6+ months late and you can only equal the competion in SLI/CrossfireX?

[Madcatatlas]

Another good article/review over at Hardocp.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/09/27/gtx_480_460_sli_vs_5870_crossfirex_redux/1

While the GTX480 SLI is the best card overall. The Radeon HD5870 CrossfireX ties/equals it in what can only be called a Nvidia optimized game, Mafia 2.


Yes, you read correctly. Being half a generation, or a full one, depending on your point of referance, and you still cant outdo AMDs top single gpu. GG Nvidia. Just another confirmation of what failure the GF100 is.


I love my GTX460 though, and MAN does it kick some ass in that review too.. except Crysis ofc..but i aint playing that anyway!


Also, make sure to see the Eyefinity scores on the second page, Radeon HD5870 CrossfireX has BETTER minimums than the GTX480 SLI ...lol.

 

[Genx87]

They should turn on PhysX and see what happens in Mafia 2.

 

[Madcatatlas]

Ye, or even better, multitask and do some graphics design work with ALL those Cuda cores ...lol

 

[Aristotelian]

From their conclusion:

"We think it is time for AMD to step it up on CrossFireX performance. We understand some games slip by, but honestly, these highly popular and still played older games should not be "losing performance" over the course of time. It is clear that NVIDIA is doing a better job than AMD at the high end when it comes to multi-display gaming. We have seen overall AMD is lacking in the driver department with its Eyefinity configurations."

If we are optimistic that AMD's multi-card performance can be improved with some driver updates, then the truth is their drivers have crippled (however slightly) the respective cards since the release of the 5XXX, and likely previous generations.

With the numbers being bandied around with the 6XXX series, if AMD can improve CrossFireX performance say, in time with the release, we could see some really incredible gains. All of this is a conditional though, and (someone can add some detail here) it seems as if ATI's multicard implementations have been less efficient than Nvidia's SLI configurations for a while now. Here's hoping, though.

 

[OCGuy]

I would hesitate to make a judgement on a card off the max resolution and max settings, with 3 hand-picked benchmarks.

 

[Leyawiin]

Yeah, its more like it took AMD nearly a full generation to somewhat get Crossfire together.

 

[Aristotelian]

They should turn on PhysX and see what happens in Mafia 2.

They probably would if they thought enough people cared about the difference that Physx makes.

I would hesitate to make a judgement on a card off the max resolution and max settings, with 3 hand-picked benchmarks.

I'm not calling you out, but I just tried to check your post history (and it doesn't go back far enough). Did you maintain this same reasoning when people were posting 2 reviews from the same site that hand picked benchmarks in very few games and tried to argue that 460sli was better than 5870 crossfire? I think the thread was in late August. I was trying to push the point you're making here regarding apples-apples reviews, and met with a lot of resistance on the matter.

 

[SirPauly]

I don't understand the OP's point. I think he is misreading the article.

 

[happy medium]

You forgot to read the "Bottom Line"

Quote:
"The Bottom Line


We have to wonder why two older games are behaving poorly with CrossFireX in a triple display setup. The intent of this evaluation was to look at a newer game, and a couple of older games to see if we are being let down by CrossFireX performance since we experienced this in two other games already. I think we definitely answered that, yes, here are two older games that seem to be lagging with the competition at the very thing that AMD has been hyping for a year now, and that is triple display gaming with ATI Eyefinity.


This really makes us wonder what other games, new and old, are also experiencing slower than expected performance with CrossFireX. Radeon HD 5870 CrossFireX should not be performing on par with, or slower than GeForce GTX 460 SLI, and we found two cases of that here today. We know that a single Radeon HD 5870 is a much more powerful and better performing card than a single GTX 460 when it comes to actually playing games. There is a reason that we see GTX 460 SLI perform better in many games than HD 5870 CFX, and after what we have seen over the last few weeks we have to think that AMD's CrossFireX scaling is inefficient due to drivers that are lacking.
We think it is time for AMD to step it up on CrossFireX performance. We understand some games slip by, but honestly, these highly popular and still played older games should not be "losing performance" over the course of time. It is clear that NVIDIA is doing a better job than AMD at the high end when it comes to multi-display gaming. We have seen overall AMD is lacking in the driver department with its Eyefinity configurations.

That all said, we want to address what a success 5800 series single card configurations represent because you might think this all comes off as a "bash AMD" fest, which it is not. AMD's 5800 series cards are a great buy for gamers. These 5800 cards are fast and efficient and represent cooler running and quieter cards overall while being great performers in single card configurations. And let's not forget that AMD's 5800 GPU line-up supports multi-display gaming on a single card while NVIDIA's do not.

