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3x 30" Portrait 6970 CF Eyefinity vs 580 SLI Surround Showdown
- Thread starter Vega
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Yeah I did... I had all sorts of problems at first (especially with the GPU's down clocking on 3 screens) found out it was an 8/8x limitation.
I'm using an Asus Maximus 3 Extreme, and ports 1 and 2 are 8/8 so I moved to 2 and 3 which I think are 16/16x and my clock speeds and hence idle temps were improved, a lot.
The same with DX9 limitations........ TF2 was fine now
Yeah man it's fine for most games, I push 100fps+ constant in BC2 in a 32 player match.
That doesn't make any sense at all. PCI-E bandwidth has almost no effect on performance when you're comparing 8x vs 16x, never mind clocks and temperatures.
anthony256
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I know... but my problems disappeared when I did that.
My temps dropped drastically, from overheating and keeping the clock speeds up to going much lower and not running ~100C the entire time.
rent.a.john
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You can check gpuz to see if your cards are running in fact at 16/16, I know for rampage III extreme, I had to run my cards in lane 1 + 3
Weird. Must be a motherboard-specific quirk.
anthony256
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yeah, I know that
I think it was.. maximus 3 extreme:
slots 1 / 2 = 8/8x
slots 1 / 3 = 16/16x
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Gawd
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Dan, I was referencing Daines post. He's running the same resolution as me, with twice the PC and is having trouble.
7680x1600 is a much larger resolution...and there is no way you could run that off a single card...much less my CPU bound PC
.Do other modes have this bug? If not what is the performance difference or dissadvantages to using the other modes?
It varies by game. Some perform with a given SLI profile type better than others. Typically AFR 1 or 2 works best. SFR tends to perform worse but it depends on the game.
I will update some of these benchmarks with tri and quad crossfire 6970 when I get my chilled water P67 system up and running.
Edit: Just read the thread about an upcoming 3GB GTX580. Now the cold war has heated up again!
Yeah you'd be the perfect guy to test out a couple of those.
Hmmm 3Gb 580's. What are your thoughts on these?
I think the 580 is a more powerful card than the 6970 and the extra mem may make that hold true at the higher resolutions. Only consideration is what kind of scaling is SLI seeing versus CF?
Very interested to see release date and prices on these as i will be making the move to triple monitors within a month.
I think the 580 is a more powerful card than the 6970 and the extra mem may make that hold true at the higher resolutions. Only consideration is what kind of scaling is SLI seeing versus CF?
Very interested to see release date and prices on these as i will be making the move to triple monitors within a month.
Regular SLI has seen pretty good scaling in general. It has for some time. 3-Way SLI scales better than it used to but I think Quad / 4-Way SLI still doesn't scale all that well.
So would it be safe to assume that the extra memory would put the 580 back on top at extreme resolutions? Card for Card i think the 580 wins, and if scaling on both is similar once the memory bottleneck is removed 580 SLI would be the best bet for triple monitor resolutions. As long as the price difference isn't outrageous.
The price is going to be the breaking point for alot of people though. The standard 580 is already 150$ more than a 6970, Add another 100$ on per card for the extra memory and your paying a 500$ premium over 6970 CF. Will the performance difference justify the 500$ premium. At that price you can have Tri fire 6970's.
The price is going to be the breaking point for alot of people though. The standard 580 is already 150$ more than a 6970, Add another 100$ on per card for the extra memory and your paying a 500$ premium over 6970 CF. Will the performance difference justify the 500$ premium. At that price you can have Tri fire 6970's.
580s are already the better card than the 6970 but the price premium is stupid for the amount of extra performance you get. If you are already dropping over 3 grand on monitors, I dont see how a few extra hundred for 580s, is going to bother you too much.
Well Vega's one of the few that spend that much on 3 monitors
Most people grab three 1080 or 1200 monitors for less than 1500$. Also its about what your getting for that price. If 2 3gb 580 are more expensive or equal to 3 6970's, is the performance going to be equal as well?
Vega when do you expect to have the quad system running? I am interested in seeing if the quad + Eyefinity scaling has been improved. On the 5000 series Quad + Eyefinity usually resulted in negative scaling.
Most people grab three 1080 or 1200 monitors for less than 1500$. Also its about what your getting for that price. If 2 3gb 580 are more expensive or equal to 3 6970's, is the performance going to be equal as well?
Vega when do you expect to have the quad system running? I am interested in seeing if the quad + Eyefinity scaling has been improved. On the 5000 series Quad + Eyefinity usually resulted in negative scaling.
