Multi GPU poll question

Hello Hexus!

I have a question for the 865 of you who responded to the front page that you would prefer an ATI Crossfire based computer to a SLI, S3, or console based gaming platform.

If you don't mind, could you please elaborate on why you made this choice?

My reason for asking:

As a member of the nVidia user group, I report trends in user opinion to nVidia, as well as concerns with their products, when I run across them on the net and in the forums.

When I saw the poll here with 30% of the people preferring Crossfire, I thought it would good information for nVidia to know what that piece of the multi gpu market is looking for that they are not providing.

Thanks in advance!

For me it was as simple as HDR with AA. :)

or maybe because of the high instances of failure on the 7900 series of cards and people have simply lost faith in nvidia?

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Originally Posted by Clunk

or maybe because of the high instances of failure on the 7900 series of cards and people have simply lost faith in nvidia?

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nVidia puts out cards with a reference specification. While some people have had problems with factory OCd cards, how is this nVidia's fault?

Not to mention 10,000s of people who don't post use those cards every day, people see 5 posts on a bbs and assume there's an epidemic of faulty 7900s.

I personally have no hard figures to an elevated failure rate among 7900s, do you?

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Originally Posted by Rollo

nVidia puts out cards with a reference specification. While some people have had problems with factory OCd cards, how is this nVidia's fault?

Not to mention 10,000s of people who don't post use those cards every day, people see 5 posts on a bbs and assume there's an epidemic of faulty 7900s.

I personally have no hard figures to an elevated failure rate among 7900s, do you?

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So you've commentted on this issue, and I tend to agree that you have a point.

You must however factor in that this is an enthusiast forum.... a place where people can go to ask questions regarding problems they have with their setups. Bound to be more complainsts than praises!

However, if you go back to the end of last year when nVidia were clearly outperforming ATI, that you'll see there was a great deal of praise for nVidia products. Could you not come to the conclusion that the undercurrent today has ATI on top, given it has the performance crown atm? - and no, I do not expect an nVidia representative to answer that last question :)

Any comment concerning the HDR and AA post?

I cuirrently run nVidia (and have on most of my PC's for a long time), but if I was going to use dual GPU it would be ATi.

SLi had a huge lead when it was incepted, but xfire has matured much faster.

Main benefits being; You can mix almost any two cards (great for upgraders) and th fact it works with every game straight away. Thats the main one for me, not needing graphics driver and program updates, just to play my new game at full whack. Of Course HDR+AA is a very attractive feature too, if you're spending £500+ on a pair of cards, or maybe even more, then you expect the absolute ultimate in visual quality.

Crossfire has now taken another step ahead, moving toward being dongle-less and moving away from mastercard's.

Where as SLi hasn't really moved forward except for Quad SLi, which is beyond the price range of most users.

I think SLI is the neater solution, but for the games I play the ATI cards would be far superior - Oblivion especially runs better on ATI and being able to run HDR+AA would be a bonus.

In the real world, I can't afford an ATI solution, as the mid-range segment is dominated (this/last generation) by Nvidia. But the poll wasn't real world, it was top top end, which I'd never get.

If I was getting a multi-gpu combination, it would be nVidia for me... but I can't see myself spending out that much money on graphics cards

After trying SLI and wasting a lot of money because is simply does not work for a lot of games, I doubt I would touch nVidia again unless they came out with some killer graphics card I couldn't live without.

Also, after switching I am blown-away by ATIs ability to allow AA at high resolutions without killing framerate (I run at 1920x1200), something the nVidia cards has been woefully bad at.

Now add in the HDR+AA.........

I don't want either - i'd rather have a single card with two gpu's everytime (if i must have two of them) or just one big powerful card. I'd go for SLI purely on maturity but I do agree atm ATI have a lead in HDR + AA. nVidia's drivers are far better tho, and you're not saddled with the awful Catalyst Control Centre either.

Console platform anyday. It's cheaper, less hassle to use (no installing games, no driver issues, no BSoDs) and does everything I want to play games. I also don't need to splash out 300 notes every few months just so I can play the latest game.

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Originally Posted by dangel

nVidia's drivers are far better tho, and you're not saddled with the awful Catalyst Control Centre either.

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Lack of CCC is a good thing, but otherwise I have to say I'm extremely annoyed with the NVidia drivers at the moment.