Oooops and /thread,

 

[Madcatatlas]

You forgot to read the "Bottom Line"

Quote:
"The Bottom Line


We have to wonder why two older games are behaving poorly with CrossFireX in a triple display setup. The intent of this evaluation was to look at a newer game, and a couple of older games to see if we are being let down by CrossFireX performance since we experienced this in two other games already. I think we definitely answered that, yes, here are two older games that seem to be lagging with the competition at the very thing that AMD has been hyping for a year now, and that is triple display gaming with ATI Eyefinity.


This really makes us wonder what other games, new and old, are also experiencing slower than expected performance with CrossFireX. Radeon HD 5870 CrossFireX should not be performing on par with, or slower than GeForce GTX 460 SLI, and we found two cases of that here today. We know that a single Radeon HD 5870 is a much more powerful and better performing card than a single GTX 460 when it comes to actually playing games. There is a reason that we see GTX 460 SLI perform better in many games than HD 5870 CFX, and after what we have seen over the last few weeks we have to think that AMD's CrossFireX scaling is inefficient due to drivers that are lacking.
We think it is time for AMD to step it up on CrossFireX performance. We understand some games slip by, but honestly, these highly popular and still played older games should not be "losing performance" over the course of time. It is clear that NVIDIA is doing a better job than AMD at the high end when it comes to multi-display gaming. We have seen overall AMD is lacking in the driver department with its Eyefinity configurations.

That all said, we want to address what a success 5800 series single card configurations represent because you might think this all comes off as a "bash AMD" fest, which it is not. AMD's 5800 series cards are a great buy for gamers. These 5800 cards are fast and efficient and represent cooler running and quieter cards overall while being great performers in single card configurations. And let's not forget that AMD's 5800 GPU line-up supports multi-display gaming on a single card while NVIDIA's do not.

Oooops and /thread,

I personally think thats a great conclusion.
Speaks volumes.

 

[happy medium]

I personally think thats a great conclusion.
Speaks volumes.

The problem they have with the 5870 is that its too dam exspensive.
I think 2 gtx460's in sli for $400 beat the crap out of a 700$ 5870 crossfire setup. You don't get all that much more performance for your extra 300$.

ANd who cares if The Nvidia cards dont support 3d vision with only one card?
There is no single card that does it well, so the smart people are using sli/x-fire anyway.


And you get hit or miss drivers with the 5870's as the article states.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Sometimes the 5870 combo is about as fast as the GTX480 cards, sometimes the GTX460 cards are as fast to faster than the 5870. I'd say it's a mixed bag at best.

 

[Madcatatlas]

Ye, gotto agree with that.

 

[happy medium]

Sometimes the 5870 combo is about as fast as the GTX480 cards, sometimes the GTX460 cards are as fast to faster than the 5870. I'd say it's a mixed bag at best.

I dont' know, they only tested 3 games and the 5870 borked 2 of them.

If I'm paying 700$ for my gpu setup , I wanna be able to turn ALL the effects on, including physx, wouldn't you? I 'd like to play in 3d also.

 

[Seero]

Other than trying to troll, I don't see any other purpose of this thread.
By the way, losing every battle in the link does not mean it is a tie or equal. At best you can say it is very close behind.

 

[Schmide]

Ehh considering the known approx sizes of Cypress is about 334mm^2 and the GF104 is about 367mm^2, although Cypress has 10% more transistors, it's not surprising that the Gf104 is very competitive.

 

[happy medium]

Other than trying to troll, I don't see any other purpose of this thread.
By the way, losing every battle in the link does not mean it is a tie or equal. At best you can say it is very close behind.

I think its good to keep the community informed about crossfire performance driver improvments, even if it took a full year to get them.

 

[Lonbjerg]

Yeah, its more like it took AMD nearly a full generation to somewhat get Crossfire together.

Why not post the full conclusion?:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/09/27/gtx_480_460_sli_vs_5870_crossfirex_redux/2

The Bottom Line



We have to wonder why two older games are behaving poorly with CrossFireX in a triple display setup. The intent of this evaluation was to look at a newer game, and a couple of older games to see if we are being let down by CrossFireX performance since we experienced this in two other games already. I think we definitely answered that, yes, here are two older games that seem to be lagging with the competition at the very thing that AMD has been hyping for a year now, and that is triple display gaming with ATI Eyefinity.

This really makes us wonder what other games, new and old, are also experiencing slower than expected performance with CrossFireX. Radeon HD 5870 CrossFireX should not be performing on par with, or slower than GeForce GTX 460 SLI, and we found two cases of that here today. We know that a single Radeon HD 5870 is a much more powerful and better performing card than a single GTX 460 when it comes to actually playing games. There is a reason that we see GTX 460 SLI perform better in many games than HD 5870 CFX, and after what we have seen over the last few weeks we have to think that AMD's CrossFireX scaling is inefficient due to drivers that are lacking.