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Well Vega's one of the few that spend that much on 3 monitors
Most people grab three 1080 or 1200 monitors for less than 1500$. Also its about what your getting for that price. If 2 3gb 580 are more expensive or equal to 3 6970's, is the performance going to be equal as well?
Vega when do you expect to have the quad system running? I am interested in seeing if the quad + Eyefinity scaling has been improved. On the 5000 series Quad + Eyefinity usually resulted in negative scaling.
I'd expect GTX 580's with 3GB of RAM to be better than the 6970 in virtually every way excluding price. As it is where memory isn't a limiting factor the GTX 580 is faster anyway.
Well Vega's one of the few that spend that much on 3 monitors
Most people grab three 1080 or 1200 monitors for less than 1500$. Also its about what your getting for that price. If 2 3gb 580 are more expensive or equal to 3 6970's, is the performance going to be equal as well?
Vega when do you expect to have the quad system running? I am interested in seeing if the quad + Eyefinity scaling has been improved. On the 5000 series Quad + Eyefinity usually resulted in negative scaling.
My fourth 6970 will be arriving this week. I am trying to knock out the tri-fire 6970 benchmarks but I've also been distracted building my evaporator liquid cooling housing.
I wouldn't necessarily say the 580's are better in every way. From what I've seen they trade blows back and forth even in games not memory limited. I have found though that I am having memory issues with A-10C with a simple 2x AA with the 2GB 6970's! I might be forced to go back to 580's for 3GB Vram.
Quad 3GB 580's would be sweet.Dan since you are a motherboard guru I have a question for you. I have the Asus P8P67 WS Revolution that says it can support quad-fire but only tri-SLI. If it has 4xPCI-E 16x slots (running at 8x each with NF200) spaced for 4 dual slot GPU cards, wouldn't quad-sli work also? I don't understand how you can have two different numbers for crossfire/SLI card count. Doesn't SLI/Crossfire just care that they have PCI-E 16x slots to go into and that the crossfire/SLI connectors are connected and thats it?
Not SLI. Motherboard manufacturers have to pay Nvidia a fee to license SLI for their boards. And at least with Tri-SLI, you need an Nforce 200 chipset on the motherboard.
I'm skeptical about 3GB 580s. That is being done by one company, not Nvidia itself, right? The pricing will probably be even worse than the regular 580s so I can't see many enthusiasts going for one.
I'm skeptical about 3GB 580s. That is being done by one company, not Nvidia itself, right? The pricing will probably be even worse than the regular 580s so I can't see many enthusiasts going for one.
At least 2 companies are making 3GB models. Palit and Gigabyte I believe.
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Doesn't the WS extreme has the NF200 onboard like the top end boards from other manufacturers? I am wondering if Nvidia won't certify quad sli given the scarcity of true pci-e 2.0 lanes to the 1155 chips. Either way, I also suspect that it should work given it has the NF200 and supports quad crossfireX. Please let us know if it does....
On a somewhat related note, I got my GTX 470 sli setup going and it is MUCH better than the unlocked 6950 was on my system. I suspect most of this comes down to drivers but I am now completely discounting the opinions of those guys in the AMD subforum that claim you can get acceptable eyefinity performance from a single 6970. Maybe this could be true in isolated circumstances with non-demanding titles but fluidity was definitely not the single cayman's strong point.
Running 3400x1680 in Black Ops with everything maxed and 2x AA shows about 1000mb of vram usage in Afterburner with only about 50-60% utilization on the GPU's (vsync). I have to think its completely pointless to go 570 sli since they have the same vram as a 470 setup and you run out of memory before gpu performance. What's more, you can pickup two 470s for the price of a single 570 or 6970. With the normal 580 only offering another 256mb of vram, I think the 3gb model would be the only real step up from a 470 system that makes sense for me. Then again, I don't have 3x30's
Also, I like the way NV surround handles the bezel correction better than eyefinity. With the NV Surround it defaults to a non bezel corrected resolution for desktop use (Yay for not losing window elements behind bezels!) while enabling the bezel corrected resolutions in games. With Eyefinity I had to use the cumbersome system of snapping to the Hydragrid and it was essentially worthless for doing spreadsheet work across the displays.
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Gawd
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R-Type....CCC profiles?
Its literally as simple as creating an extended desktop profile, saving it as say "Workstation". Then create and Eyefinity group and save it as "Gaming". You can then assign hotkeys or even desktop icons to these profiles...so when you want to game, just double click, and suddenly your screens become one massive monitor. When you want to go back to browsing the web or whatnot, enable the workstation profile to have each screen treated as separate space.
You can then use some of the various other features to determine window locations, sizing options, etc etc.
