AMD Eyefinity vs. NV Surround and 4K
We feel that AMD Eyefinity better properly configures the 4K panel automatically when launching games for the first time. For example, when we launched each game it duplicated the image, since the panel is natively two displays of 1920x2160 stitched together. All we had to do was go into the game menu, set the resolution, apply settings and it worked with no issues what-so-ever. However, we had some issues with NVIDIA Surround on the 4K display.
When we started up Windows on GTX TITAN SLI or GTX 780 SLI on the 4K display, it did properly boot up at the right resolution of 3840x2160. When we went to enable SLI, sometimes the screen would go black and stay black, with the display going into power save mode. It would take a reboot, and trying again, and then it would come around just fine with SLI enabled. It didn't always work the first time though. Whereas, with AMD R9 290X CrossFire we could disable and enable it at will on the 4K display, and it never got stuck. We did not have to reboot to see the changes, we could do it all on the fly. It just worked without issue.
When we started some games on GTX TITAN SLI and GTX 780 SLI some of the games had issues at initial launch on the 4K display. When we started up Crysis 3 the game would show partly on the screen for a few seconds, then just quit to desktop. This happened over and over and over again with the TITAN SLI and GTX 780 SLI. After many tries we finally got it to work.
In Far Cry 3 on the GTX TITAN SLI and GTX 780 SLI on the 4K display every time we tried to change to the resolution of the display the display would go black, and stay black. In order to get that game to work we had to switch the game to windowed mode, then we had to set the proper resolution, then we had to go back to full screen mode.
We had none of these issues in any game tested on the AMD Radeon R9 290X CrossFire configuration on the 4K display. Every game worked the first time, we never had any hang ups or display going into power save mode issues. It may just be the placebo effect, but we swear that 2D performance on the Windows desktop felt faster on R9 290X CrossFire Eyefinity versus TITAN SLI NV Surround.
Smoothness, Frame Time, Frame Pacing, and all that Jazz
So much talk about smoothness, frametime, and the actual experience of multi-GPU video cards while gaming has been discussed lately. In the past, AMD has been highly criticized of having a sub-par CrossFire experience, and rightly so. There were major issues with smoothness where games would stutter or feel choppy, even though the framerates looked good. We've been telling our readers for years that CrossFire just didn't feel as good as SLI while gaming.
Those times have changed, at least on the new Radeon R9 290/X series. The new CrossFire technology has improved upon the CrossFire experience in a vastly positive way. Playing games on the Radeon R9 290X CrossFire configuration was a smooth experience. In fact, it was smoother than SLI in some games. It was also smoother on the 4K display at 3840x2160 gaming, and it was noticeably smoother in Eyefinity at 5760x1200.
AMD is using its Frame Pacing technology, but that is a software technology. That, combined with the evolved CrossFire technology is providing a noticeable benefit to the gameplay experience compared to the previous generation cards. Once you've gamed at a large resolution on CrossFire with R9 290X, you likely won't go back.
It is safe to say, from a real-world gaming perspective, stuttering is no longer an issue one has to worry about. Low framerates don't feel "stuttery" anymore, you no longer have to achieve the highest framerates to get a smooth experience. We were pleasantly surprised how smooth the gameplay was on the 4K panel with CrossFire. We can only hope this technology evolves to future products, and AMD stays on its feet and never lets a bad CrossFire experience happen again.
. Although it does surprise me that an additional tool is required to completely remove the drivers - this should be part of the Control Panel uninstall program IMO, even if they have to provide two options during the uninstall (ie, a radio button that allows basic uninstall or full uninstall along with a few other bits of information on the difference between the two and a default radio button is set to basic -so those who have no idea can just click next).