We think it is time for AMD to step it up on CrossFireX performance. We understand some games slip by, but honestly, these highly popular and still played older games should not be "losing performance" over the course of time. It is clear that NVIDIA is doing a better job than AMD at the high end when it comes to multi-display gaming. We have seen overall AMD is lacking in the driver department with its Eyefinity configurations.

That all said, we want to address what a success 5800 series single card configurations represent because you might think this all comes off as a "bash AMD" fest, which it is not. AMD's 5800 series cards are a great buy for gamers. These 5800 cards are fast and efficient and represent cooler running and quieter cards overall while being great performers in single card configurations. And let's not forget that AMD's 5800 GPU line-up supports multi-display gaming on a single card while NVIDIA's do not.

 

[happy medium]

Yeah, its more like it took AMD nearly a full generation to somewhat get Crossfire together.

Lets hope it dosent take this long for the 6000 series. :'(

 

[Ben90]

snip

 

[Lonbjerg]

This thread is 6 months late.

I lol'ed...

 

[rgallant]

- anyone know if nv has IP that covers dual gpu config's. , maybe ati has to do a work around [hardware] to get the best they can for crossfire with out using nv IP. or do you feel it's just lack of programing effort or maybe a bit of both ?

 

[RussianSensation]

The Radeon HD5870 CrossfireX ties/equals it in what can only be called a Nvidia optimized game, Mafia 2.

How is Mafia 2 optimized for NV other than PhysX implementation? ATI cards run the game just as well if not better. Of course instead of picking just 1 game and concluding that Fermi failed, you somehow missed all the other DX10/11 games where GTX480 SLI will be faster than 5870 CF (or a single GTX480 will beat a 5870, with 470 even being as fast as the $100 more expensive 5870).

GTX480 easily beats 5870 in all of these, while GTX470/overclocked 460 are at least as fast:

Lost Planet 2, Alien vs. Predator, Just Cause 2, Starcraft 2, STALKER:CoP, BattleForge, Dirt 2, Metro 2033, Borderlands

So while you can claim that 5870 is better in Mafia 2 (without PhysX) or BF:BC2, what happened to the games above? I certainly expect a $350 graphics card to be faster than $200-250 cards, no?

No one can deny that 5870 was a good card from September of 2009 to June of 2010. After that time though, at $350 5870 became overpriced compared to $210-250 5850s and $240-250 GTX470s and $200 GTX460s. Frankly, both 5870 and GTX480 are not great price/performance cards, even for high-end gaming cards imo. I realize economics 101 dictates that because of supply/demand AMD can still sell 5870s...that doesn't mean that 5870 is a good buy.

....and tried to argue that 460sli was better than 5870 crossfire? I think the thread was in late August. I

Unless $ is not a consideration in your hardware purchases, then 460 SLI was and still remains better. It is very competitive with 5870 in CF for hundreds of $$$ less. Not only is a single GTX460 @ 900mhz keeping up with a 5870, but with better SLI scaling, 460 SLI will be very close while costing $300 less. 5870 has little overclocking headroom and scales worse when overclocked compared to Fermi architecture.

Sorry a lot of people could care less if 5870 is 10% faster than a GTX470, they would rather take $100 savings towards their next graphics card upgrade where that $100 will buy them 30-50%+ performance increase after selling their old card. In addition, I am sure many opted for the $400 GTX460 SLI setup and sacrificed 20% or so performance increase that 5870 CF would offer, pocketing $300 in the process.

I don't think anyone disputes that 5870 CF is awesome for performance. But for a lot of people, price/performance is much more important than having the absolute fastest/coolest/lowest power consuming card.

FYI, I was able to grab 2 eVGA GTX470s with high flow brackets for $409. They also came with 3 free games: Just Cause 2, Mafia 2 and Cryostasis. So from price/performance perspective, Fermi was not a failure because I couldn't find this price/performance + free games from AMD in the last 12 months. They can keep the fastest GPU 5970 crown for all I care

HD6000 is almost here --> it's getting tiresome to continue reading HD5000 'pawns all' Fermi threads. I am sure a ton of GTX260/275/280/285/4870/4890 owners can't wait for something worthwhile to upgrade to because let's face it for the majority of these owners, this generation was underwhelming.

 

[OCGuy]

- anyone know if nv has IP that covers dual gpu config's. , maybe ati has to do a work around [hardware] to get the best they can for crossfire with out using nv IP. or do you feel it's just lack of programing effort or maybe a bit of both ?

I would guess whatever issues AMD is having with multi-GPU has to be greedy nV's fault, as you are suggesting.

 

[Grooveriding]

They should turn on PhysX and see what happens in Mafia 2.

It will unplayable, just like it is on nvidia hardware ()