AMD CrossFireX Drivers - Opportunity Lost @ [H]

So I have these 2 7970's and also have 2 580's... Just trying to decide what to keep. As some of you know in my other post I use a PLP monitor setup. With the 7970's I Can do that keep crossfire and not require another card. However, with the GTX 580's I have to use another card and also with my board I have to sandwich both 580's together compared to on the 7970.
 
So I have these 2 7970's and also have 2 580's... Just trying to decide what to keep. As some of you know in my other post I use a PLP monitor setup. With the 7970's I Can do that keep crossfire and not require another card. However, with the GTX 580's I have to use another card and also with my board I have to sandwich both 580's together compared to on the 7970.

You could always sell your 7970's and 580 gtx's and buy an Asus mars 580 SLI card.

That way you dont have to sandwitch anything together
 
You could always sell your 7970's and 580 gtx's and buy an Asus mars 580 SLI card.

That way you dont have to sandwitch anything together


No thanks, I am sticking far away from the dual gpu on a card setups... I guess I can wait it out and hope for the drivers to mature...
 
I think going beyond single GPUs is not really an attractive option generally speaking, there's diminishing returns in terms of performance gains, and you have to deal with potential driver and stutter issues due to the additional layer of complexity it introduces to the equation (syncing, load balancing etc).

It's just not the ideal solution to the problem, hard enough to do it right when putting two chips on the same card, let alone making two chips working perfectly together on two separate cards.

The whole thing, to me, feels like a gimmick for GPU companies to sell you more than one video card, and I doubt this will change any time soon. There's a clear gap between their ambitions vs results.
 
To Whom it may concern as I think this could be a driver issue. Sometimes, when my machine has been idle, and actually, thinking of it now, it's somewhat a high percentage. I will return to the machine and any windows I had left open, example, Firefox. that window will be blacked out and unresponsive. I am however able to close it out without getting an error message of any kind. Another thing is that the cards fan will have a pulsing behavior in that, again, after I've left the machine idle for any length of time, I will return to find the fan on the card gently speeding up and then slowing down. What I refer to as a pulsing sound. It's not too radical so I've not put much thought into it and the two issues combined have never caused a complete lock-up. I wanted to mention this as I attribute this behavior to a new product and, potentially, buggy drivers.

While I know the current driver issue is annoying especially with very very expensive new hardware, I cannot imagine for one moment AMD would skimp in this area. None of us outsiders really have a clue on how fast the AMD ship is going down, but we can all agree that with all the restructuring, firings and people being shuffled around, that it does make for some tense thoughts and worries. Lets hope they have dedicated in house people working on these drivers daily and that the delay is just a result of the difficulty of a new architecture and NOT them being cheap and cutting corners. Only AMD and God knows the answer to that.
 
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Personally, this experience has been one of the best I have had, and certainly as good or better than the experience I had with the GTX 590.
 
I dunno...

been using crossfire with my 5870 & 5830 and don't experience the problems I read about. Also use switchable graphics and hybrid crossfire on my laptop and it works very well also.

Maybe I just use older software, or I'm lucky?

But I can't complain, everything works.

Waiting on those mythical 6GB 7970's to upgrade.
 
Did you even read the article? AMD kept saying they would send the CFX driver to hardocp.

They are still waiting for this day.

If AMD had a CFX Driver, why would they tell Hardocp, they would have the driver for at a certain date, and keep stalling if the CFX driver is already out?

Yes i did read the article and there are plenty of CF and even Tri Fire reviews.
There are even members on my regular forum who have been wining bench with trifire.

jp7152 (7970 Trifire) - 6228
Gibbo (7970 Trifire) - 5113
rjkoneill (7970 TriFire) - 4495
Vega (GTX580 Quad SLI) - 4406
Blast3r (GTX590 QUAD SLI) - 3949
W3bbo (6990 +6970+6970 Quad Fire) - 3820
MisterNiceHands (GTX590 QUAD SLI) - 3758
TonyCattoor (GTX570 TRI SLI) - 3690
gatecrasherlok (GTX590 Quad SLI) - 3630
NeoRed (7970 Xfire) - 3491
http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/7256/unigine2012011019563308.jpg
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18249292


And lets not forgets world record Quadfire run.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?278155-Quad-Seventy-Nine-Seventy

The only thing i can think of is AMD promised hardocp newer CF drivers.
 
I found this article a little bit weird, Crossfire is hardly something most people use. For certain people it is the only way to game.

What is even weirder is that AMD PR firm sends out drivers?

