Eyefinity gets owned by NVIDIA Surround

Puppetmaster · 24 Jul 2010 at 15:09

HW91 said:
why would oc'ing them be interesting from your ATI biased point of view?

oc'ing ati cards gives no where near the scaling of oc'ing fermis, if any change in fps difference occurred it would be increasingly in nvidias favour

plus you can easily get a 15% oc on the 480 on air, or up to a 40% OC on a 470

Heat is more of an issue with Nvidia cards. Imo you cant just say "whack up the fan speed" because then they get noisy.

Slurms · 24 Jul 2010 at 15:10

ATI will always come out on top for me

HW91 · 24 Jul 2010 at 15:16

Puppetmaster said:
What i wrote earlier is true though right, that the GTX 480 is a faster single card vs 5870. If thats correct then i dont see how you can compare directly. Its like saying an M3 can go faster round a track vs a regular 3 series bm, ones faster than the other but it also costs more.

I don't think you get it

since you're using car analogies I'll use them too

so an M3 is faster than a standard 3 series with a single engine but it costs a bit more, however if you double up the engines the standard 3 series with 2x engines may pull ahead of the M3 with 2x engines due to the extra weight which is also added. Emphasis on the may because the M3 still has the extra power which could overcome the extra weight.

infernox · 24 Jul 2010 at 15:34

wolvers69 said:
^this^

It's like gaming looking through Tudor windows!

thats the case really unless you try to modify the monitors to remove the frames..

Orangey · 24 Jul 2010 at 15:58

I was talking about clocking a pair of cards, which in my experience is a different animal than single card. I would've thought the 5870s would have more wiggle room on air compared to the 480s.

Razor Time · 24 Jul 2010 at 16:16

Orangey said:
I was talking about clocking a pair of cards, which in my experience is a different animal than single card. I would've thought the 5870s would have more wiggle room on air compared to the 480s.

Fermis scaling is very good and a 10% overclock gives about the same back in terms of frames ie 10%. This is not the case with ati cards or any other nvidia card prior to fermi.

arc@css · 24 Jul 2010 at 16:18

I've so far not been interested in eyefinity or nividia's multiple monitor technology at all, not even the slightest. Until the other day that is, when I saw a review on 3dgameman, all of a sudden I realised I was not even aware the bezels were there.

Puppetmaster · 24 Jul 2010 at 16:28

HW91 said:
I don't think you get it

since you're using car analogies I'll use them too

so an M3 is faster than a standard 3 series with a single engine but it costs a bit more, however if you double up the engines the standard 3 series with 2x engines may pull ahead of the M3 with 2x engines due to the extra weight which is also added. Emphasis on the may because the M3 still has the extra power which could overcome the extra weight.

Maybe that wasnt the best way of putting it. Il make it easier (Not exact prices, doesnt really matter for this)

5870 x2 costs £700, GTX480 x2 costs £900. £900 wins. Wait what? More money, better product / performance?

If buying 2 of each graphics card was the same price, then you could say that eyefinity gets owned by nvidia surround, but since they are different prices you cannot directly compare them. Its as simple as that. If they had tested a similiar priced ati setup it would have been fair to say they "got owned" if they actually did. Its like saying a hex core i7 owns a hex core amd, fair enough but the amd is a lot cheaper.

Even if the nvidia one scales better than ati's, it still doesnt matter without having similiar priced hardware. If ati released a product for £100 that gave you 100 fps and nvidia released one for £200 that gave 125 fps, you could argue nvidia "owned" ati with performance, but cost wise its the other way around. Some people have odd views of competition. I'd guess that review site is probably heavily nvidia biased anyway, since they are not using like for like price wise components giving the nvidia the clear edge, despite costing more money.

Rroff · 24 Jul 2010 at 16:29

Razor Time said:
Fermis scaling is very good and a 10% overclock gives about the same back in terms of frames ie 10%. This is not the case with ati cards or any other nvidia card prior to fermi.

Aslong as you overclock both core and shader (and have adequate VRAM bandwidth) you get very close to 1:1 performance increases with both the 200 and 400 series and even the G92 based cards are quite close to 1:1.

I can't really talk authoritatively about the realworld results on the ATI side - in theory the architecture sees diminishing returns as you scale it up and my limited runs with 5850s recently didn't seem to gain as much from overclocking as I'm used to from nVidia but I didn't have long to play.

I'm certainly no fan of hardocp - their results are fairly meaningless generally but those results certainly appear to show that nVidia's surround absolutely blows eyefinity out of the water in most of the cases. It doesn't suprise me tho - despite being "later" than eyefinity - nVidia's multimonitor 3D (not stereo) support is actually the more mature technology* (and they've spent a lot longer when porting it to 3+ displays actually debugging and compatibility testing it).

