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Do I ditch my GTX 260 for a 4870x2?

Gotta say the 4870X2 is my fav card so far - came from a single 1Gb 4870 and there is a very noticeable difference at 1920x1200, the 4870X2 is a clear winner!
 
Im sorry to disagree with you all here but I really do feel that the 4870X2 (at least in my experience) is not a great card. Have a look here for some more information on micro-stuttering:

http://www.rage3d.com/reviews/video/ati4870x2cf/index.php?p=2

I had mine overclocked under water and still couldnt get consistent smoothness in games. The X2 is too inconsistent in my opinion. According to this article though, adding another X2 would decrease the amount of stuttering dramatically.

Micro-stuttering DOES exist. Compare your X2s to a single card setup sometime and you will see what I mean. Me and my friend did with his 4870 1GB in Oblivion/Crysis/GTA4 and there was a marked difference between the two. I would get higher FPS but his would be more responsive and butter smooth despite lower FPS. Seriously I'm not talking doo doo here!

P.S Before anyone asks yes we did make sure all the driver level settings as well as game settings were the same!!!!
 
Shikyo said:
- 20-60 fps gain @ 1920x1080+ comparing to a GTX260
- £250



:confused: You ok mate?

Oh and you got the GTX280. that's 10-15fps more than a GTX260.

:p
Click to expand...

Well I game at 1680x1050, and another £250 (admittedly I could sell the GTX280) is a lot. I'm perfectly happy with the FPS of all my games (bar GTA4 but that's a CPU thang).

It is good value I suppose, but you'd have to try hard to part me from my BFG 10 year warranty! If only they did ATI.....

btw, how does this compare to the GTX295, qualitatively? £250 is a good deal, but overkill for me.
 
hughythomas said:
Im sorry to disagree with you all here but I really do feel that the 4870X2 (at least in my experience) is not a great card. Have a look here for some more information on micro-stuttering:

http://www.rage3d.com/reviews/video/ati4870x2cf/index.php?p=2

I had mine overclocked under water and still couldnt get consistent smoothness in games. The X2 is too inconsistent in my opinion. According to this article though, adding another X2 would decrease the amount of stuttering dramatically.

Micro-stuttering DOES exist. Compare your X2s to a single card setup sometime and you will see what I mean. Me and my friend did with his 4870 1GB in Oblivion/Crysis/GTA4 and there was a marked difference between the two. I would get higher FPS but his would be more responsive and butter smooth despite lower FPS. Seriously I'm not talking doo doo here!

P.S Before anyone asks yes we did make sure all the driver level settings as well as game settings were the same!!!!
Click to expand...

Micro-Stuttering

On the topic of micro-stuttering, no truly outstanding revelation came ... or, at least, none should've come for those that avoided the pitfalls of extremism (saying it does not exist versus saying it eats baby kittens for breakfast). It does, in the strictest sense, exist. It can be a true deterrent from a good gameplay experience ... however, the cases when that happens are already plainly bad: you need to be performance choked in order for the bulk of inter-frame deltas to shift towards being greater than 25 ms, which is the truly obnoxious zone. So, technically, if you're at 20 FPS due to rendering constraints, and not some sort of framerate cap, on a dual-GPU solution (as noted, queuing more frames will reduce the amplitude of the n-n+1 frame transition), micro-stuttering will be a big problem, but being at 20 FPS is a far greater problem in itself. Where would a single GPU solution be? Low teens? We'd like to reiterate that, if you're in that zone with a high-end single-GPU, going multi-GPU won't save you: don't do it, you'll just frustrate yourself.

The only solutions at that point involve either waiting for a new generation of GPUs, or adjusting your settings until you find a sweet spot (assuming that the bad performance isn't due to a bug). But if you're doing well with a single-GPU, and want more ... why fear multiple GPUs? We've seen that once performance is good, it becomes a non-issue. So whilst it would be trendy to complain about the absconded nature, and inherent absolute evil of micro-stuttering, we can't do so in good faith ... like all other things, it must be qualified, and you must understand how it works, and when it could affect you.

It would be a good point to discuss potential improvements on this front: it's probable that either the load-balancing scheme will change, requiring quite a significant technical overhaul, or that further AFR improvements will be implemented. If that is to happen, we'd expect some sort of heuristic algorithm to be included in the driver, one does a tighter management of how frames are presented, or perhaps the dropping of frames - it makes sense to implement the latter when the framerate is over the refresh rate of the display device, namely if a frame “comes-in” in less than 16.6 ms, it should be dropped, as it only has the potential to add tearing, with V-sync off, and having V-sync on tends to solve some of the issues by itself. However, the second solution is more important for times when performance is high, and at that point micro-stuttering becomes a non-issue.

