Single card eyefinity/surround - 680 or 7970?

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pizza65

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I'm currently running eyefinity on my trusty radeon 5850 and I'm due an upgrade soon! I was waiting for the 680 to come out just so the price would drop on the new radeons, but now the geforces can do single-card surround I've got a choice on my hands.

I've had 2 problems with AMD so far. The worst is 'The Line'; when running 2 DVI outputs and one DP, at least one monitor will have a slow scanline across it. This is apparently due to the different timings on the outputs, and was not fixed with the 6000 series. Can anyone report whether this is still a problem on the 7970? Is the 680 going to be better as I could use 2 dvi and one hdmi->dvi adapter?

The other problem is catalyst control center and profile switching between extended desktop and eyefinity. Is Nvidia more manageable in this regard?

Thanks!
 
pizza65 said:
I'm currently running eyefinity on my trusty radeon 5850 and I'm due an upgrade soon! I was waiting for the 680 to come out just so the price would drop on the new radeons, but now the geforces can do single-card surround I've got a choice on my hands.

I've had 2 problems with AMD so far. The worst is 'The Line'; when running 2 DVI outputs and one DP, at least one monitor will have a slow scanline across it. This is apparently due to the different timings on the outputs, and was not fixed with the 6000 series. Can anyone report whether this is still a problem on the 7970? Is the 680 going to be better as I could use 2 dvi and one hdmi->dvi adapter?

The other problem is catalyst control center and profile switching between extended desktop and eyefinity. Is Nvidia more manageable in this regard?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

The problem is still there with the 7k series.

i THINK "not 100% sure" With Nvidia surround on 1 card, you can use the dvi/hdmi or dvi/display port. But not sure on the line problem.

But I agree, that fucking line problem sucks ass....It's one of the reasons I stepped away from Eyefinity
 
I would definitive go 7970 series, AMD is very good with multiple cards, especially after drivers are perfected.
 
I had the line problem too but I was able to get rid of it by switching around which outlets were connected to which monitor
 
I say support AMD :)

Just get a card that uses all the same output such as the ASUS models. 3 DP with adapters are better then mix/match via different adapters, I personally do not know if Nvidia has this same issue, but, output are outputs unless they have fancy clock gating mechanisms on the output themselves so they sync perfectly with each other no matter which is used(very very doubtfull)
 
You know the reviews show the 680 winning in most things when both are overclocked even with 3x monitors. However, 2GB ram just doesn't seem sufficient to me so go 7970 when the price drops.
 
Overclocked / multi-monitor performance will be about the same from what I've seen. It's a fielder's choice at this point! :)
 
You could go with the 4GB GTX 680 models when they come out too. I just honestly gave up on AMD and cfx since there is always something wrong with one driver or the next. Either it's unstable as hell (BSOD), really slow or has some scaling issues. I was running with 3x 7970s in tri-fire, and when it did work the performance was not very impressive compared to two cards.

I don't know if it's just the next generation cards being very finicky, or just plain bad drivers but I hope team green comes through with good driver support.
 
I can confirm that there is no screen tearing with gtx 680 and using 2 dvi and 1 hdmi for Surround works fine. I would go with the gtx 680. All this bs about vram is just that. A single gtx 680 will run out of juice before hitting that limit in probably 99.9% of games. Now if you plan to SLI on multiple monitors then yeah 2gb might be a problem in some games.

Note to AMD. Fix this damn tearing problem already. You would have had my money months ago if you did.
 
Sufu said:
You could go with the 4GB GTX 680 models when they come out too. I just honestly gave up on AMD and cfx since there is always something wrong with one driver or the next. Either it's unstable as hell (BSOD), really slow or has some scaling issues. I was running with 3x 7970s in tri-fire, and when it did work the performance was not very impressive compared to two cards.

I don't know if it's just the next generation cards being very finicky, or just plain bad drivers but I hope team green comes through with good driver support.
Click to expand...

hah you might want to go check the SLI reviews, 680 SLI is not very good.
 
If you have DVI connections on your monitor and the monitor is 120hz.. go with Nvidia. Less hassels having to buy $100 adapters per monitor to run 120hz refresh rate.
 
