Eyefinity vs NVSurround

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mlcarson

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 12, 2009
Messages
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I've got two 6950's (clocked to 6970 speeds) running 3 24" monitors (1920x1200) at 6020x1200 resolution after bezel compensation. The MSI Lightning 7970 and the GTX 680 are both looking like good upgrades.

Will the single card Nvidia Surround suffer from the same screen tearing issues as the AMD 6950 had with the mixed Displayport/DVI outputs? Does Nvidia eliminate that by using 2 DVI and the HDMI with an HDMI to DVI adapter? It appears that the HDMI port is a real port on this card and not linked to one of the other DVI ports so this would be the equivalent of 3 DVI ports, right? If so, presumably no screen tearing on the HDMI.

The other issue that AMD suffered from is that of poor drivers. There are reports of the same corrupted cursor problem on the 7970 that plagued my AMD 5850 card. I'm thankful that my 6950 hasn't seen this problem lately but I don't want to see it again with the next card. The latest 12.2-12.3 drivers created issues on my current cards at idle presumably because of a problem in the power-saving mode. All kinds of crossfire driver problems but I don't plan on going down that road again. Assuming that the GTX680 and AMD7970 were close to equal on the hardware side, are the driver issues enough to flip to Nvidia or do they have just as many problems of their own?

I think the 3GB vram of the 7970 makes this card superior but I only have 2GB on the 6950's and haven't noticed that being a limitation yet. If the GTX 680 has 3 usable ports on the reference card rather than having to get a non-reference MSI Lightning for the same feature, it's really tempting to switch to Nvidia -- especially if they end up with superior drivers. I've used AMD exclusively since the Radeon 9700 with the exception of the 8800 series in some Linux boxes -- is the grass any green on the Nvidia side of the fence? Or should I just grab the Lightning when it becomes available?

Does AMD do anything better with eyefinity itself than Nvidia does with NVsurround assuming 3 of the same monitors?
 
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what setting you use in BF3?\\
when using my 7970 cross fire
at ultra setting with 4x AA
my video memory usage suppose to hit 2.4gb....
have you tried that ?
and mine is just using three 22" 5228*1050
 
It might come as a shock but I don't play BF3. I generally don't use AA settings at high resolution. FPS has always been more important than any jagged edge at this resolution.
 
should be able to get a 4GB kepler too.

i am in the same boat, running 5760x1200 on a 2GB 5870 and wanting an upgrade.
 
if you aren't running AA then the 680 or 7970 should be able to run all 3 displays on a single card. BF3 would really be the only game that you would run into problems at this time. but it all depends on how low you are willing to go on quality settings for some games. i'd still say the 7970 with 3GB of vram still has an edge over the 680 at that resolution.

as far as one doing anything better then the other, no not really. they are very similar in design and with Nvidia moving toward the hardware+software multi-screen that AMD has been using since the start they are probably going to get even more similar. the only advantage is if you wanted to use 3D, obviously nvidia's 3D support is far superior. but they are both pretty easy to setup, i think AMD's setup has gotten a bit better then Nvidia's in the last few driver updates.

as far as drivers go in single card support both AMD and Nvidia's drivers perform about the same. with multi card Nvidia's drivers are a bit better but the last few drivers they have released have been nothing but headaches.
 
just so you know, nvidia has no preset capabilities, LOL...
really it is saddening for multi monitor users not to have presets.. have to configure manually (5 minutes?) everytime u switch from surround/eyefinity mode into triple screen mode for productivity or anything else...

with amd it only takes 1-2 sec..
nvidia is really an annoying card for multi monitor users.. (have tried 580 sli setup)
 
mlcarson said:
I've got two 6950's (clocked to 6970 speeds) running 3 24" monitors (1920x1200) at 6020x1200 resolution after bezel compensation. The MSI Lightning 7970 and the GTX 680 are both looking like good upgrades.

Will the single card Nvidia Surround suffer from the same screen tearing issues as the AMD 6950 had with the mixed Displayport/DVI outputs? Does Nvidia eliminate that by using 2 DVI and the HDMI with an HDMI to DVI adapter? It appears that the HDMI port is a real port on this card and not linked to one of the other DVI ports so this would be the equivalent of 3 DVI ports, right? If so, presumably no screen tearing on the HDMI.

The other issue that AMD suffered from is that of poor drivers. There are reports of the same corrupted cursor problem on the 7970 that plagued my AMD 5850 card. I'm thankful that my 6950 hasn't seen this problem lately but I don't want to see it again with the next card. The latest 12.2-12.3 drivers created issues on my current cards at idle presumably because of a problem in the power-saving mode. All kinds of crossfire driver problems but I don't plan on going down that road again. Assuming that the GTX680 and AMD7970 were close to equal on the hardware side, are the driver issues enough to flip to Nvidia or do they have just as many problems of their own?

I think the 3GB vram of the 7970 makes this card superior but I only have 2GB on the 6950's and haven't noticed that being a limitation yet. If the GTX 680 has 3 usable ports on the reference card rather than having to get a non-reference MSI Lightning for the same feature, it's really tempting to switch to Nvidia -- especially if they end up with superior drivers. I've used AMD exclusively since the Radeon 9700 with the exception of the 8800 series in some Linux boxes -- is the grass any green on the Nvidia side of the fence? Or should I just grab the Lightning when it becomes available?

Does AMD do anything better with eyefinity itself than Nvidia does with NVsurround assuming 3 of the same monitors?
Click to expand...

wait for 7970 driver to stabilized then upgrade.. the price will also decrease by then.. maybe another few months.. i am tempted to upgrade to 7970 lightning as well..
 
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