This is the conclusion from that article and he pretty much says that microstutter is not a problem. He says it does exist but only at really unplayable frame rates where a single gpu would be even worse to play on so i don't really get your point.
 
Micor stuttering has become a thing for people to throw at multi gpu solutions and most people that have them don't have a problem with it but if you try and tell some that your either not seeing it or your ignorant of it. Seems to me micro stuttering like many other things that can ruin gaming experience is dependent on a whole load of things not solely the gfx card.
 
I agree with hughythomas

I went GTX280 -> 4870x2 -> GTX280

I tried both cards on a OC Q6600 system and an i7 920 OC system

Frame rates far more consistant with the single GPU cards
 
Seriously guys compare the two sometime if you get the chance.

Multi-GPU systems all seem to suffer from it to my eyes well at least the 3 that I have seen. Micro stutter isn't as annoying as the inconsistent performance on the X2 in my opinion but both ARE an issue. I haven't seen the 295 so I wouldn't be able to comment. I'm interested to see if anyone else has witnessed the same thing? I know that me and my friend both saw it and my other mate who was over tonight agreed with me that my new gtx 285 is smoother than the X2 I had in there last week...the X2 was on water to! I don't have the cash for a wb for my 285 yet and even so at stock it so far trumps the X2 in every way thus far.

Remember people this is just my opinion!!!
 
Got a 4870x2 yesterday from a GTX280. Not thoroughly tested it yet but it doesn't seem like an amazing 'upgrade'. Everything stock this card runs far too hot, 105°C on the 2nd GPU under load and 86°C idle. Spent a few hours making a custom CCC profile and now things are a lot better. 45°C idle and 80's under load with an overclock :)
FPS is better in some games but there's one thing I'm having trouble with. With vsync on (which I use in most games) the game stutters to buggery, it's not micro stutter as the stutters are far from micro lol. Turn vsync off and its fine. Still looking for a solution to this problem.
4870x2 works very well - when you get it working.
 
Never had a problem with my 4870X2...have you all updated your drivers? They fixed micro stutter a long time ago...

Temperature was an issue...but the latest drivers all increase the fan speed. Plus custom CCC profiles work like a charm :D
 
hughythomas said:
Im sorry to disagree with you all here but I really do feel that the 4870X2 (at least in my experience) is not a great card. Have a look here for some more information on micro-stuttering:

http://www.rage3d.com/reviews/video/ati4870x2cf/index.php?p=2

I had mine overclocked under water and still couldnt get consistent smoothness in games. The X2 is too inconsistent in my opinion. According to this article though, adding another X2 would decrease the amount of stuttering dramatically.

Micro-stuttering DOES exist. Compare your X2s to a single card setup sometime and you will see what I mean. Me and my friend did with his 4870 1GB in Oblivion/Crysis/GTA4 and there was a marked difference between the two. I would get higher FPS but his would be more responsive and butter smooth despite lower FPS. Seriously I'm not talking doo doo here!

P.S Before anyone asks yes we did make sure all the driver level settings as well as game settings were the same!!!!
Click to expand...

I would not disagree that Microstutter does exist. But would say that only the minority of users experience it.

Its been taken way out of proportion with even the slightest jitter will have some people screaming microsutter.
i dont think that is true, ive seen micro stuttering too and i have a single card. there were rumors that a quad core cpu was causing it.

theres so much speculation in this that ever individual setup may see it excessively or never depending on the one or two differences.
Click to expand...
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=3770599&postcount=11

Now we have people saying that they get it on a single GPU :rolleyes:


Maybe its the combo of Crossfire on Intel mobos, that can increase the chance of microsutter.
 
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I had a 4870X2, amazing card, didn't have any microstutter (though the launch drivers did), for £250 it's a hell of a lot of card for the money. It just ran anything I threw at it at max...
 
I went 4870 512mb > 4870 Xfire > 4870X2 > 260-216 now getting a 285 and i gotta say other than benches i didn't really notice any difference gaming at 1900/1200 from the X2 to the 260. Also much less heat and noise dumped into the case from the 260 that the monster X2. I don't think the X2 is really worth double the cost of a 260-216. Maybe wait for the next gen version 5870X2? to push the price down to sub £200.
 
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