I can't find a set that actually allows me to play the games I want without errors with my card (6800gt) - they always seem to be pushing for higher 3dmark scores but the bugs are terrible.

All I want is a driver that allows me to play my set of games - that's NWN, Rallisport, Quake 4, Oblivion, KOTOR etc. But it's impossible to do such a thing - NWN has bugs from 71.89 onwards, Rallisport hard locks from 77.77 onwards, KOTOR stutters from 80.** onwards, Quake 4 and Oblivion have problems prior to 80.**. 8*.** drivers seem to perform the best in games but I can't alt-tab out properly. 9*.** drivers fix the alt-tabing but have bugs in other games and stop me from being able to set seperate 2d/3d CPU speeds! ARGHHHH!!!!

Basically the last 'working' set of drivers has been 71.89 for me, and they're just too old for newer games :(

All I want is one set of drivers that actually work I don't care about 3dmark score or 1fps difference in games.

/rant

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Originally Posted by kalniel

All I want is one set of drivers that actually work I don't care about 3dmark score or 1fps difference in games.

/rant

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Tell me about it, I haven't had an all around stable and fast set of drivers in a while, it also amuses me when a new driver build breaks a game, that worked before and nvidia calls it a 'fault with the application' :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Rollo

nVidia puts out cards with a reference specification. While some people have had problems with factory OCd cards, how is this nVidia's fault?

Not to mention 10,000s of people who don't post use those cards every day, people see 5 posts on a bbs and assume there's an epidemic of faulty 7900s.

I personally have no hard figures to an elevated failure rate among 7900s, do you?

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Its not just the factory overclocked cards. The problems arent isolated to one board partner with a faulty batch of parts. I also, just like you, assumed that all the hundreds of reported cases of this 'NSDS' were just the tip of the iceberg, so i bought an XFX 7900GTX that has the standard clocks of 650/1600, and guess what, that had the 'NSDS' and was dead within hours. I am not alone in this.

EVGA have released a new set of part numbers for some of the 7900 series of cards which alledgedly have the components fixed, but some of the people on their forums are on their 10th rma, many are on their 3rd+, its not bad luck, its a problem with the cards. The same problems are widespread accross all the manufacturers.

I do appreciate that people come onto forums looking for help, and as such, you will hear more complaints than you would normally, but IMO still there are far more complaints about the 7900gt/7900gtx than any other card for quite a while.

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Originally Posted by ajones

So you've commentted on this issue, and I tend to agree that you have a point.

You must however factor in that this is an enthusiast forum.... a place where people can go to ask questions regarding problems they have with their setups. Bound to be more complainsts than praises!

However, if you go back to the end of last year when nVidia were clearly outperforming ATI, that you'll see there was a great deal of praise for nVidia products. Could you not come to the conclusion that the undercurrent today has ATI on top, given it has the performance crown atm? - and no, I do not expect an nVidia representative to answer that last question :)

Any comment concerning the HDR and AA post?

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I'm not a "representative of nVidia", I'm a member of their user group. I'm just a hobbyist like you who gets a few free cards and beta drivers in return for feedback.

I think EXR HDR+AA now is like SM3 was on 6800 series cards- nice to have, too few games supporting it for it to be a deal maker.

I played FarCry and Serious Sam2 already, and at my native res (19X12) at Oblivion, HardOCP has shown us in their GX2 review I could get playable framerates with a whopping 2X AA with X1900XTX Crossfire.

I ran FRAPS on Oblivion last night, no HDR+AA, all maxed, 4X16X and got minimum 29, average 60 something in God mode battling outdoors. It's a choice. :)

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Originally Posted by chuckskull

SLi had a huge lead when it was incepted, but xfire has matured much faster.

Main benefits being; You can mix almost any two cards (great for upgraders) and th fact it works with every game straight away. Thats the main one for me, not needing graphics driver and program updates, just to play my new game at full whack.

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Actually this isn't true. With Crossfire, you have no render flexibility mode, you either use the profile or the default for the API.

There aren't many profiles yet, and the defaults don't always give benefits.

John Reynolds did a good review at SimHQ that was discussed pretty thoroughly on B3d forums explaining how he got no benefit at all from Crossfire on Sims, and the non geometry scaling tiling is not what you'd pick as first choice for non profiled D3d.