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Calling all multi-GPU owners

ev0styLe

ev0styLe

ev0styLe

Associate
Joined
7 Dec 2008
Posts
144
Location
Brighton
Hello guys I'm looking to plunge into the world of Crossfire & just wanted to know whether multi-gpu's are worth the headaches of drivers, profiles, scaling, caps etc. What are your experiences? & please don't let the fact you've paid more for a multi setup sway your opinion, if its been a waste of time & money then please say. Likewise for good experiences
 
Ive got 2 5850s and have had no problem, i wouldnt want to go back to 1 card.

Infact im already thinking of selling these this year and buying 2 better cards.

I think multi cards offer the best bang for buck.
 
I got a pair of 6950(6970 bios) the only game that throws a wobbler is black ops, everything else has been fine no problems, just make sure you keep your CAP's up to date.
 
I had no issues with CF 5850s whatsoever. Drivers always work fine for me, but I don't buy loads of games on release day, so that could be partly it
 
I've had both SLI and Crossfire setups.
My experience was that you sometimes have to wait a little longer for driver support, or for niggles to be ironed out, and you're a little more prone to bugs/reliant on game profile updates, but that for all that, the experience is no where near as bad as some would have you believe, and often is fairly seamless.

I would go for either again if they were an option and a faster single card wasn't.

Unless you're extremely sensitive to it, Microstutter is far more an issue at low framerates (sub-30) than above.
 
Pre owning my current card I used to run 2 HIS 4850s in crossfire, for the most part they were great and I'd certainly do it again, I'm currently considering another DirectCU II as a partner for my current card, it's a lot of money to spend though :eek:

J.
 
Never had anything other than positive experiences since going xfire with 5850's.

THere are so many people with multi-card set-ups.... but they get drowned out by the few who have issues as they shout louder.


Go for it mate!
 
Never had any trouble with my 5770s. I think as said above the vocal few who have problems tend to get listened to more.
 
I had CF 5850's.

I had a lot of problems in games when I used them. I was getting microstutter in F1 2011/Dirt 3 where I would have a solid 60 fps but it felt sluggish. BF3 would instantly crash everytime I loaded it or it would run ok for 5 mins then bluescreen. Disable crossfire and it would be ok. I got bluescreens from time to time just updating the drivers.

Before anyone suggests this. I tried both cards separately on their own and they worked ok, was purely a driver issue for me. I just couldn't get a driver combination that would play the games I wanted them to. It got to the point where I would just leave the second card disabled and run 1 card. Then I thought why am I paying for this power I can't even use?

In the end I sold them and bought a GTX 580 and haven't looked back. I get roughly the same performance with the 580 as I did with the CF 5850 but the difference is I don't have to fiddle about with drivers or anything. It just works as it should. I can spend my time gaming 100% now rather than 50% gaming 50% looking for driver fixes. That alone is worth the £150 I had to shell out to change cards (once I factored in what I got for my 5850's.)
 
I always wonder whether some of the issues (don't get me wrong, Crossfire and SLI aren't perfect and have thier own...intricacies), are down to poor board implementations, slightly unstable overclocks, power deficiencies etc etc.

I'm not saying all issues are by any means; but the adding of the second card, and the additional power load and usage, as well as additional hardware connector etc could trigger issues in far more places than a single card, but because it is only when Crossfire/SLI are enabled these deficiencies are exposed, the problems are alloted to these rather than failures in other departments.
 
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Currently have two sli rigs, gtx 460's and 470's. No problems with either setup. A lot better than sli was in its infancy. Owned quite a few sli setups over the years.
 
2011 was a rough year for crossfire I would say, quite a few releases took a good few weeks to get the kinks ironed out, but all in all was it worth it? Yes.

Things are starting to look up this year already with 12.1 and now for some part being able to set your own crossfire profiles for games, hopefully AMD expand on it.
 
Unless you're playing over 1080p I wouldn't bother.

Used to have 4850 CF then I replaced them with a 4890, it felt SO much smoother in gameplay.
 
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