Eyefinity vs Nvidia Surround

[niggz]

Hey

I know with Nvidia surround you need 2SLI and eyefinity you need just 1 card but has anyone tried both which do you think is better ?

[suiken_2mieu]

In general, Eyefinity has more compatibility because you don't have to deal with SLI. It's also more flexible for what ever monitor setups you dream up. The only issue is that you need one of more active adapters for DVI / VGA only monitors.

[niggz]

yeah but wouldnt 2x5870gtx be better then one 6970? also which is more user friendly eyefinity of nvidia surround or which has least problems?

[thales100]

Nvidia Surround in general has a better performance if you compare two cards running in SLI and Crossfire, dont forget that gaming with just one card (like eyefinity permits) at super high resolutions isnt the best configuration of course. :wink:

[niggz]

with what you said i think u've changed my mind about going with AMD and getting 2xGTX580's

[ViciousXUSMC]

Just my single 5870 has been able to handle just about every game I throw at it with high settings so I am pretty happy with the eyefinity solution.

Dual cards is a big investment, it means 2x power consumption, 2x heat, 2x cost, need a motherboard that supports SLI, and a computer case that holds it all well.

I was very happy to "downgrade" my dual 4850 setup to a single 5870.

I think to this day Crysis and Metro 2033 are about the only 2 games that I felt my system needed to be stronger to play in surround and both games are known to be rather poorly optimized for PC.


Id definitely go 1 card over 2 given the choice any day.


The things I would look at is what flaws eyefinity has and if Nvidia Surround fixes any of those.

In my case "the line" issue is one major flaw in eyefinity, I still have it to this day and I am not sure if its a hardware or software issue but its there. I also still dont like a few minor issues with the drivers AMD is using like not saving my aspect scaling options when I use a profile to change between a single monitor and eyefinity mode.


If Nvidia has those issues fixed thats a good +1 for Nvidia, but also make sure they do not have any major issues that off set those advantages.

Im sticking with the 5870 until a new single powerful card with 2gb vram is released from AMD, then I play to upgrade to an i7 and stuff along with it (2600k looking pretty nice)

[tepescovir]

i have used single 5970, dual 5970's. single 5870, dual 5870's and mixed 5970+5870. and have used them in 3 different rigs.
I now use dual 480's and got rid of all the ati cards.
on paper the ati cards are more powerful. in reality ati drivers let them down big time, vsync, poor crossfire and compatability issues. all driver issues, but thats always been an issue for ati.

Nvidia simply works for me, ati didnt.

[Hydralisk_X]

My roommate has a gtx 480 SLI surround setup. I have a 5870 xfire eyefinity setup.

Of course he has better performance. He also paid $1500 for the cards + water cooling (they were overheating on air).

For my eyefinity setup, I have my default triple wide extended desktop and eyefinity profiles hotkeyed and it takes about 2 seconds to switch back and forth. My roommate for whatever reason can't do the same with his GTX 480 setup. He claims nvidia drivers can't do it, but maybe he's just too lazy to figure it out.

Word on the street (there's a thread where someone compared 6970 xfire to gtx 580 sli) as well as through an [H] review is that 6970 xfire is much better than the previous gen (5870/5970 xfire) and the 2gb of vram trumps the gtx 580 when you reach very high resolutions with AA (I've never found this to be a huge deal - just turn AA down or off if a game runs like a slideshow).

You can't compare 6970 to gtx 580 SLI. A single 6970 costs less than a single 580. Why in the world would you compare $400 to $1000.

Eyefinity
Pros:
- Can run on a single card
- 6900's have 2gb of VRAM
Cons:
- Needs special DP adapters if you don't have DP monitors (I have 3 DP monitors personally, got them for $180 each)

nvidia surround
Pros:
- SLI seems to be a little bit more solid than xfire, although the two technologies are very similar at this point. The 5800 xfire was a little worse than 480/580 SLI while 6900 xfire is a little better.
- Can do 3d surround if you want to. I've never tried it personally. It needs A LOT of horsepower though.
Cons:
- If a game doesn't like SLI, it won't work in surround period. One example is mirror's edge, my roommate can't even play that game in surround. Some games while they run in SLI will show negative scaling or poor scaling coupled with stuttery / unsmooth gameplay. In these cases, I can just resort to one card with eyefinity while with surround you're stuck.


As far as drivers go... I've owned both nvidia and ATI cards on all sorts of different machines and all these tales that people report of catastrophic driver failures and how one company just can't get things right are honestly anecdotal. If one company failed so hard with drivers then how in the world do people even get things to work? You'll always get people saying nvidia or ATI drivers suck and didn't work for ______. In the end it really doesn't matter a whole lot.

Bottom line: Figure out your budget first. Only compare things if they make sense money wise. If you're willing to shell out $1000 for videocards, don't put a single 6970 on the table for comparison.

[fatlazyhomer]

If budget is no problem, then of course go 580gtx. But like vicious said, the ability to run triplehead on 1 video card removes huge barriers of entry.

As for performance, I'm happy with my 5870 despite having had it for over a year. It seems like PC games have leveled off graphically, so there isnt a tremendous need for 1000$ worth of video cards.

[niggz]

I was always going to originally go with 1 6970ATI but then i was looking at monitor setups and i want 3x 23" or 24" 120mhz monitors and all of them seem to be 3D and nvidia seems to be all over that but i will be mainly gaming 2D but i just wanted to be able to use 3D if i wanted to.

money isn't a problem but it sounds like ATI is abit better and more stable with games i only really play FPS gamings BFBC2,TF2,BOPS etc

[TheUnk]

I started out with a 5970.. I was constantly annoyed by the monitor hooked up by the DP adapter, it would need to be unplugged and plugged back in frequently. Other than that, it worked, but some games lagged at that res. After reading a HardOCP review of Nvidia Surround and how much faster it was, I dropped my 5970 and got two GTX480s. I've been happy ever since and now all 3 monitors never stop working.

[zpaf]

I had trifire with one monitor 1920x1200 and just upgrade with 2x6950 and 3x dell u2311.
Drivers is just fine and play all my games (F1 2010, Dirt 2, Need for Speed SHIFT, CoD Black Ops, BC2) perfect.
Low cost for 6950 and with the flash you can have 6970 :D

[Mach1.9pants]

Whereas I get awful stuttering with CF and Eyefinity so swapped from dual 6950s/70s to GTX580 SLI

[matrices]

The new Nvidia cards make no sense for Surround. Meager vRAM for high-end cards but still more expensive.

I've done GTX 470 SLI and now I've got 6950 CF. No complaints about scaling or gaming experience. With the Radeon 5 cards, AMD's CF kind of sucked, especially with EF, but that's all fixed with the new cards. Scales better than SLI now actually, and doubly so at the higher resolutions and AA, because of the 2GB vRAM.

[BlueMonster]

I have been following this thread, and hoping to find out... or actually help me make my mind up. I plan to purchase the hardware and monitors to get myself into widescreen gaming.

I am just so indecisive on if I should go Nvidia, or ATI. And then I cant decide on monitors... other than I know I want 24 inch or larger x 3.


Can any of you help me out a bit?