* 2 display version used to be enabled for gaming back in 2001 or so before it was taken out the drivers

and made a "professional" feature only - where its been simmering for the past 7 years or so.

Razor Time · 24 Jul 2010 at 16:33

My 4870X2 and 4850 overclocked by 10% would give me about 4-5% return in frames.

Mojo · 24 Jul 2010 at 16:33

Am I the only one who notices the bezels while gaming? My mate has three 22" monitors and I couldn't use them, every time I tried playing Dirt 2 my eyes just complained at me =(

HW91 · 24 Jul 2010 at 16:35

Puppetmaster said:
Maybe that wasnt the best way of putting it. Il make it easier (Not exact prices, doesnt really matter for this)

5870 x2 costs £700, GTX480 x2 costs £900. £900 wins. Wait what? More money, better product / performance?

If buying 2 of each graphics card was the same price, then you could say that eyefinity gets owned by nvidia surround, but since they are different prices you cannot directly compare them. Its as simple as that.

not talking in £ here though

$120 for quite a bit higher fps and quite a bit higher graphics settings sounds like a good deal to me

Puppetmaster · 24 Jul 2010 at 16:37

HW91 said:
not talking in £ here though

$120 for quite a bit higher fps and quite a bit higher graphics settings sounds like a good deal to me

but how is that owning them? it still costs more.

If you pay more or something, you expect to get some benefit either reliability, performance, etc

Razor Time · 24 Jul 2010 at 16:39

Puppetmaster said:
but how is that owning them? it still costs more.

Because they are comparing performance and not price.

ilovebbs · 24 Jul 2010 at 16:47

RavenXXX2 said:
Nah it got owned, read the whole review, the experience was way smoother with the nvidia setup even with higher IQ settings applied to 480 SLI and that's a big deal IMO.

plus the 480's had AA on and the 5870's did not. IT did get owned.

Phoenixdancer · 24 Jul 2010 at 19:05

Have many of you tested or owned a multiple gpu multiple monitor setup? I have my own tri fire eyefinity monster and my bros surround nvidias 480gtx monster...

The amd does stutter at frames under 30 but it rarely gets those fps....

The nvidias cards cost him £820 new... My 3 cost £700 (5970 + 5870)

Considering I use less power and cost less and can run 3 gpus on a pa120.2 I feel that the amd cards win.

480gtx is simply not enough for 6000x1200 with 4aa on crisis, sli doesn't help much... But tri fire handles it fine...

Nvidias are 6 months late and stuill falling behind.

How does ati get owned???

mmj_uk · 24 Jul 2010 at 19:11

That's a bit embarrassing considering ATI have been the ones making a big song and dance about multiscreen, not only are the frame-rates much better but the NVidia cards ran with higher settings too.

HW91 · 24 Jul 2010 at 19:15

Phoenixdancer said:
Have many of you tested or owned a multiple gpu multiple monitor setup? I have my own tri fire eyefinity monster and my bros surround nvidias 480gtx monster...

The amd does stutter at frames under 30 but it rarely gets those fps....

The nvidias cards cost him £820 new... My 3 cost £700 (5970 + 5870)

Considering I use less power and cost less and can run 3 gpus on a pa120.2 I feel that the amd cards win.

480gtx is simply not enough for 6000x1200 with 4aa on crisis, sli doesn't help much... But tri fire handles it fine...

Nvidias are 6 months late and stuill falling behind.

How does ati get owned???

so you're complaining that amd cards didn't get owned because 3x amd cards beat 2x comparable nvidia cards?

you do realise how much of a fanboy you sound?

Phoenixdancer · 24 Jul 2010 at 19:21

No it's nit that.

The 5870 was released 6-7 months before nvidias could get the 480gtx out.

The facts...

480gtx sli uses more power the 3 5870 cores!
480gtx sli produces more heat then 3 5870 cores...

You can run eyefinity well on a single card called the 5970 at a cost of £430

You require to spend a lot more to get a dx11 sli setup that can do the same thing.

I stress again... Nvidias is 6-7 months LATE.

I would love a tri-sli 480gtx rig but I would need new psu and more rad space.... And £400 extra...

coupe69 · 24 Jul 2010 at 19:25

Phoenixdancer said:
You require to spend a lot more to get a dx11 sli setup that can do the same thing.

470 in SLi will easily keep up if not beat a 5970 for a mere 40 quid extra, hardly a lot more now is it?