7 920 rampage II extreme computer... I have to say it must be many years now since I had a ATI card in my computer for several reasons: like shitty drivers, wired artifacts when playing games etc.. So during the last ~8 years this will be my third attempt to run ATI's graphic solution now, and my old GTX 285 went out of the computer.

Well I am "happy" to inform you that apparently ATI has not learned *** during these years, after booting up with the newest ati drivers 11.2, I could not even get the catalyst control center to work, and I got a error message each time I logged into Windows, the USB equipment I had took 5 times longer to get it regoniced and so I could even type the password with my usb keyboard to enter Windows! After a lot of cleaning computer from drivers and making sure all old nvidia drivers where gone (which they were) etc I finally got it to somewhat work with 11.1 drivers. I do not know if ATI is supposed to tell which graphic card I am running in catalyst, but all I get is "6xxx" as a number for my graphic card. I also had problems during the driver install/reinstall that the computer lost information about which hard drive to boot from, the raid array got reset to standard sata drives and had to be reconfigured etc before I finally got the cards to "working" state I think.

If I ever dare to flash the cards to 6970 after this headache I already got from this I do not know...
I don't know if I imagine some microstuttering as well now in crossfire mode or if I'm just to angry still and seeing things, but I will have to wait and try out some more tests with the card later when I have cooled down.

Anyway, this was my third and final experience with ATI, while their numbers in theory and test might win over nvidia with a couple of FPS, and a couple of [currency] cheaper - Nvidia atleast always work and don't give this much headache!

Wouldn't be suprised to find my girlfriend gone out of the house when I get home after spending 10 hours swearing at my computer after this.

Next grapic card is without doubt Nvidia, forever and always.

Those are very strange issues, perhaps ATI isn't for you? I've owned a bunch of Ford cars and all died from heat issues, it appears some people are hexed. I only say that because the issues you reported don't make any sense. But I'm glad to see you got it working.

I'd probably wait for CAT 11.4 before upgrading, since it's supposed to fix poor scaling in a few games. That will give you a while to cool down before you have a reason to get angry again.

 

[Mousemonkey]

I've owned a bunch of Ford cars and all died from heat issues,

Where I live they burn them after they steal them, or is that not the same kind of thing? 😗

 

[cburke82]

I just bought 2 x 6950 Asus (overclocked by factory with 10mhz) for my i7 920 rampage II extreme computer... I have to say it must be many years now since I had a ATI card in my computer for several reasons: like shitty drivers, wired artifacts when playing games etc.. So during the last ~8 years this will be my third attempt to run ATI's graphic solution now, and my old GTX 285 went out of the computer.

Well I am "happy" to inform you that apparently ATI has not learned *** during these years, after booting up with the newest ati drivers 11.2, I could not even get the catalyst control center to work, and I got a error message each time I logged into Windows, the USB equipment I had took 5 times longer to get it regoniced and so I could even type the password with my usb keyboard to enter Windows! After a lot of cleaning computer from drivers and making sure all old nvidia drivers where gone (which they were) etc I finally got it to somewhat work with 11.1 drivers. I do not know if ATI is supposed to tell which graphic card I am running in catalyst, but all I get is "6xxx" as a number for my graphic card. I also had problems during the driver install/reinstall that the computer lost information about which hard drive to boot from, the raid array got reset to standard sata drives and had to be reconfigured etc before I finally got the cards to "working" state I think.

If I ever dare to flash the cards to 6970 after this headache I already got from this I do not know...
I don't know if I imagine some microstuttering as well now in crossfire mode or if I'm just to angry still and seeing things, but I will have to wait and try out some more tests with the card later when I have cooled down.

Anyway, this was my third and final experience with ATI, while their numbers in theory and test might win over nvidia with a couple of FPS, and a couple of [currency] cheaper - Nvidia atleast always work and don't give this much headache!

Wouldn't be suprised to find my girlfriend gone out of the house when I get home after spending 10 hours swearing at my computer after this.

Next grapic card is without doubt Nvidia, forever and always.

Guess im no expert but how would display drivers have anything to do with your raid drivers? and try the 11.4 preview drivers on ams website click the 6990 card option. I was on the phone with amd and they said they should work fine with the 6000 series cards

 

[Crashman]

Where I live they burn them after they steal them, or is that not the same kind of thing? 😗

Not unless they're starting the fire inside the engine or transmission...

 

[theusual]

Well I am "happy" to inform you that apparently ATI has not learned *** during these years, after booting up with the newest ati drivers 11.2, I could not even get the catalyst control center to work, and I got a error message each time I logged into Windows, the USB equipment I had took 5 times longer to get it regoniced and so I could even type the password with my usb keyboard to enter Windows! After a lot of cleaning computer from drivers and making sure all old nvidia drivers where gone (which they were) etc I finally got it to somewhat work with 11.1 drivers. I do not know if ATI is supposed to tell which graphic card I am running in catalyst, but all I get is "6xxx" as a number for my graphic card. I also had problems during the driver install/reinstall that the computer lost information about which hard drive to boot from, the raid array got reset to standard sata drives and had to be reconfigured etc before I finally got the cards to "working" state I think.

[Removed stuff about girlfriend]

I doubt your problems were related to the AMD video driver. If you are using an nvidia chipset on your motherboard, you may have removed some motherboard drivers by mistake, including the raid driver. Also, some motherboards share PCIEx lanes with the graphics card. Perhaps you could move the second graphics card to a different graphics slot. Perhaps you accidentally reset you bios to its defaults while you were in there.

I have a 6950 2 GB on the way and hopefully all will go smoothly. I am upgrading from a Radeon 4850 so I won't have to worry about uninstalling old drivers. I am also installing just one card for now until I build my new Sandy Bridge system later this year.

 

[killerrabbit]

I doubt your problems were related to the AMD video driver. If you are using an nvidia chipset on your motherboard, you may have removed some motherboard drivers by mistake, including the raid driver. Also, some motherboards share PCIEx lanes with the graphics card. Perhaps you could move the second graphics card to a different graphics slot. Perhaps you accidentally reset you bios to its defaults while you were in there.

I have a 6950 2 GB on the way and hopefully all will go smoothly. I am upgrading from a Radeon 4850 so I won't have to worry about uninstalling old drivers. I am also installing just one card for now until I build my new Sandy Bridge system later this year.

Well I was never in the bios in the first place while doing this, only after I lost the raid array information I have to enter the bios first time to enable raid inside bios again. Yeah I know many of the issues I experienced does not have anything logical at all to do with what I did on my computer (cleaning out nvidia graphics card driver, shutting down computer, installing ATI cards, booting computer, installing drivers, restarting... and errors.)

I have been building my own computers for 16 years now about, so I am not new to the situation where I go resetting the bios by misstake, or removing wrong drivers from windows registry. Of course accidents happen even for "the best" but I had to many strange issues with my current build + the new 6950 cards to be happy at the moment.

Anyway, maybe some hardware pieces just do not like each other causing some conflicts that are not detected, would not be the first time - but I try to keep myself to ASUS nowdays and that have kept problems down to a minimum the last years in such conflicts.

Now when I have had a couple of days down to chill down from the computer, I will try the preview drivers mentioned, and maybe flash them to 6970 - and report back the result

 

[stectacular]

@Luay - totally agree. We need more multi-monitor gaming/Eyefinity/etc. reviews.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Not unless they're starting the fire inside the engine or transmission...

If you ever get a chance to watch any of those 'Police, camera, stop, action, chase' vids you'll see that they can usually manage to do that after a while! :lol: