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AMD vs Nvidia multimonitor gaming?

A

aviphysics

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 27, 2011
Messages
75
I am thinking about switching from red to green for my triple monitor rig. I would appreciate any input I can get from those that have used either or both for multi-monitor gaming. On my home forums, some have stated that they had problems with Nvidia Surround, but I know I often have to jump through hoops to get a game to work well with Eyefinity, so I am not sure whether or not Surround is really any worse.
 
I have no direct experience with it, but, for whatever it's worth, I've talked to a friend that has had it set up and the NV stuff sounds like it's probably the same mixed bag as eyefinity. He ditched the surround for a single 144Hz display I believe,
 
I have been on the green team most of the time however, I did go to the red team when the 290s were released and all of it is at 5760x1080. I have experienced problems with both.

Red Team Pro’s:
Better support for 3+ monitors
New drivers all for mixed layout (horizontal and portrait) however they are in there infant stages
High bus speeds on high-end cards (512 bit bus compared to 256/386)
Crossfire with no external ribbon
Bit more control over monitors via CCC and preferences for eyefinity

Red Team Cons:
Active adapter likely needed for monitors (card dependent on latest generation)
Drivers seem “beta” I have been unable to upgrade off 3.12C from Dec 2013 without having BSODs or game instability. Also had multiple issue’s with release with hardware acceleration youtube crash.
Crossfire only works in full screen

Green Team Pro’s:
Polished drivers compared to AMDs (big one in my book, had no driver BSOD with the gtx 690)
Window mode SLI
No active adapter needed to go three monitors or more (ran four off a GTX 690) just had to set it correctly via their site configuration.
Seems Nvidia has more support for games in SLI/Surround than AMD
I haven’t experimented with surround however I know more preferences have appeared to mimic eyefinity so they may have caught up now with preferences.

Green Team Con’s:
Only Certain configurations work on Nvidia cards for monitor setup, have to reference there surround tool on their site.
Ribbon needed for SLI
Currently lacking in mixed orientation

Cons for Surround/Eyefinity:
Not all games support it or take time to get full driver support for games
Some Games are not optimized or can’t even use Surround or Eyefinity
FPS can be an issue depending on GPUs being used


My opinion:
I am going switch back to green team on the sole fact of computer stability; I am tired of immature drivers and stability issues with AMD drivers causing BSODs or driver crashes.
 
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Pieter3dnow said:
Nvidia still requires 2 videocards for a 3 monitor setup?
Click to expand...

Negative, Nvidia does not require 2 GPUs to run a 3 monitor setup. I was running 3 monitors off my wifes GTX 670 you just need to have certain input types used for it to work which the tool is on their website.
 
I currently use 4 23" Acer LEDs connected to my Crossfired 6970s for gaming (mostly STO and SW:KOTR), but it works great. Created a preset in the Catalyst Manager so I can switch between Eyefinity (7680x1080) and regular mode (4x1920x1080) with just a key combination.

My multi-monitor nVidia experiences goes back to the "TwinView" GeForce 2 days - so I can't really comment on their implementation.
 
@Nexilus

Crossfire DOES NOT need an active adapter on GCN 1.1+ (any XDMA card), there are now 3 TMDS legacy clocks.

Crossfire DOES NOT support mixed orientation, only mixed resolution.

Crossfire DOES support windowed mode in Mantle games.
 
@The Mac
To go above the 3 monitor limit you need active adapters. I had to use an active adapter on my sapphire 290 to go to 4 monitors and I have the email from support confirming it before I purchased it. I also needed an active adapter on the Gigabyte 280x in order to get three monitors to work properly.

The mixed orientation just recently was released and I kinda figured it wasn't supported by Crossfire only single GPU until it matures

How many mantle games are there? All games I have played it is not supported. General consciences, it is not supported
 
I found Eyefinity would find some way to piss me off about once every week or two. Usually this was one of my monitor just not initializing from power resume or getting out of order every time I toggled Eyefinity. Sometimes when I was using the key combs to enable Eyefinity it just didn't work, and I would get pissy and have to go remove the display configuration to get it working again. Also I had the AMD screen tearing (not my video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xl4nQfX0zoE

This was with single and Crossfire 6xxx series cards, presumably they have fixed this junk by now.

Moved on to team green with a GTX 660 and never looked back. Overall my experience has been much more stable, only problem now is the card it getting slow. Waiting on new Nvidia cards now to upgrade.
 
@Nexillus: If you are not already you really should be doing clean driver installs.

Upgrading drivers directly from one version to the next causes issues on both AMD and NVIDIA, heck a few months ago it caused NVIDIA drivers to kill peoples GPUs.
 
@Spazturtle
Yes, I always do clean install. I actually do a step further with uninstall, AMD clean up then driver sweeper to install AMD Drivers. With Nvidia I do uninstall and then driver sweeper.

Both I select the clean install box.
 
Nexillus said:
@The Mac
To go above the 3 monitor limit you need active adapters. I had to use an active adapter on my sapphire 290 to go to 4 monitors and I have the email from support confirming it before I purchased it. I also needed an active adapter on the Gigabyte 280x in order to get three monitors to work properly.

The mixed orientation just recently was released and I kinda figured it wasn't supported by Crossfire only single GPU until it matures

How many mantle games are there? All games I have played it is not supported. General consciences, it is not supported
Click to expand...

Prior to GCN 1.1 (R9-280/x, 7xxx), active adapter was needed for 3 monitors. Most people use 3, not 4 monitors. Yes, a 4th non-DP will will require one, however if you have 4 monitors and one is not DP, i would question why.

Mixed RESOLUTION is supported. There is absolutely NO MIXED ORIENTATION supported by either single card, or crossfire. They must be all portrait, or all landscape.

Mantle fully supports windowed crossfire. current games: BF4, Theif, PVS:GW, Sniper Elite (patch coming). Many more coming by the end of the year.
 
You are correct The Mac on the resolution for AMD, I interpreted it incorrectly.

So we have three games and more coming? While Nvidia has full game support not relying on an API.
 
Nexillus said:
You are correct The Mac on the resolution for AMD, I interpreted it incorrectly.

So we have three games and more coming? While Nvidia has full game support not relying on an API.
Click to expand...

AMD has the same support for dx11 as Nvidia does, but now they have Mantle as well.

OP - go Matrox, it is best! :p
 
He was refering to crossfire Windowed support.

only Mantle is supported on AMD at the moment.
 
Well it is kinda sad that AMD doesn't support CF in windowed mode on DX side. I really wish they would bring the support for it so that I don't have to run games @ 4960x1600 with single 290X expect for those (two?) games which utilizes mantle.

Or they could finally introduce PLP support to Eyefinity and everything would be so awesome.
 
I have AMD Crossfired 290X and NVidia SLi GTX 780 systems sitting right next to each other running three Dell 24" for a total 6060 x 1200. I have been running three monitors since AMD released EyeFinity in the 5000 series.

I run landscape.

I find that there is essentially no difference, with minor exceptions, in the gaming ability of either.
Some older games suck, but widescreengamingforums is my go to for fixes. Hayden generally has a fix for almost every game out there.
Most new releases are three screen ready.

Nvidia generally has newer drivers quicker. AMD is still in a funk but their stuff works well most of the time. You can use DVI with both teams, but DP capable monitors are helpful if you choose AMD.
 
Osjur said:
Well it is kinda sad that AMD doesn't support CF in windowed mode on DX side. I really wish they would bring the support for it so that I don't have to run games @ 4960x1600 with single 290X expect for those (two?) games which utilizes mantle.

Or they could finally introduce PLP support to Eyefinity and everything would be so awesome.
Click to expand...

PLP is a long way off, its a technology limitation.

the SLI in buffers have to read in the same pattern, rotating one 90 degrees changes that.
 
Well mantle does work with CF in windowed mode when using PLP setup. As do DX9 games with SoftTH so maybe I'll just have to wait for born2beflyin to get that little piece of software updated to DX10+ era.

I know PLP is a long way off, but one can always hope for a little miracle to happen.
 
I've owned both: AMD is much easier and less strict in terms of multi-monitor.

Nvidia has it's advantages, but multi-monitor gaming is NOT one of them.
 
Osjur said:
Well mantle does work with CF in windowed mode when using PLP setup. As do DX9 games with SoftTH so maybe I'll just have to wait for born2beflyin to get that little piece of software updated to DX10+ era.

I know PLP is a long way off, but one can always hope for a little miracle to happen.
Click to expand...

For the love of Pete,

Mantle DOES NOT work in PLP period. Windowed or otherwise.

There is no such mode in mantle, dx or crossfire.

It does not exsist, it is a user wish.

It can use mixed resolution monitors only and they must be the same orientaion, just like dx
 
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I use nvidia for my multi monitor and I did so because amd doesn't have crossfire frametime pacing for eyefinity for the non 290 (as far as I know). I would need at least 2 cards and amd reference cards are not a viable option, the aftermarket aren't going to work well in sli for me
 
they do for 7xxx and beyond.

GCN 1.0 (7xxx) is software based, and GCN 1.1 is in hardware.
 
The Mac said:
For the love of Pete,

Mantle DOES NOT work in PLP period. Windowed or otherwise.
Click to expand...

Well tell me what is this 65fps what I'm getting in BF4 (Ultra) in windowed mode when using Mantle and 4960x1600p resolution across three screens (PLP) on my 290X CF vs 35fps after disabling CF, if it doesn't work :rolleyes:

Must be that I'm dreaming... Or maybe I have actually tested this and yes CF in fact does work in PLP setups when using Mantle in windowed mode. And CF also happens to work with PLP setups when using SoftTH in fullscreen. Or does my card duplicate Core clock speed, Mem speed, ROPs, TMU's, you name it, to get that almost double the fps compared to single card.
I need to find more of these self-replicating cards.

EDIT: I can actually post some proof after I get back to home ;)
 
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i would like to see this, as no AMD card in exsistance currenly supports mixed orientation monitors in eyefinity

Please show the eyefinity group in CCC with the 3 monitors.
 
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What this has to do with Mixed orientation Eyefinity :confused:

It is known fact that Eyefinity and Surround doesn't support that feature. That's why we who are using PLP setups have to use SoftTH software emulation of SLS (Eyefinity / Surround) mode which also happens to support PLP setups, or run our games in (borderless) windowed mode to have that Eyefinity experience.

We are not on the same page now. I've never said that I'm using Eyefinity Single Large Surface mode. I am using three extended screens and my games are running in (borderless) windowed mode across those three screens or I am using SoftTH to emulate SLS whenever I can (DX9 Games).

And Mantle does work in windowed mode across those 3 screens and it utilizes both GPU's. And before you even ask; yes it renders the whole game world in 4960x1600 and not just stretch it as some not properly coded games do (which you can override by defining your windowed resolution in cfg file in some cases).

I'll quote my first post:
Well it is kinda sad that AMD doesn't support CF in windowed mode on DX side. I really wish they would bring the support for it so that I don't have to run games @ 4960x1600 with single 290X expect for those (two?) games which utilizes mantle.

Or they could finally introduce PLP support to Eyefinity and everything would be so awesome.
Click to expand...

I was talking about getting CF support to (borderless) windowed mode when using DX API. Nvidia SLI in fact works in windowed mode (on DX API :duh), at least with Windows 7.

Or maybe we could have same kind of software emulation for PLP as how SoftTH is doing it, so that you can actually select your fullscreen resolution (my case 5310x1600 after bezel compensation) inside the game, as you can when you are using SoftTH.
 
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I appologize.

I assumed you were using eyefinity.

If you are using extended desktop mode, yes you can use plp.
 
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No probs man :cool:

I could have explained my situation little better from the start :eek:
 
cortexodus said:
I have no direct experience with it, but, for whatever it's worth, I've talked to a friend that has had it set up and the NV stuff sounds like it's probably the same mixed bag as eyefinity. He ditched the surround for a single 144Hz display I believe,
Click to expand...

This right here is it for me. I did surround, and even 3D surround, from GTX480 to 580 to 680 to Titan in tri-SLI.

In the end it was too annoying. I don't have direct experience with Eyefinity, but I have plenty of friends that stick with AMD builds. AMD definitely provides more flexibility around setup, but they still have plenty of complaints and, once things are setup, it is equally an endless process of tweaking and retweaking every time you get a new game.

The biggest thing with SLI surround that is annoying is that you have to do a spanned surface desktop if you want SLI surround in full screen games, OR you have to switch SLI modes before gaming.

The former sucks because Windows doesnt support a 3 screen desktop surface well at all. The latter sucks more because it isn't a quick and easy thing to change SLI mode. It's a control panel/dark screen/screen flash event that is a pain in the ass if you have to do it a lot.

I ended up with 2 QNIX2710 1440P IPS panels, both driving at 120Hz, and I setup Tri-SLI Titan with 1 screen plus accessory display.

Two distinct 1440p surfaces on the Windows desktop for productivity, and the center monitor full screen for gaming. I find the experience a *lot* more satisfying.

I've done a ton of surround build and testing entries on my blog over the years as I really like the idea in concept, but in the end I had to throw in the towel.
 
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