nvidia or ATI?

Unknown-One said:
Eh? No you wouldn't. You said yourself you didn't want SLI... or have you changed your mind?
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SLI vs. TH2G I'd go with SLI, because at least then my $300 is actually doing something to make it worthwhile over an ATI card. After all, $300 can get you a 6950 and this whole headache would be done and over with. Remember, I was originally talking about what it would take for Nvidia to be interesting to me - adding $300 to the cost of every Nvidia card hardly makes Nvidia interesting. ;)

Not true. Assuming you plug everything in correctly, you can switch between spanned and Extended Desktop mode with an Ultramon profile. Note, you will need a second video card for this, but it doesn't matter what it is. Even an 8400GS will work.

DVI Port 1 on Card 1 to DVI Mview
DVI Port 2 on Card 1 to DVI Left Monitor
DVI Port 1 on Card 2 to DVI Right Monitor
DVI Port 1 on Mview to VGA on Left Monitor
DVI Port 2 on Mview to DVI on Center Monitor
DVI Port 3 on Mview to VGA on Right Monitor

Windows will now see three monitors (Two 1920x1200 screens and one 5760x1200 screen). When you feed the Mview 5760x1200, it displays across all three monitors, but if you only feed it 1920x1200 it stops sending signal to the left and right monitor and acts as a pass-through to the center screen. We're going to use this to our advantage.

Create one Ultramon profile with the two 1920x1200 screens (Left / Right) enabled, and the 5760x1200 screen (center) set to 1920x1200. This will give you normal Extended Desktop mode with three 1920x1200 screens connectd via DVI.
Create another Ultramon profile with the two 1920x1200 screens disabled, and the 5760x1200 screen enabled at full resolution. This will give you spanned mode.

I spent quite a bit of time with the TripleHead2Go and SoftTH before Eyefinity or Surround existed. I know the ropes, and I also couldn't live without extended desktop mode ;)

Edit: It's worth mentioning that switching between Extended Desktop and Spanned modes is actually smoother with an Mview/TripleHead2Go than it is with Nvidia's current drivers (they take forever to switch, and you have to reconfigure surround from scratch every time).
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That sounds like a neat solution... if you have an mview. You originally proposed TH2G, which can't do any of that :p

But you have to reconfigure surround every time? OUCH. That really sucks. ATI hotkey switching ftmfw! But if NV Surround takes forever to switch and you have to reconfigure it every time, how can anyone possibly think it's superior at all to Eyefinity? There are people here who will swear up and down that Nvidia improved upon Eyefinity with NV surround, but it kind of sounds like NV Surround is a PIA...
 
kllrnohj said:
That sounds like a neat solution... if you have an mview. You originally proposed TH2G, which can't do any of that :p
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The same thing works with a TripleHead2Go, it's just limited to 5040x1050.

The more modern Mview would be the current top choice for that type of solution, so I used it in the example.

kllrnohj said:
But you have to reconfigure surround every time? OUCH. That really sucks. ATI hotkey switching ftmfw! But if NV Surround takes forever to switch and you have to reconfigure it every time, how can anyone possibly think it's superior at all to Eyefinity? There are people here who will swear up and down that Nvidia improved upon Eyefinity with NV surround, but it kind of sounds like NV Surround is a PIA...
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I'd have to say I do prefer Nvidia's solution. Switching between surround and extended modes is its ONLY problem, and it plays nice with multiple cards where as Crossfire can cause issues with Eyefinity.
 
kllrnohj said:
I think ATI fucked something up with the 58xx series and CF, because even with the drivers that people with 58xx were having tons of CF troubles, 57xx CF continued to be good. 68xx CF has so far seemed quite good, I'm anxious to see how 69xx CF is working out. 2GB VRAM + CF sounds like a real winner for Eyefinity if it doesn't have the 58xx's broken scaling (which initially it doesn't seem to), not to mention the 69xx seems to scale much better as the resolution increases compared to the 570/580.
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I'm going to wait until more driver updates are released. I don't want to be force to use old drivers in fear that the new ones will f-up my PC.
If AMD can be more consistent with updates for the 6900 series, I'll consider them again but I rather wait.

6900 series does scale better but it will take a few driver updates to see if AMD maintains good support.
 
Nvida is a power hog but has better drivers.. kinda tough.. then again i dont want a heater in my room mid summer. ATI FTW
 
Unknown-One said:
The same thing works with a TripleHead2Go, it's just limited to 5040x1050.

The more modern Mview would be the current top choice for that type of solution, so I used it in the example.
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Actually, Mview can still only do 1680x1050 @ 60hz, as that is the limits of DVI-D. You have to drop to 50hz to get 1920x1080.

But yeah, I re-read your explanation and realized I misunderstood what you were describing.

I'd have to say I do prefer Nvidia's solution. Switching between surround and extended modes is its ONLY problem, and it plays nice with multiple cards where as Crossfire can cause issues with Eyefinity.
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Toggling Eyefinity on and off is something I do quite frequently, far more often than I imagine one would ever need to fight with CF/SLI profiles. Of course, I can neatly avoid all that by just running a single card, thus that is what I am doing :)
 
How can you not be happy with a 5770 on WoW? My 5770@900Mhz runs great on BFBC2 on max settings(single monitor at 1920x1080)
 
kllrnohj said:
Actually, Mview can still only do 1680x1050 @ 60hz, as that is the limits of DVI-D. You have to drop to 50hz to get 1920x1080.
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I never made any claims of refresh rates, only resolutions.

kllrnohj said:
Toggling Eyefinity on and off is something I do quite frequently, far more often than I imagine one would ever need to fight with CF/SLI profiles. Of course, I can neatly avoid all that by just running a single card, thus that is what I am doing :)
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Sure, but with a single card you're still stuck with the rest of ATi's driver bugs (which I've found to be FAR more annoying that Nvidia's switching method) :(
 
gotta call bs on ATi's drivers being crap compared to nVidia. I have had both and each has their own set of issues

Nvidia driver update on my laptop typically had the nasty issue of causing power dvd to quit working
UT would be choppy as can be
nvidia's scaler is definately subpar to ATi's when it comes to LCDs

Both have issues running older software because the drivers cannot set the proper modes for the games.
 
Sounds more like you had issues with one particular laptop video card (aside from the scaler quality).

I've been switching back and forth between my HD5850 and my GTX260 as a primary card for the last couple days. With the GTX260, I havn't run into any noticable driver bugs. All of my older OpenGL titles worked correctly (Nvidia's drivers set the expected exstension limit) I even borrowed a second card to try out Nvidia surround.

As for the the HD5850 (and this goes for the entire 5800 and 6800 series)...it can't play ANY hardware accelerated video without issues, the mouse cursor corrupts at random which requires a reboot to fix, monitors flicker, overclocking is broken, and clockspeed scaling is broken.

Worst part is, all of those issues in ATi's drivers have been there since the HD5000 series was launched OVER A YEAR AGO. Has Nvidia had that many serious bugs persist for 15 months? I can't recall any instances of that occuring.
 
Unknown-One said:
As for the the HD5850 (and this goes for the entire 5800 and 6800 series)...it can't play ANY hardware accelerated video without issues, the mouse cursor corrupts at random which requires a reboot to fix, monitors flicker, overclocking is broken, and clockspeed scaling is broken.
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You said yourself it's all a bios issue -- hardware acceleration, flickering, and scaling, is all related to the PowerPlay settings.
You could fix the value and flash your bios in a matter of minutes, which would permanently resolve the problem.

You brought these issues up with me a few days ago and I fixed them within a matter of minutes, and now it's never an issue again (I don't even let the stock bios settings take control, and I fixed the bios anyway just to feel better about it).

Even simpler you can use ATI Tray Tools to literally control core clocks, memory clocks, and voltages at all times under any settings (you can completely ignore hardware acceleration altogether).
Nvidia doesn't even offer that level of control. Perhaps you should take advantage of the tools you have available to you.

But rather than do any of that, you're waiting on a driver update to fix a bios problem (is that even possible?) and spend the rest of your time whining about it on HardForum. Take some initiative.
But I suppose you're more interested in proving a point.

It's true it's a big problem with ATI, but you're definitely on the wrong forum with it.
I'm pretty sure everyone here is capable of a small bios modification to resolve the huge problem you're describing.
 
UtopiA said:
You said yourself it's all a bios issue -- hardware acceleration, flickering, and scaling, is all related to the PowerPlay settings.
You could fix the value and flash your bios in a matter of minutes, which would permanently resolve the problem.
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I can't seriously reccomend any card that requires the user to dump, hex edit, and re-flash their video card BIOS in order to hide (not fix) serious issues.

Even with the BIOS mod, the driver is still glitching...you've just made it glitch to more acceptable values.

UtopiA said:
But rather than do any of that, you're waiting on a driver update to fix a bios problem (is that even possible?) and spend the rest of your time whining about it on HardForum. Take some initiative.
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I'm waiting for AMD to fix an AMD problem. I don't care how they do it, but I want an official fix.

I send bug reports to AMD on every single issue, every time they release a new driver. I also know we have an AMD rep who reads these forums. I've also attempted contacting a decent number of AMD staff members through twitter. So far, no response from any of them...

How much more initiative should I take?
 
I'm not talking about recommending the cards, or AMD's response to the issue.
I'm talking about your 5850.

You're much more interested in complaining about the problem, rather than fixing it.
That's completely justified, as I said, it's a huge problem.

But you can fix your problem and still continue complaining about it.
There's no reason to suffer intentionally when you already know how to solve it.
 
Unknown-One said:
Worst part is, all of those issues in ATi's drivers have been there since the HD5000 series was launched OVER A YEAR AGO. Has Nvidia had that many serious bugs persist for 15 months? I can't recall any instances of that occuring.
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Nvida driver issues cancels out AMD's driver issues so "we" should consider buying AMD for that reason?

Get real. That type of reasoning can't convince me. Once someone has experienced AMD drivers and switches to Nvidia they finally realize they were living in a cave.
 
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UtopiA said:
But you can fix your problem and still continue complaining about it.
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Like I said, the BIOS mod is a work-around that just makes the bug more palletable. It doesn't actually fix the problem.

Instead of glitching to 400/900 when a hardware accelerated video is open, it glitches to the values you defined. A 5850 should be able to run at 400/1000 with a hardware accelerated video open, and scale up to 725/1000 when you open a 3D game on top of that.

That still doesn't happen with the BIOS mod, which just adjusts things so that the card is in its highest performance state (725/1000) for the duration of the glitch. This eleviates the performance drop in 3D games since the card isn't stuck at 400/900, and prevents monitors from flickering since the video RAM stays at 1000MHz at all times, but it's still not correct behavior.

It covers up the issue, but it's far from resolving it :(
 
WorldExclusive said:
Unknown-One said:
Worst part is, all of those issues in ATi's drivers have been there since the HD5000 series was launched OVER A YEAR AGO. Has Nvidia had that many serious bugs persist for 15 months? I can't recall any instances of that occuring.
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Nvida driver issues cancels out AMD's driver issues so "we" should consider buying AMD for that reason.

Get real. That type of reasoning can't convince me. Once some has experienced AMD drivers and switches to Nvidia they finally realize they were living in a cave.
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Uh...re-read what you quoted. I was reccomending Nvidia, not AMD.

I was pointing out that I couldn't recall Nvidia having a serious bug persist for 15+ months through driver after driver (which is a good thing).
 
Unknown-One said:
I've been switching back and forth between my HD5850 and my GTX260 as a primary card for the last couple days. With the GTX260, I havn't run into any noticable driver bugs. All of my older OpenGL titles worked correctly (Nvidia's drivers set the expected exstension limit) I even borrowed a second card to try out Nvidia surround.

As for the the HD5850 (and this goes for the entire 5800 and 6800 series)...it can't play ANY hardware accelerated video without issues, the mouse cursor corrupts at random which requires a reboot to fix, monitors flicker, overclocking is broken, and clockspeed scaling is broken.

Worst part is, all of those issues in ATi's drivers have been there since the HD5000 series was launched OVER A YEAR AGO. Has Nvidia had that many serious bugs persist for 15 months? I can't recall any instances of that occuring.
Click to expand...

I've been running a 5870 since launch - never once had my mouse cursor become corrupt, monitors never flicker (aside from the obvious changing resolution stuff), and video playback has been trouble free.

"clockspeed scaling is broken" - not sure what that means?

I haven't modified my bios, either.

That's 15 months of more or less zero problems. I did have the h/w accelerated flash video problem, but I just turned it off until it was fixed - annoying, but not a big deal.
 
kllrnohj said:
I've been running a 5870 since launch - never once had my mouse cursor become corrupt, monitors never flicker (aside from the obvious changing resolution stuff), and video playback has been trouble free.
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The mouse cursor thing is a real problem, though they supposedly fixed it already.
It became a bigger issue when the 6870's launched, there's threads around here somewhere.