I personally use 3 profiles. My workstation profile enables extended desktop mode, downclocks the video card and power slider, and sets the fan speed at 20%.
My Eyefinity profile links the screens and overclocks the card + setting fan to auto.
My standard gaming profile disables the side screens, and overclocks the card and the fan.
NV drivers should have the same features...it seems they do some of this automatically.
Also, let me get this straight. You're comparing two GTX470's in SLI to a single 6950/70? And you were surprised you got higher frame-rates? Drivers have nothing to do with this, the GTX470's in SLI are simply faster...they are actually faster then any other single graphics card on the market. Add a second 6950 to your system and things will get even smoother...
There isn't a single graphics card on the market that can run Eyefinity resolutions with high settings and max AA, while still averaging over 60FPS. From the testing on the home page, it appears you'll need at least 3 6970's or GTX580's to accomplish this feat.
Its literally as simple as creating an extended desktop profile, saving it as say "Workstation". Then create and Eyefinity group and save it as "Gaming". You can then assign hotkeys or even desktop icons to these profiles...so when you want to game, just double click, and suddenly your screens become one massive monitor. When you want to go back to browsing the web or whatnot, enable the workstation profile to have each screen treated as separate space.
You can then use some of the various other features to determine window locations, sizing options, etc etc.
I personally use 3 profiles. My workstation profile enables extended desktop mode, downclocks the video card and power slider, and sets the fan speed at 20%.
My Eyefinity profile links the screens and overclocks the card + setting fan to auto.
My standard gaming profile disables the side screens, and overclocks the card and the fan.
NV drivers should have the same features...it seems they do some of this automatically.
Also, let me get this straight. You're comparing two GTX470's in SLI to a single 6950/70? And you were surprised you got higher frame-rates? Drivers have nothing to do with this, the GTX470's in SLI are simply faster...they are actually faster then any other single graphics card on the market. Add a second 6950 to your system and things will get even smoother...
There isn't a single graphics card on the market that can run Eyefinity resolutions with high settings and max AA, while still averaging over 60FPS. From the testing on the home page, it appears you'll need at least 3 6970's or GTX580's to accomplish this feat.
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I am not familiar with that feature of the AMD drivers but I also didn't see any mention of it in the several eyefinity set up guides I read. The 6950 was my first AMD gaming card since the 9800 pro and although I've used the Catalyst 10 on a 785g chipset, I'm admittedly not the most knowledgeable with them. But beyond the eyefinity management issues that I seemingly could have mitigated with profiles, I had the same issues that Vega did with forcing triple buffering and the permanent vertical tear.
I was definitely not surprised that the 470 sli was faster, but I was surprised it was smoother. The reason I went with the 6950 was a strong desire to avoid a multi gpu setup and the horror stories I had heard they bring. What I got instead though was perfectly fluid performance with no noticable drawback other than peak power draw. There is no reason not to compare 470 sli with a 6970 as they cost the same and nearly all the enthusiast motherboards from the last few years include sli support. Sure 6970 cfx would be faster, but that is more expensive still. My point was mainly that you need multi gpu in order to do multi display gaming well, even at the low resolution I am pushing. Taking this as a prerequisite then, the 470 sli is an absolute steal at current pricing so long as you won't hit the vram limit. For the 5xx cards, it is disappointing that they didn't give the cards a bigger frame buffer to avoid bumping into the vram ceiling like many are now. Still, this is why competition is a good thing and AMD's 2gb move seems to have spurred 3gb geforce cards as a response. I'm not a fanboy by any means and I apologize if my post seemed to imply that. The three deciders for me were drivers (God I hated 10.12a), price (470 sli for 6970 money), and folding (admittedly this isn't entirely AMD's fault).
The horror stories about multi-GPU are all outdated bullshit that no sensible person need pay attention to these days. Or any other day in the last two years.
AMD drivers do have some nice features that Nvidia doesn't, but they really are buried in a shit-ass UI.
Also, comparing 470 SLI to a single 6970 is not logical. Makes no more sense than comparing them to a single 570. The 69xx and 580/70 are refreshes of the 58xx and 480/70, not new gen parts that are supposed to run twice as fast. And I definitely wouldn't want to deal with the noise factor of them in SLI (hint: I did for a week and then moved to water cooling).
AMD drivers do have some nice features that Nvidia doesn't, but they really are buried in a shit-ass UI.
Also, comparing 470 SLI to a single 6970 is not logical. Makes no more sense than comparing them to a single 570. The 69xx and 580/70 are refreshes of the 58xx and 480/70, not new gen parts that are supposed to run twice as fast. And I definitely wouldn't want to deal with the noise factor of them in SLI (hint: I did for a week and then moved to water cooling).