Well, there is that, 680 was made to do its thing VERY well, however, ALOT of reviewers have pointed out at higher res using tri or more monitor, the 7970 does hold its own it just has more horsepower available to it.

1680x1050, 1920x1080, 2560x1600 etc are one thing, but once you start going very high res in the 5k range+ you really need more Vram and a wider bus sometimes even the 580 catches up to the 680 in this regard(this probably will change once the 680 4gb or the "higher" end Keplers get released, once they get released) I suppose it truly depends on what kind of reso you are refereing to, multi-monitor toned back or multi-monitor balls to the wall. 680 does win most things, but the one thing the 7970 does better as a single card, muli-monitor at high res/eye candy, it just seems to get pounded a little less hard in doing so :)
 
Strange, I have seen a Beyond3D dissection once come out to something like that a bit before the HD4870 came out, where a wider bus was in some cases, adventageous over madly clocking a smaller memory interface. Either way, I've decided to wait on Big Kepler to come out, lol.

In terms of the OP, I think AMD still edges out nVidia at the higher resolutions. I don't know why, but look back at the past... 6 years of GPU reviews? Even if nVidia has a large lead at lower resolutions, AMD normally manages to make it a closer game at high resolutions, and if AMD pulls away at high resolutions (just talking about 2560x1600, here, not even Eyefinity res), nVidia manages to get closer at low resolutions. No clue why, however, it's been that way for a while, which is why, even at the GTX680 launch, Eyefinity/Surround comparisons were still up for grabs.

Now I don't know what the outcome was, just stating a bit of history, there. Personally, I'd only ever buy eVGA, so that means nVidia only for me :D
 
I think it very much has to do with the way they build thier products, MOST users are still using cpu dependent and lower res so it does amount to some, as does clocking the cpu up which generally Nvidia takes better advantage then ATI/AMD Radeons do as they are less reliant on raw cpu speed(the gpu is what it is)

There is the image quality as well, to my eyes I PREFER the way Radeons make things look, the lighting, the shadows etc seem more "vivid" if that makes sence. I have seen SS of ALOT of cards going way back, Nvidia card may sometimes/most times(depends on how you look at it) have better game/driver/performance but to me as long as it plays well I want it to look as nice as possible, Radeons have an edge in this, in my opinion. Not talking how sharp textures are etc cause that is a different topic, but the black blacks, bright colors, realistic lighting, shadows etc.
 
Buy a Sapphire 7970 and it will come with all the adapters you need. If you like eye candy then AMD is the way to go because of the extra memory.

It's pretty much an even wash at this point between the two performance wise, just OC the 7970 to at least 1GHZ and you're good.
 
I went with a used 7970 on these forums (got it for a helluva price) and I expect it to be a good purchase for 3x 23" Acer displays. I should have it this week. Definitely an upgrade over a 5870 in terms of eyefinity
 
OP here, thanks for all the input. A bit more info about my setup - I'm only using 5040x1050 so my VRAM requirements aren't vast. Also the chance of me bothering with SLI/Crossfire is virtually nil so that's not a factor either.

@allen5055I've tried the process of switching the primary monitor around to fix the line issue - I've only ever managed to move it to the side monitor which uses displayport where it is less noticeable, but since every other catalyst update scrambles my profiles I have to set this up a lot.

@leat good to hear that works - I thought it would since DVI and HDMI are basically the same thing IIRC. How is nvidias profile implementation? Is it easy to switch from surround to extended desktops?

I'm thinking at this point it’s a choice between 680 and a 3x DP 7970, using adapters back to DVI to avoid the line.
 
5k reso for gaming, I believe the 7970 would just have more grunt if you are looking to but it now, so yes the Vram requirement can be there depending on the game/settings.

Nvidia will be releasing 4gb 680s soon enough, and the 7970 is bound to price drop in the next little while.

Its personal choice. if it were me, 7950 and overclock it, very easy to do, will match a 680/7970(in most aspects) and save some $, plenty of good choices out there already from ASUS, XFX, MSI etc.
 
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