Radeon 7970 Crossfire Review

dook43 said:
You just said it was AMD's fault. They don't have access to the game until it's released. Wow. What an idiot.
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Umm, how is that being an idiot? The scaling went well in the other games, why is it they can't seem to improve it for Skyrim? And why is it that AMD is consistently late with driver support while Nvidia is consistently faster and many times on time? It is because Nvidia gets involved in pre-release and in the development stages to make sure it will work. They spend time and money helping companies develop. AMD has not and recently admitted that is something they need to do.

That being said, the 7970 does seem to be scaling fairly well with the current crop minus Skyrim. Hopefully if they can get their driver updates going faster, we can see even better improvements.
 
NoOther said:
Umm, how is that being an idiot?
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Because it's a TWIMTBP game. AMD can't fix performance on any TWIMTBP games until after its released, and there are limited resources to go around, and right now BF3 is the top priority for just about everyone.

The scaling went well in the other games, why is it they can't seem to improve it for Skyrim?
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There's something about the Gamebryo engine that simply doesnt support Crossfire well. I blame Nvidia.

And why is it that AMD is consistently late with driver support while Nvidia is consistently faster and many times on time?
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I'll bet most if not all of your examples will be TWIMTBP games.

It is because Nvidia gets involved in pre-release and in the development stages to make sure it will work.
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There are also documented instances of them making sure things will not work on AMD cards.

They spend time and money helping companies develop. AMD has not and recently admitted that is something they need to do.
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Even if AMD were to be "more involved", they still wouldn't have been involved with Skyrim because it is TWIMTBP. The Gamebryo engine simply doesn't work with AMD cards in crossfire. It never has. This is old news now since 2008. What you'll see from AMD is more "Gaming Evolved" titles.

With ANY twimtbp game, you'll have to wait until after the game is released to see updates from AMD.
 
dook43 said:
Because it's a TWIMTBP game. AMD can't fix performance on any TWIMTBP games until after its released, and there are limited resources to go around, and right now BF3 is the top priority for just about everyone.

...
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This and just about everything that followed is pure FUD. There is no reason AMD cannot put more into games before release even with TWIMTBP games. And note Nvidia has spent time and money on more than just TWIMTBP games. They also have had less issues overall with games at their release than AMD. So your arguments are unfounded. AMD themselves as I have mentioned numerous times now has admitted it and are sinking more money into fixing this issue with more pre-release dedication. You are trying to fault Nvidia with good business and consumer practice, that is absurd. AMD has rightly sunk a lot of their money into better engineering, but that doesn't mean they can't start budgeting (which again they have now) more money into better driver support, as well as consumer and developer relations.
 
NoOther said:
Umm, how is that being an idiot? The scaling went well in the other games, why is it they can't seem to improve it for Skyrim? And why is it that AMD is consistently late with driver support while Nvidia is consistently faster and many times on time? It is because Nvidia gets involved in pre-release and in the development stages to make sure it will work. They spend time and money helping companies develop. AMD has not and recently admitted that is something they need to do.

That being said, the 7970 does seem to be scaling fairly well with the current crop minus Skyrim. Hopefully if they can get their driver updates going faster, we can see even better improvements.
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AMd has done better with this as time has gone on. They used to be really bad about it and they still aren't as fast about it as I'd like, but it isn't the waiting game it used to be.
 
Doesn't Nvidia have a significantly larger budget to work with on that front though?
 
Dan_D said:
AMd has done better with this as time has gone on. They used to be really bad about it and they still aren't as fast about it as I'd like, but it isn't the waiting game it used to be.
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Definitely not, if they were that bad I wouldn't own any AMD cards. And they are starting to make much more concerted efforts to improve in those areas as well. As the success of their cards continue and they can get more money, they can spend more in these areas to improve. I suspect also with the change in architecture in the 7000 series we might see other added benefits down the line as well.

What I am tired of hearing though are people using invalid excuses. What Nvidia does or does not do, does not dictate what AMD chooses to do. That is AMD's choice. And to blame Nvidia for spending money to help developers put out better products for their consumers is frankly ludicrous. AMD deserves the blame for their poor drivers, lack of developer relations, and slow turn around, but they are starting to own up to it and correct it. That should mean only good things for the future for everyone.
 