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Doesn't the WS extreme has the NF200 onboard like the top end boards from other manufacturers? I am wondering if Nvidia won't certify quad sli given the scarcity of true pci-e 2.0 lanes to the 1155 chips. Either way, I also suspect that it should work given it has the NF200 and supports quad crossfireX. Please let us know if it does....
Yes, the WS (don't think there is an extreme version; it is already extreme) uses an NF200 chipset. It runs 5 PCI-E lanes, which is more than any other P55 board and most other X58 boards. It can run 16/16 SLI or 8/8/8 Tri-SLI. Tri-Fire is curiously not advertised but it works.
The quadfire support is coy marketing. All that means is that you can plug in two dual-GPU cards.
Pretty sure it could also do 8/8/8 Tri-SLI plus 4x Physx but I think true Quad-SLI requires a high-end X58 board. And someone who doesn't realize that quad doesn't scale for shit. At least not yet.
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Gawd
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Multi-GPU setups aren't like they used to be. I ran 4870's in crossfire for a couple years and never experienced the issues people still seem to go on and on about.
Also, two GTX470's cost more then a single 6970...on Newegg right now, the cheapest 470 is $240, with the cheapest 6970 being $350. More importantly though, the cheapest 6950 is $270...so if you want to compare the 470's in SLI, then 6950's in Crossfire are within the realm of comparison...and certainly aren't twice as much. I'd venture the increase in performance scales nicely with price.
Also, you can't forget the heat and noise issues associated with 2 cards in SLI/Crossfire. Not to mention power requirements of GTX470's...
Still though, you are correct. To really enjoy multi-monitor gaming, you're going to need multiple cards. Any apparent smoothness differences are probably the result of increased FPS and overall performance associated with the increased graphics power two cards provide.
Also, we can't ignore the fact that in order to get 3 functioning screens on an Nvidia setup, you'll need 2 cards...whether you're gaming, or just looking to web browse. A single 6900 provides 3+ monitor support off a single card. And while the performance of 3+ screen gaming off a single card is debatable, the productivity benefit is not. My 3 screens work whether I'm gaming or not...and I only have to deal with a single card. This equals reduced heat and noise...and depending on the cards you're looking at, reduced price.
As for not exploring the settings CCC provided...I'll put some blame on AMD for having a poor UI. That said, I don't think its so poor that people can't figure it out. I didn't need to find an internet guide to learn about profiles. I just clicked options, and saw profiles and was like "Hmm". Takes 10 seconds to create a profile. And when you get into all of the desktop management features, they are really powerful. HydraVision has all the features one would need to customize their experience. The only thing I'd like to see them integrate is support for multi-screen desktop background spanning outside of windows. That said, a free copy of DisplayFusion took care of that for me too.
Does this mean GTX470's don't make any sense? Absolutely not. At $240 a pop, they are a good deal, and if you can supply them with power and keep them cool, it makes sense as a bang for the buck NVsurround setup. But when you look at dual 6950's and their similar price...the choice isn't as clear. Especially if you don't mind bios flashing the cards. 2 HD6970's for $520? Yes please!
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You're taking pre rebate prices (they are frequently available for 200) and discounting the fact that there are many times more used 470's on the market. I bought one on black friday and one on FS/FT for around $160 each. So thats $320 invested versus 2x$270 + $30 for the active DP adapter. There is a big difference between $320 and $570, enough in fact that you could buy a 3rd 470 or pay for waterblocks for both cards which is what I did. The 6950 is a great card hampered by questionable drivers and I honestly hope they get improved soon. Still, the price premium doesn't seem worth it, particularly given that GF100 sli scaling is great whereas 5870 owners have a reason to upgrade in order to get improved cfx.
Taken from the WS Revolution manual:
According to that quad-crossfire should work just fine at 8x/8x/8x/8x because of the NF200. My original question is, why wouldn't quad-SLI work in the exact same configuration?
Here, even at a single monitor 2560x1600 resolution and quad-fire still shows scaling. I will be running 3x 30" so quadfire/quad SLI should prove fairly useful at these extreme resolutions. The Heaven benchmark virtually has 400% quad-scaling over one card. That is incredible.
I look forward to seeing the results.
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but, I thought that QuadSLI is only supported on dual gpu cards (ex GTX295), and that it's more of a driver limitation than anything else?
Looking at those graphs, QuadCF does scale, but not by as much as 2-way to 3-way does. (Minimum FPS over 100!!)