Does that mean that people that are hired by AMD for public relations do understand which things are important but management at AMD doesn't have a clue ?

Are those PR guys also responsible for the grandstanding world overclock attempt ?

I am sure that Crossfire users are a minority but that doesn't mean that AMD shouldn't take care of them because you are using Crossfire as a method to sell your cards.

Which in the end means that if you (AMD) don't support it people will shun your cards for the same reason as you now show your lack of enthusiasm.
 
I think there's a misunderstanding here. CFX definitely works on the 7970, the article leads one to believe that it doesn't work period. I think there are a couple of applications with improper scaling, Kyle could have perhaps better clarified that.

There are many users of CFX @ ocn and many CFX reviews. Personally the only game I found with CFX issues was witcher 2, most other games are fine. I'm not defending AMD here, they should really ensure that nearly all games work in CFX, when clearly a few don't.
 
To Whom it may concern as I think this could be a driver issue. Sometimes, when my machine has been idle, and actually, thinking of it now, it's somewhat a high percentage. I will return to the machine and any windows I had left open, example, Firefox. that window will be blacked out and unresponsive. I am however able to close it out without getting an error message of any kind. Another thing is that the cards fan will have a pulsing behavior in that, again, after I've left the machine idle for any length of time, I will return to find the fan on the card gently speeding up and then slowing down. What I refer to as a pulsing sound. It's not too radical so I've not put much thought into it and the two issues combined have never caused a complete lock-up. I wanted to mention this as I attribute this behavior to a new product and, potentially, buggy drivers.

While I know the current driver issue is annoying especially with very very expensive new hardware, I cannot imagine for one moment AMD would skimp in this area. None of us outsiders really have a clue on how fast the AMD ship is going down, but we can all agree that with all the restructuring, firings and people being shuffled around, that it does make for some tense thoughts and worries. Lets hope they have dedicated in house people working on these drivers daily and that the delay is just a result of the difficulty of a new architecture and NOT them being cheap and cutting corners. Only AMD and God knows the answer to that.

Maybe try that hotfix.
The computer stops responding when you use a WDDM driver in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2617202

I don't know any other 7xxx owner with the issue your having.
But sometimes overclocked system can cause that issue on some setups.
 
I think there's a misunderstanding here. CFX definitely works on the 7970, the article leads one to believe that it doesn't work period. I think there are a couple of applications with improper scaling, Kyle could have perhaps better clarified that.

There are many users of CFX @ ocn and many CFX reviews. Personally the only game I found with CFX issues was witcher 2, most other games are fine. I'm not defending AMD here, they should really ensure that nearly all games work in CFX, when clearly a few don't.

amd have stated they put more into driver and games this year.
needed.
:p
 
I think there's a misunderstanding here. CFX definitely works on the 7970, the article leads one to believe that it doesn't work period. I think there are a couple of applications with improper scaling, Kyle could have perhaps better clarified that.

There are many users of CFX @ ocn and many CFX reviews. Personally the only game I found with CFX issues was witcher 2, most other games are fine. I'm not defending AMD here, they should really ensure that nearly all games work in CFX, when clearly a few don't.

There is always room for improvement.
 
The driver is so awesome that AMD does not want us using it for a CFX review. Plenty of game bugs and flaky power issues. PPW and idle power envelopes are of the utmost importance for this card. This is where it shines. It's drivers are still not allowing that according to AMD.

If you love the current AMD CFX drivers, more power to you.
 
But when you combine the best single GPUs in multi-GPU you can get some stunning performance. SLI turns 8 this year and I think it's to the point where it's quite dependable, it definitely will more often than not deliver even better than tomorrow's single GPU today.

Never going back to single GPUs probably as long as it works as well or better as it does today, at least today's SLI.

To each his own. Enjoy :)
 
Another thing I find annoying is the separation of CAP profiles and drivers. Honestly, I think this is annoying and probably confusing for some, when you go to some other forums you see users trying to "mix and match" different driver releases with different CAP profiles.

They should just merge them into drivers like nvidia does.

Two things AMD should do IMO:

1) Really improve their community website. If you look at the (nv community) website, there's a GREAT community there and end users have an open line to developers at NV. If there's a driver problem, users can report it there and NV devs will actually respond at times to the issues.

2) Again, get rid of CAP profiles. Merge them into driver releases. Again, this is just annoying to deal with. A merged driver/profile is just easier to deal with.

3) Back to #1, I think this is why many users really like NV. I like NV as well, I still have my 580s - I love their community website. And its a great place to report problems and such, and many times you can get an answer from a dev. Hardware wise, I think the 7970 really stomps the 580 when overclocked, and it would be sad to see AMD not take advantage of the great hardware with poor crossfire support.
 
I based my purchase of two GTX 580 cards on the info I was reading about drivers for the AMD camp. I have had Nvidia products for at least the last 12 years. Looking at the price of the AMD 6950 or 6970, I was sure that I was going to purchase AMD cards. As I was reading through forums I noticed that more people were complaining of driver support for the AMD cards than the NVidia cards. Plus I noticed that two GTX 580 cards would outperform two 6970 cards in many of the games I played even though the 6970s had more impressive hardware. That info combined with the fact that I am used to how Nvidia drivers work kept me from buying an AMD board.
 
Another thing I find annoying is the separation of CAP profiles and drivers. Honestly, I think this is annoying and probably confusing for some, when you go to some other forums you see users trying to "mix and match" different driver releases with different CAP profiles.

They should just merge them into drivers like nvidia does.

Two things AMD should do IMO:

1) Really improve their community website. If you look at the website, there's a GREAT community there and end users have an open line to developers at NV. If there's a driver problem, users can report it there and NV devs will actually respond at times to the issues.

2) Again, get rid of CAP profiles. Merge them into driver releases. Again, this is just annoying to deal with. A merged driver/profile is just easier to deal with.

3) Back to #1, I think this is why many users really like NV. I like NV as well, I still have my 580s - I love their community website. And its a great place to report problems and such, and many times you can get an answer from a dev. Hardware wise, I think the 7970 really stomps the 580 when overclocked, and it would be sad to see AMD not take advantage of the great hardware with poor crossfire support.

The CAP's are merged into each official driver release, any new CAPS vwith the same version number of the drivers or higher are updates that were made after WHQL.

The caps need some sort of auto update feature like which is optional with the drivers.
 
To each his own. Enjoy :)

As in all things. It's just that in threads like this people would get the idea that multi-GPU doesn't work well. There were very few games that didn't have SLI support on launch day that I played. I had more issues with multi-monitor support than SLI.
 
I based my purchase of two GTX 580 cards on the info I was reading about drivers for the AMD camp. I have had Nvidia products for at least the last 12 years. Looking at the price of the AMD 6950 or 6970, I was sure that I was going to purchase AMD cards. As I was reading through forums I noticed that more people were complaining of driver support for the AMD cards than the NVidia cards. Plus I noticed that two GTX 580 cards would outperform two 6970 cards in many of the games I played even though the 6970s had more impressive hardware. That info combined with the fact that I am used to how Nvidia drivers work kept me from buying an AMD board.

You had me until you said 6970 had more impressive hardware than the GTX 580. What?

It came a month after GTX 580 and performed worse. But hey it was 100$ cheaper sooo yeah.
 
I based my purchase of two GTX 580 cards on the info I was reading about drivers for the AMD camp. I have had Nvidia products for at least the last 12 years. Looking at the price of the AMD 6950 or 6970, I was sure that I was going to purchase AMD cards. As I was reading through forums I noticed that more people were complaining of driver support for the AMD cards than the NVidia cards. Plus I noticed that two GTX 580 cards would outperform two 6970 cards in many of the games I played even though the 6970s had more impressive hardware. That info combined with the fact that I am used to how Nvidia drivers work kept me from buying an AMD board.

Most NVidia issues are kept to the Offical NVidia forum or NVidia subsections on forums that have them.

AMD Offical forum is not helpful because of some of the regulars, so few people post there.

A quote from a well known forum with subsections.

for me everything works fine, i know CCC team sucks, and same goes for nvidia, if you look how many threads for drivers problems, i care less now, i just stop playing new games and wait till theres a fix first, then i buy it. so my release dates for games is like a month past the real real release date

nvidia drivers
21,823 threads

ati drivers
8,381 threads
 
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Seriously don't see what all the fuss is about. My Tri-Fire 7970 setup has been nearly flawless! Drivers have worked fantastic for me. What the hell is all the whining about? :rolleyes:

The ONLY game that gave me any issues is Crysis 2. I don't even care about that since I only loaded it up to see how the 7970s would shread it. lol
 
I wasn't particularly impressed with CrossFireX when I had two HD 5870s as many of the multi-format games I played had negative scaling forcing me to use an, excellent it has to be said, third-party app called RadeonPro to work around the issues. AMD often took months to address CrossFireX in some games; I remember Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands taking FIVE months for example and their fix after all that was to disable the second card! Gee, thanks, AMD, that's exactly why I bought two cards so the second one could sit idle most of the time! :rolleyes:

As it became apparent that more and more new games would either take months to support CrossFireX or have it disabled completely, I took the decision to ditch multi-GPU gaming for good in favour of the fastest single card. Since then I've had almost 14 months of issue-free gaming on my GTX 580 (buying that second HD 5870 really was a mistake though but if the GTX 480 had actually been good then I wouldn't have had to).

I've often wondered what percentage of people actually use CFX or SLI? I've always thought it to be very low (under 1%) in which case you can hardly blame AMD or NVIDIA for not prioritising the drivers for those users if the vast majority of users only use single GPU cards. I've always felt that to use CFX or SLI you have to be either very patient, if like me you buy games at launch, or you play a limited selection of older games that already have multi-GPU support. It just isn't for me I'm afraid until both AMD and NVIDIA can guarantee working drivers for new games at launch and not 4-6 weeks later.
 
These are the problems that come with being an early adopter. I am waiting for nvidia to come out with their competing product. Also you have think many gamers are going to wait for the resupply of the card. And for the prices to drop when he competing product comes out. $550-$580 is a lot for a video card.... I got a 6870 and am doing pretty well at 1920x1200 for all my games. I agree that there is no excuse for not having a stable drive available at launch. I think that AMD wanted to get the card out before it was truly ready. As you know drivers mature so I'll bet by the end fo the month things will change.
 
You had me until you said 6970 had more impressive hardware than the GTX 580. What?

It came a month after GTX 580 and performed worse. But hey it was 100$ cheaper sooo yeah.

Performed worse? The 6970 was almost always no more than 5% under performance of the GTX 580 (in rare cases equal or higher). And it was almost 150$ cheaper. Even in SLI the difference was barely 8% in CFX/SLI compatible games lets not forget who takes the crown at triple display resolutions. Not to mention that the GTX 580 retailed for $550 on release while the 6970 albeit released much later was only $370.
 
How come that when Nvidia fucks up, Nvidia users get angry at Nvidia

...but

When AMD fucks up, AMD users also get angry at Nvidia. :eek:


That's not true. AMD fucked up. Same as every other company I listed.

Here's the difference though...I've submitted 7 bug reports to AMD listing the bug encountered, the steps to reproduce it, my complete BIOS version and all settings, Windows Version, patches loaded, the order they were loaded, driver versions, install results log files, Event Log entries, etc. to help them find the cause.

How many of these "me too" posts are from people who actually took the time to document the errors and provide detailed feedback to AMD to correct the issue?

Yeah...thought so.
 
It is kind of ironic that [H] is hosting an event with AMD this weekend yet writes a fairly strong article about them a few days before about their driver support.

IRONIC but a needed article
 
I've seen issues with Nvidia drivers (8800GTX single, SLI, and Tri-SLI -- third card often did nothing, second card rarely gave more than a 25% boost), and actually fewer issues with AMD/ATI (4890 Crossfire x2 scaled closer to 75% boost most times, 6950 Crossfire x2 I get near 100% boost in most titles). Maybe I'm just lucky, dunno.

Most people use third party apps to handle custom SLI profiles, why are people so often angry / irritated AMD hasn't come out with an "official" way to handle custom CrossfireX profiles? I /hated/ Nvidia's driver interface, and let's be honest, I hate AMD's too. ForceWare and Catalyst are terrible, I try to stay away from both. I'd rather use the third party app (though I rarely have to) and it works great. So where's the issue again?
 
I am completely blown away at how bad the driver/X-fire support is for Radeons almost across the board considering how hard AMD is pushing multi-monitor gaming. You absolutely NEED multiple GPUs to get good performance and image quality when gaming across 3+ monitors, but their software often cripples X-fire setups completely. I invested in a 6990 late last year and must admit, after having gamed with it for a few months now and seen the lacking driver support for new games firsthand, I really am not sure I will be able to invest in another AMD GPU upgrade the next time around.
 
I just have to add my $0.02 cents to this article. This is the reason I gave up my 5870's. They were running GREAT until the 10.6 drivers came out and really broke crossfire for the 5870's.

Great Great Great Hardware, SHITTY SHITTY SHITTY drivers....
 
waaaaahhhhhh, my brand new architecture graphics card doesn't have perfect drivers at release unlike nvid........oh wait, never mind.

Seriously, please release the 7950 so the 6970 can drop in price..me want!
 
Read the thread.

People got their knickers in a twist because [H] called out AMD for not having a proper CrossFire driver, crappy CF power consumption etc..

Not sure if your posts is directed at me, but felt the need to respond only because the general tone of the thread as a whole seems to be one of AMD fucked up, got called out, and fanbois are defending them...to be honest, they don't deserve to be defended.

However, something that all concerned need to keep in mind when reading my posts in this thread is

I'm bashing ALL companies (AMD included) and I am bashing those who consider themselves "enthusiasts" who manage only "me too" posts instead of doing their part.

We ALL accepted shoddy drivers, hardware, and software from companies and we've done so for years and years and years.

I listed just a few examples off the top of my head, but could have named many other examples like having to load AMD-specific Quake II drivers for the Voodoo2 because of the crappy performance compared to the C300As?

I could have mentioned the IBM Deathstar fiasco of the horrid VIA drivers and install process back in the early K6-2 300 days.

We ALL agreed to act as beta testers for these devices and programs when we adopted them early.

That's just the way it is. It has not and it will not change. Ever.

Make no mistake. I completely AGREE with Kyle's article. What I see as the difference between Kyle and a lot of posters is that Kyle & company are in contact with AMD providing feedback to show where the problems are, instead of restricting their response solely to the article on the site or posting on the forum.


One thing we ALL need to keep in mind is one could do a simple search & replace on the article to replace "AMD" with the name of damn near any of the top 50 tech companies into it though...and we all know it.

This isn't AMD only. It's just the latest example.

That's what it means to be on the bleeding edge.

If you don't want to be on the bleeding edge, buy 6 months after new tech is introduced when the bugs are already worked out and the item is $100 cheaper.

If you're gonna be on the bleeding edge, then do your part. Document the errors you get, your complete environment configuration and setup, and FFS submit feedback to the mfgr with -proper and complete- information so the problems can be isolated, replicated and then SOLVED, because "me too" posts just suck.
 
Not sure if your posts is directed at me, but felt the need to respond only because the general tone of the thread as a whole seems to be one of AMD fucked up, got called out, and fanbois are defending them...to be honest, they don't deserve to be defended.

However, something that all concerned need to keep in mind when reading my posts in this thread is

I'm bashing ALL companies (AMD included) and I am bashing those who consider themselves "enthusiasts" who manage only "me too" posts instead of doing their part.

We ALL accepted shoddy drivers, hardware, and software from companies and we've done so for years and years and years.

I listed just a few examples off the top of my head, but could have named many other examples like having to load AMD-specific Quake II drivers for the Voodoo2 because of the crappy performance compared to the C300As?

I could have mentioned the IBM Deathstar fiasco of the horrid VIA drivers and install process back in the early K6-2 300 days.

We ALL agreed to act as beta testers for these devices and programs when we adopted them early.

That's just the way it is. It has not and it will not change. Ever.

Make no mistake. I completely AGREE with Kyle's article. What I see as the difference between Kyle and a lot of posters is that Kyle & company are in contact with AMD providing feedback to show where the problems are, instead of restricting their response solely to the article on the site or posting on the forum.


One thing we ALL need to keep in mind is one could do a simple search & replace on the article to replace "AMD" with the name of damn near any of the top 50 tech companies into it though...and we all know it.

This isn't AMD only. It's just the latest example.

That's what it means to be on the bleeding edge.

If you don't want to be on the bleeding edge, buy 6 months after new tech is introduced when the bugs are already worked out and the item is $100 cheaper.

If you're gonna be on the bleeding edge, then do your part. Document the errors you get, your complete environment configuration and setup, and FFS submit feedback to the mfgr with -proper and complete- information so the problems can be isolated, replicated and then SOLVED, because "me too" posts just suck.

About sums it up.
 
It's just Kyle wanting to be dramatic. Seriously, the [H] is becoming more and more like the TMZ of the hardware enthusiast world. I'm thinking I'm done here. This place certainly isn't what it used to be and all of the crying is just getting old.

User error != defective hardware. It's a lack of intelligence that is causing the problems.
 
SLI in games are a mix between Drivers and game support. CFX is profiles. I fail to see and considering every card that's launched by AMD has been plauged with slow CFX profiles says it will continue. Look how long it took AMD to get Skyrim CFX on the 6000 series but the 5000/4000 were hit or miss or not at all.