Video playback pushes the cards into a hardware accelerated clock mode, which lies between 2D mode and 3D mode. If you game while the video is opened (paused or unpaused) the card will not enter full 3D mode and you will be gaming while using half clocks. In other words, the bios doesn't prioritize 3D mode when necessary. Don't watch videos while you game, or fix it within the bios or find another way to force 3D clocks (profiles). Personally, I have hardware accelerated videos forced to disabled at all times, unrelated to this issue.
 
kllrnohj said:
I've been running a 5870 since launch - never once had my mouse cursor become corrupt
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How many monitors are you running? Far less likely to occur on one monitor.

kllrnohj said:
monitors never flicker (aside from the obvious changing resolution stuff), and video playback has been trouble free.
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Changing the GDDR5 clockspeed on these cards causes secondary monitors to flicker (for whatever reason, the primary monitor doesn't flicker, and neither do monitors in an Eyefinity display group).

Due to a PowerPlay bug, starting a hardware accelerated video (DXVA or Flash) will cause the HD5870 to downclock to 400MHz core, 900MHz RAM. That drop in memory clockspeed causes secondary monitors to flicker momentarily. Worse still, the card is stuck at this clockspeed until the video is closed, it will not enter 3D clocks (850 / 1200) even if a game is started. You have this bug, I guarantee it.

The only way you could have had video working without this glitch being triggered would be to disable every hardware accelerated codec and replace them all with software codecs. You wouldn't have seen flickering if you only have one monitor (or if all monitors were joined in an Eyefinity display group), but you would have suffered a severe performance hit in games if you left any hardware accelerated video paused in the background due to clockspeeds not scaling up.

kllrnohj said:
"clockspeed scaling is broken" - not sure what that means
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PowerPlay is glitchey, has been since launch. The issues with UVD clock are a manifestation of that. Enabling ATi Overdrive triggers even more PowerPlay glitches with 10.12 and 10.12a (the card tries to idle at 157 / 300, which causes secondary monitors to flicker constantly)

kllrnohj said:
That's 15 months of more or less zero problems. I did have the h/w accelerated flash video problem, but I just turned it off until it was fixed - annoying, but not a big deal.
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I'd say 15 months of you not recognizing the problems. Turning off hardware acceleration in Flash videos avoided triggering the UVD PowerPlay state bug for pretty much all web videos, but having to avoid basic functionality of the card to keep it from glitching is pretty unacceptable.
 
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I should add that I dislike Nvidia because I hate companies/people that try to control the market. Nvidia has proven that many times. Their latest is when they forced XFX to stop selling their cards (all because of the fact that XFX wanted to sell ATI cards also). And Nvidia forcing game companies to use only what benefits Nvidia cards. Last year Nvidia forced one company to remove the DX10.1 support they added to their game.
 
tc17 said:
I should add that I dislike Nvidia because I hate companies/people that try to control the market. Nvidia has proven that many times. Their latest is when they forced XFX to stop selling their cards (all because of the fact that XFX wanted to sell ATI cards also). And Nvidia forcing game companies to use only what benefits Nvidia cards. Last year Nvidia forced one company to remove the DX10.1 support they added to their game.
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Damn you Nvidia, for being too aggressively competitive in a highly competitive market!
It's not Nvidia's fault that AMD hasn't grown a pair of balls yet.
 
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Unknown-One said:
Sounds more like you had issues with one particular laptop video card (aside from the scaler quality).

I've been switching back and forth between my HD5850 and my GTX260 as a primary card for the last couple days. With the GTX260, I havn't run into any noticable driver bugs. All of my older OpenGL titles worked correctly (Nvidia's drivers set the expected exstension limit) I even borrowed a second card to try out Nvidia surround.

As for the the HD5850 (and this goes for the entire 5800 and 6800 series)...it can't play ANY hardware accelerated video without issues, the mouse cursor corrupts at random which requires a reboot to fix, monitors flicker, overclocking is broken, and clockspeed scaling is broken.

Worst part is, all of those issues in ATi's drivers have been there since the HD5000 series was launched OVER A YEAR AGO. Has Nvidia had that many serious bugs persist for 15 months? I can't recall any instances of that occuring.
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lol both cards have issues and neither one is better than the other dispite what you say........and just so you know hardware accellerated video on my laptop works just fine with the 5470.........nice try though.....
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
lol both cards have issues and neither one is better than the other dispite what you say
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Please, feel free to list any I should look for while using my GTX260 as a primary. I haven't stumbled across any with Nvidia's current drivers in casual usage, but if you know of a non-game-specific bug I'd like to try and replicate it. :)

YeuEmMaiMai said:
and just so you know hardware accellerated video on my laptop works just fine with the 5470.........nice try though.....
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I quite clearly said the problem effects the 5800 and 6800 series, not the 5400 series (which your card is a member of).
 
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