Is stuttering with Crossfired 69xx's really so common?

[Abram]

With a tax return looming, I've been thinking of getting a second 6950 for my desktop, but I keep reading of stuttering that folks seems to have, and I'm pretty good at spotting stuff like that.. i fear that if i get it, ill regret teh purchase. It it from a certqin hardware combination or connection type? Does it only happen with some cards, or is it just random?

So is it really as common s it seems? If so, I' may just get a single 7970, as it appears to about as fast as crossfired 6970's..

[amdr]

I think the stuttering is really dependant on how much the game is optimized for CF. Just a small example, I play a lot of racesims and iracing does eyefinity + crossfire without any issues or microstutters but the same combination in rFactor 2 is simply unplayable, even at 100 fps.
I'm talking about 6970's in crossfire offcourse

[Jza]

...

[Jza]

You will get unsmooth gameplay in most games.
Vsync on looks terrible, and off 60fps actually looks more Like 40fps. You will regret it.
I cannot recommend enough that you sell the 6950 and grab a 7970.
I just sold my 6990 and got a 7970 to cure this.
I went through 3 windows installs and 2 pc's phenom 965 now an i72600 problem is still there.

[Abram]

Hm. Well, i guess a single 7970 it ism then..

Uh.. anyone want to buy an ASUS 6950 with unlocked shaders?

[amdr]

To be honest, I wouldn't really say most games.
Out of all the games I currently play once in a while, rFactor2 (beta) is pretty much the only game which is unplayable for me. Deus Ex, Arma2, Skyrim, Tribes Ascend, BF, Hard Reset, Metro 2033, LA Noire, Red Orchestra2, Sonic Generations, all pretty much run smooth.

Most of the stuttering happens when the game is just released and, like I said, it hasn't been optimized yet, it's a very old title (which most of the time doesn't even need CF to run decent) or there aren't CAP's available for it yet.
I was planning on making the same swap, going from a 2 6970's to a single 7970 but I'd like to get all the juices I can get for a 16/10 eyefinity setup and when the CF works properly, it's gonna blow a single 7970 out of the water.

[Wijkert]

and I'm pretty good at spotting stuff like that.. i fear that if i get it, ill regret teh purchase.

I would not recommend combining crossfire and eyefinity. For me the stuttering was apparent in every game I played. Since you notice this kind of problem easily you will regret your purchase. I am afraid that for people who get annoyed by stuttering there is no other solution than to wait until this problem is fixed and use just the one high end card in the meantime. This might take years since not a lot of customers use both these technologies and that makes it a low priority problem for AMD (and NVidia for that matter).