7950 Crossfire vs 680 SLI at 5760*1080 (Eyefinity/Surround)

[Rusty0611]

The difference between the 7950 and the 680 at triple screen resolution can be summarised by the difference between playing at maximum settings or not playing at maximum settings.

The difference is noticeable to the naked eye in terms of smoothness at maximum settings.

 

[Rusty0611]

^^ are you talking about single cards or dual? Or both?

Also I take it you mean the 7950's were 'smoother' in your experience?

SLI/CF but same principle for single card. For single card/single monitor I can't see any difference between 7950 and 680 but with an FPS counter up I can tell the 7950 is marginally slower.

The faster bus allows you to run with maximum settings and get decent FPS whereas with the 680s (if you were to graph it) as soon as any AA is applied performance drops off quite sharply.

On a separate note I think this card is OK - it was a bad OC I think. I don't want to run faster than 1100 on the core anyway and to be honest FPS was pretty darn good in BF3 for that overclock.

 

[Rusty0611]

Doesn't Nvidia fiddle the performance somewhat by running the side screens at half the frame rate of the centre screen, or am I misremembering that?

I didn't noticed this happening. Performance seemed in sync.

 

[Rusty0611]

If the MSI is on top slot, then as you know it runs hotter in CrossFire, and remember it's not venting the waste heat out the back, by dumping it in the case, even though there is good airflow, it will still create a larger heat build up the MSI's components than it would if instead of dumping the heat out the back ala the Ice-Q.

Nah it's hotter like for like - single card in case on its own. As it gets hotter it's also unbearably noisier.

Clee has used both, having used eyefinity first, he said it's better hands down.

Possibly as you used surround first, then this could explain individual preference?

As they are both relatively new in the the grand scheme of things, they will both get better over time imo.

Nah. Neither is perfect but Eyefinity is more broken than Surround is broken. Nothing fundamental just little niggles.

 

[Rusty0611]

I've just bought 2 7970s and I'm wondering if I shoulda gone with 2 670s instead...
7970s will preform better I expect, but they seem to be more hassle with DP->DVI adaptors etc.

Not to mention the issues with X79 and eyefinity.

Did i do the right thing? 2 7970s for £620 (+ ~ £95 for adaptors) or 2 670s for £564.

I worry that despite the better framerates people say Nvidia cards are smoother?

Do I DSR the 7970s, take the hit of the cost of sending them back and get the 670s?

670's are going to perform quite badly compared to 7970's over triple screen. I only noticed a very slight lowered smoothness when compared 7950 vs 680 but that could have just been me looking for something without any way to measure it.

 

[Rusty0611]

Rusty0611, can you honestly tell any difference in image quality using AMD, and Nvidia with current generation cards, using a decent amount of AA/AF, or whatever is best?

Not really. You could maybe tell from a side by side still any difference but this just serves to exaggerate minor differences either way. Colours are perhaps slightly more vivid on AMD when both are at default but I used a touch of Digital Vibrance on my nVidia cards so I didn't notice any difference in real terms.

The guys who are using 3D surround say the peripheral monitors are running the same framerate as the central one.

Correct. Difficult to monitor though so I just trusted my eyes which are super sensitive to low FPS.