Sorry but what you said is simply not true. AMD uses profiles or application profiles because that gives AMD more flexibility over NVIDIAs implementation of SLI. This allows you to use a 5850 and 5870 in crossfire for example. Or a 6970 in crossfire with a 6950. Something you can't do with NVIDIA. Also AMD works with game developers also to make sure their games are well coded to handle AMD cards and so does NVIDIA. I suppose I think this is what you meant when you said it is a mix between drivers and game support. It largely comes down to drivers. NVIDIA sort of has profiles too but are implemented differently than AMDS and aren't referred as profiles. They are built into NVIDIAs drivers and achieve the same thing AMDS profiles do but differently of course because their hardware scalable link interface works differently than crossfire does. Also NVIDIA always gave their users to tweak anything so users could most of the time get a game to work properly in SLI if it didn't before. So users are able to actually get a game to work right before NVIDIA releases the next driver that will fix the issue in most cases. AMD is also taking this route and it should be happening real soon.
 
I really really wish AMD would get it together.

I have always been an AMD fan since the early Athlon days, but lack luster performance has made me move away from buying their products.

I was also really hopefully that they would continue to improve driver support after taking over ATI, but it is not happening.

They have good hardware there and they are getting blown out of the water because of their drivers.

AMD really needs to push and work these issues out, because I do not want a single choice when it comes to gaming hardware.
 
Because you are way cooler then most :p. To me it looks like AMD does address CFX issues after awhile for games and hardware which if you are like me you wait until the games are patched or confirmed working good before buying or when dirt cheap ;) meaning they are working if not we just don't waste time with them. Plus wait a little bit before getting a new hardware setup. This time I didn't, got 990FX board before BD and got BD as soon as it was available :eek: as well as the 7970 which is AWESOME :). This is a CFX issue with new hardware, new games, where HardOCP has to be on top of the game to survive. AMD is dropping the ball on that aspect of a release.
Fuckin A right I'm cooler than most. :p

I am similar to you though. I almost never buy a game at release. God knows I have more than enough that I've bought and haven't even played yet.
In addition to that, I'm kind of a cheap skate, I hate paying $50-60 for a game when I know that in a month or two it'll most likely be on sale through steam for a fraction of the price. Hell, I only paid $6.75 for BFBC2, $5 for Mass Effect and so on.
The last game that I bought at release was Mass Effect 2, before that BF2142.
Regardless, even those games that I bought at release, played well enough that I really didn't care if they had a CF or SLI profile.
I don't bench anymore really so all of this bullshit that people whine about, makes not an iota of difference to me.
As I eluded to before, more often than not it's user error that causes most of the issues that people have. I've been a member over at OCN since '08 and have helped countless people with their driver issues. More often than not it's someone using driver sweeper to try and remove any last remnant of the previous driver and mistakenly remove chipset drivers and so on.
I'd dare say that 80% of driver related issues are PEBKAC, plain and simple.

Obviously scaling is another story, but still, I've found games that aren't officially supported still utilized both GPU's. Sure maybe not as much as I'd have liked, but I've never had to turn down any setting on almost any game with the exception of Metro 2033. Even Metro I could run almost completely maxed, just had to crank down AA.

Never say never, forever is a long time. I'm not of fan of most of nVidia's dual-GPU cards, had a couple of 7950s and a 9800GX2, not the best cards, AMD's dual-GPU cards I think have been much better than nVidia's.

However the issue with the 590 isn't the norm and even if it did effect every 590 you would have gotten a new card and moved on. AMD just seems to have more persistent issues with game support particularly with CF consistently.

In the respect I have used never was referring to the past. Although you're right they still have a chance to cook up your brand new 7970. ;)

And I wholeheartedly agree with the dual GPU cards. ATi has consistently made better ones than Nvidia.
The 9800GX2's hardcore microstutter problem, the twin PCB GTX295 wouldn't work half the time and have usual hardware failures. I swear I've read WAAAAY more posts about people having issues with the 295's than any other dual GPU card. Couple that with poor drivers from Nvidia supporting it, that card was a fail all around.
Then you have the 590 which is just a piece of crap. Doesn't OC almost at all, and if you do, it fails never to be heard from again. Hence most distributors dropped them almost as fast as they picked them up.
Sure the 5970 had issues, but never at a hardware level. Sure ATi drivers didn't support CF in some games, but as with ANY dual GPU configuration, you should expect that. This goes for BOTH Nvidia and ATi.

However, I think that there's this bandwagon that people like to jump on with ATI CF hate. People run unstable overclocks and then wonder why their driver installs fail, hmmmm.....I wonder? :rolleyes:
 
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