Skyrim is just borken in CF...the problem is Skyrim, don't blame the cards.
Are you using Adaptive Vsync? I really like that feature.i've never really had any problems in skyrim with a 9800 GTX+, GTX 560ti, or the GTX 680. But if I turn V-sync off I get this horrible flicker in areas that have water.
Over the past year, I have become increasingly frustrated with AMD due to their driver support. I'm running two 6950's, and am at the point where i just want to get rid of them and change over to Nvidia.
My question is, is it worth making the switch to nvidia right now or would it make more sense to wait for the next gen of their cards to come out?
My motherboard does not support SLI, so i am just looking for a solid single gpu card. Would something like a 670 be an upgrade or not?
nVidia has better multi-GPU drivers from what I gather from around the web.
Microstuttering is a dual GPU issue. I've heard that it tends to be worse on dual AMD setups.
I've come to the realization that my crossfire setup is not worth ditching for one game being dumb even though skyrim is one of my favorite games. that said, I'm not going to run dual gpus in the future when its time for me the upgrade
Just bare in mind that is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. AMDs crossfire has a severe issue of stuttering where NVidia doesn't. That isn't to say SLI is perfect but it is vastly superior to CF at this time. It wasn't always true, the 5000 series crossfired well, but then they changed the drivers a few times and the stuttering started.
Now bare in mind I have also compare my 7970's against my 680's in single card setups and the 680 is a little smoother. That is my eyes are fooled by motion down to a lower FPS than on the 7970's. The techreport data doesn't show that out in data and I also couldn't capture it with Fraps frame times so I suspect its not part of the cycle that fraps measures but I keep coming to the same conclusion that 30 fps is smooth on the 680 but I need 40 to be happy on AMD.
I understand your frustration, I was there until I switched to NVidia's solution. Overall NVidia's drivers have been much better, no stupid problems with power saving, no negative scaling in SLI (so far) and well I don't have any problems whereas I had about 25 bugs raised with AMD. So NVidia has been dramatically better for me. But you pay more for similar performance, but most review sites measure the performance on FPS instead of frame times so aren't really worth the pixels they consume.
Just bare in mind that is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. AMDs crossfire has a severe issue of stuttering where NVidia doesn't. That isn't to say SLI is perfect but it is vastly superior to CF at this time. It wasn't always true, the 5000 series crossfired well, but then they changed the drivers a few times and the stuttering started.
Now bare in mind I have also compare my 7970's against my 680's in single card setups and the 680 is a little smoother. That is my eyes are fooled by motion down to a lower FPS than on the 7970's. The techreport data doesn't show that out in data and I also couldn't capture it with Fraps frame times so I suspect its not part of the cycle that fraps measures but I keep coming to the same conclusion that 30 fps is smooth on the 680 but I need 40 to be happy on AMD.
I understand your frustration, I was there until I switched to NVidia's solution. Overall NVidia's drivers have been much better, no stupid problems with power saving, no negative scaling in SLI (so far) and well I don't have any problems whereas I had about 25 bugs raised with AMD. So NVidia has been dramatically better for me. But you pay more for similar performance, but most review sites measure the performance on FPS instead of frame times so aren't really worth the pixels they consume.
So you're claiming that you can't directly compare FPS between single AMD cards and single Nvidia cards because you need higher framerates on the AMD card than the Nvidia card? I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that before.
An oced 7970 ghz is faster than 6950 cf even in terms of plain fps in modern/very recent games.
Well I'm pretty sure my xfire 6950 is faster than Your 7970 in majority of cases!
It isn't the minimum frame rates, its inconsistent frame times, aka microstutter.
For stutter in Skyrim run it in borderless windowed mode. This also improves Sleeping Dogs stuttering, and apparently for many other PC games. Search online for the mods
Minimum fps can be misleading. It could be a very small dip in a very brief part of the game where its almost unnoticeable. Average fps, although preferable to me, is also not an entirely reliable measure if the minimums are just enough to cause some stutter in some places.
Running windowed disables crossfire....which is likely why it stops the stuttering.