I'm impressed, I wonder how well the 7950 will perform. These performance numbers and eyefinity 2.0 comming I'm curious what nvidia is going to have up their sleeve.
 
NoOther said:
This and just about everything that followed is pure FUD. There is no reason AMD cannot put more into games before release even with TWIMTBP games.
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Prove that AMD has any access to TWIMTBP games before release.

You are trying to fault Nvidia with good business and consumer practice, that is absurd.
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Developed under NVIDIA's The Way it's Meant to be Played program, and featuring NVIDIA's PhysX technology, the game's launcher disables in-game AA when it detects AMD's ATI Radeon graphics hardware. AMD's Ian McNaughton in his recent blog thread said that they had confirmed this by an experiment where they ran ATI Radeon hardware under changed device IDs. Says McNaughton: "Additionally, the in-game AA option was removed when ATI cards are detected. We were able to confirm this by changing the ids of ATI graphics cards in the Batman demo. By tricking the application, we were able to get in-game AA option where our performance was significantly enhanced." He further adds that the option is not available for the retail game as there is a secure-rom.
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http://www.techpowerup.com/104868/B...-on-NVIDIA-Hardware-on-PCs.html?cp=2#comments


According to Richard, who was the former European head of Developer Relations at nVidia [it is little known that Richard Huddy was nVidia's Employee #94 and he stayed for years until he departed from the company 'on moral grounds']
"When I was at nVidia, I was instructed to do these kinds of things. It is very much a style they tend to be involved in. You could say it's just me whining and coming to the conclusion that nVidia are bad people and so on, but if I am looking for differences in style, the one really obvious one is this: there I was, with my team, working primarily on DirectX 11 titles. And there is nVidia working on Batman: Arkham Asylum. I could try to lock DX11 functions and content to AMD hardware. I can do that today on the basis that nVidia can't do any QA on their DirectX 11 hardware. It is irresponsible… I could come up with this speech about nVidia not having good hardware but ultimately, it is irresponsible and plain wrong. We are spending the time with DirectX 11 developers; they use our hardware, so we should not allow for that code to run on nVidia DX11 hardware when it appears next year? No one can do QA on something like Unigine unless they are using AMD hardware. No nVidia hardware can be used for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, none can be done on DiRT 2 because their hardware is still in the development phase. If I were to follow their style, I could argue that DX11 games should not be able to run on future nVidia hardware. In my opinion, it would just be irresponsible thing to do so."
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http://www.kitguru.net/components/g...e-constant-smell-of-burning-bridges-says-amd/
 
dook43 said:
Prove that AMD has any access to TWIMTBP games before release.
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Prove that they can't. Your articles are more FUD. "Moral grounds" by one employee really? Many people confuse moral grounds with business practices. The Batman games have been argued over and over, you are just trolling now. The engine didn't have AA abilities before, and Nvidia helped the developers code AA into them along with Physics. What responsibility does Nvidia have to share that with AMD who didn't offer a darn thing? You are just being ridiculous and absurd now.

There was nothing barring AMD from going and spending time and money on Batman titles pre-release or any other title. It is good business practice to have more hands on experience with the programs consumers are going to use on your hardware. In fact, I would say it is downright irresponsible and borderline "morally corrupt" not to try and improve the experience consumers have on your hardware. You are so wrapped up with Nvidia "locking out" a competitor you completely miss the part where they helped provide something that wasn't going to be there otherwise.

This whole debate over morality is ridiculous anyway. AMD's entire company is based on immoral principles. They ouright stole technology and reproduced it, then profited from it. And to this day they continue to reap profits from their blatant theft. So please don't try to make this seem like they hold some moral high ground. It is simply business. Despite which none of this would be a problem if AMD simply licensed PhysX and/or CUDA from Nvidia, which Nvidia has offered many times. And none of any of what Nvidia has done has anything at all to do with why AMD's driver support is so crappy. That is all on AMD and AMD alone.

The fact that Nvidia seems to consistently work across all titles well while AMD continues to lag behind, is a telling tale. That is part of what this review shows. They have brought out a brand new card, and still haven't fixed some of the issues plaguing crossfire. That is what is being discussed here. If you want to talk more fanboism, I suggest taking it to another thread or offline.
 
NoOther said:
Prove that they can't. Your articles are more FUD. "Moral grounds" by one employee really? Many people confuse moral grounds with business practices. The Batman games have been argued over and over, you are just trolling now. The engine didn't have AA abilities before, and Nvidia helped the developers code AA into them along with Physics. What responsibility does Nvidia have to share that with AMD who didn't offer a darn thing? You are just being ridiculous and absurd now.
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Share? How about explicit vendor ID lockout code? No. You are outright ignoring facts.

There was nothing barring AMD from going and spending time and money on Batman titles pre-release or any other title. It is good business practice to have more hands on experience with the programs consumers are going to use on your hardware. In fact, I would say it is downright irresponsible and borderline "morally corrupt" not to try and improve the experience consumers have on your hardware. You are so wrapped up with Nvidia "locking out" a competitor you completely miss the part where they helped provide something that wasn't going to be there otherwise.
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You simply cannot prove that there is "nothing barring" AMD from spending money and putting developers in place with TWIMTBP games. Can you imagine it? Lead dev coding with an AMD guy on one side and a Nvidia guy on the other. LMAO.


This whole debate over morality is ridiculous anyway. AMD's entire company is based on immoral principles. They ouright stole technology and reproduced it, then profited from it. And to this day they continue to reap profits from their blatant theft.
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um, what? Are we talking x86 here?
 
DAMN! That is impressive CF scaling!

I was looking at one 7970 for my eternity setup, but WOW! is that ever impressive scaling. Puts my 5870+5830 setup to shame.
 
NoOther said:
This whole debate over morality is ridiculous anyway. AMD's entire company is based on immoral principles. They ouright stole technology and reproduced it, then profited from it. And to this day they continue to reap profits from their blatant theft. So please don't try to make this seem like they hold some moral high ground. It is simply business. Despite which none of this would be a problem if AMD simply licensed PhysX and/or CUDA from Nvidia, which Nvidia has offered many times. And none of any of what Nvidia has done has anything at all to do with why AMD's driver support is so crappy. That is all on AMD and AMD alone.
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I really don't want to get into your arguments since it's quite stupid in my opinion.

But this one about x86? Really? AMD? ATi? :confused:
 
I wasnt going to get involved with the stupid argument going on until "NoOther" pulled the "it's just business." Trying to give yourself an unfair advantage is not being business savvy, it is screwing customers.
 
Wow.. a lot of fanboyism here. It's almost like US politics really, in many ways I wish there were 4-5 choices as opposed to 2. Then we wouldn't have the crap-slinging we have here and a more unified game development strategies behind tools like DX11 and OpenGL and not primary focus being placed on vendor specific features.

And so this isn't too far off topic, the 7970 crossfire performance is very impressive and shouldn't be downplayed.
 
hecatomb said:
Wow.. a lot of fanboyism here. It's almost like US politics really, in many ways I wish there were 4-5 choices as opposed to 2. Then we wouldn't have the crap-slinging we have here and a more unified game development strategies behind tools like DX11 and OpenGL and not primary focus being placed on vendor specific features.
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AMD has done what it can to make sure this happens. NVIDIA???!?!? Not so much.
 
dook43 said:
AMD has done what it can to make sure this happens. NVIDIA???!?!? Not so much.
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Sure it has. NVIDIA has done all they can to pimp CUDA and PhysX. Technologies they'll license. For a price.
 
Why has this turned into an Nvidia - AMD war? I find it very frustrating, I clicked expecting to read about crossfire performance (not where it fails), but instead got to read post after post of why nvidia and/or amd sucks....
 
John Vuong said:
Can't wait to see more 7970 Crossfire results, because it looks quite good so far.
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same here!

what i REALLY want to see is some tri-fire. we already know normal crossfire scales well, but i want to see what tri-fire can do on an X79 board. if they dramatically improve 3+ GPU scaling then i know a lot of eyefinity folks who will be picking these up like hotcakes.
 
Dan_D said:
Sure it has. NVIDIA has done all they can to pimp CUDA and PhysX. Technologies they'll license. For a price.
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Good thing no one is going to license a dead end. CUDA and PhysX will soon enough join thousands of earlier, ultimately failed, attempts to quell the adoption of open APIs.

PhysX and Glide, walking hand in hand into the sunset.
 
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