Looking at those graphs, QuadCF does scale, but not by as much as 2-way to 3-way does. (Minimum FPS over 100!!
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Gawd
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Who is talking about used cards? And Black Friday was months ago. If you wanted a new GTX470 right now, you'll spend no less then $218 after rebate and shipping from Newegg.
Anyways, you're obviously happy with your setup, and I'm not trying to take that away from you.
When the GTX560 drops...I am expecting some price adjustments on just about every card on the market below $300. So it will be interesting to see how the price equation sits a month or so from now.
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Someone correct me if I am wrong, but, I thought that QuadSLI is only supported on dual gpu cards (ex GTX295), and that it's more of a driver limitation than anything else?
Looking at those graphs, QuadCF does scale, but not by as much as 2-way to 3-way does. (Minimum FPS over 100!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjwpNI8e11s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzELwp5-fpY
samuelmorris
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Vega: I take it those are publicised benches and not your own test data? I'm curious to see what happens in tri/quad CF with 6970s (and indeed 3 or four GTX580s - I thought only three were allowed if they were single GPUs, but people have said to me that's no longer the case) at both 2560x1600 single, and some huge multi-display resolutions.
I've no intentions of getting additional 6970s, I'd need a new board for a start, but given the bad press people give quad CF, I'd like to know how it's improved (if at all).
I've no intentions of getting additional 6970s, I'd need a new board for a start, but given the bad press people give quad CF, I'd like to know how it's improved (if at all).
x2 here as my mobo and wife, only allow me to have 2x6970's, so I am looking forward to your results vega
Count me as someone who experiences tearing. =(
I have 2x 6950s flashed to 6970s and have very noticeable tearing that moves slowly from top to bottom of screen. This happens when I am in both Fullscreen or Windowed mode in BFBC2 and WOW.
I have enabled V-Sync and Triple buffering, but it doesn't seem to be making a difference. Installed Rivatuner to see if playing with V-Sync settings there would make a difference, but they did not.
I was going back and forth on whether to get 2 580s or 2 6950s and decided to save a large chunk of cash. I am now wondering if that was a good idea.
Has anyone found a solution to tearing issues with these cards?
I have 2x 6950s flashed to 6970s and have very noticeable tearing that moves slowly from top to bottom of screen. This happens when I am in both Fullscreen or Windowed mode in BFBC2 and WOW.
I have enabled V-Sync and Triple buffering, but it doesn't seem to be making a difference. Installed Rivatuner to see if playing with V-Sync settings there would make a difference, but they did not.
I was going back and forth on whether to get 2 580s or 2 6950s and decided to save a large chunk of cash. I am now wondering if that was a good idea.
Has anyone found a solution to tearing issues with these cards?
Taken from the WS Revolution manual:
According to that quad-crossfire should work just fine at 8x/8x/8x/8x because of the NF200. My original question is, why wouldn't quad-SLI work in the exact same configuration?
That's not the board I have. Must be different versions of the WS for different chipsets much like there are different versions of EVGA's FTW. I have the P55 version.
But to answer your question - I don't know. Why does Tri-Fire work on boards that don't support Tri-SLI? Because they don't have the NF200 chipset. Maybe Quad-SLI needs an even more expensive chipset.
As for Quad-anything performance, I'll believe it when I see it. I am extremely skeptical that it works properly in real games. Even the FPS numbers are higher. Remember that even in 2-way SLI, the FPS numbers are not representative of the actual gaming experience you would see if you could get one card to produce those frames. It's about 20% "inflated" numbers in that sense - which is still fine since there's 80 to 100% scaling.
However, I don't know how much more "inflation" you have to account for when you start going ridiculous like 3-way and 4-way, not to mention the decreased scaling. Maybe the scaling issue is mitigated once you increase the resolution and AA, like you say, but the gameplay experience of 3-way and 4-way SLI/CF is not something I've seen enough, or any, positive reviews about to instill confidence.
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samuelmorris
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Quad crossfire with two HD4870X2s worked very well in lots of games, I ran it for two years. The main reason I changed was because the scaling of two 6970s is a fair bit better than with two 4870X2s, and the power/heat/noise is considerably reduced. Since there are no usable aftermarket air coolers for the 4870X2, you can't really do anything about the racket they make (Arctic Accelero does not count, as it is not usable)
In the trickier titles, my fps has around doubled from two 4870X2s to two HD6970s. In the more productive titles like L4D2 and the 3dmark graphics tests, I've only gained about 10-15%.
In the trickier titles, my fps has around doubled from two 4870X2s to two HD6970s. In the more productive titles like L4D2 and the 3dmark graphics tests, I've only gained about 10-15%.