SLI vs Crossfire article by Ratchet over at Rage3D.

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Ackmed

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003


Ratchet, did not get them to work? Ok, I guess he didn't put as much effort into getting Crossfire to work than is normally needed then for these games.

The selection of games? I suppose you would have prefered Ratchet to use only games that worked then? It is what it is.

And why is this negative news? You are actually the only person in this thread that thinks it's negative in any way. Why is that? Ratchet tossed some complaints to both parties in that article. So, you go right ahead with your ATI damage control. How soon after an article is release does it need to be posted about before it is considered old? Please let me know in minutes and seconds. :disgust:

Its not a lot of work, but I do think that you shouldnt have to rename an exe to get a game to work in CF. ATi has said in their chat, that they are working on profiles, ala SLI's. Profiles is the biggest drawback to CF to me. But for me personally, it doesnt bother me, as renaming an exe is easy, and takes less than a minute. And now since you can force AFR thru the drivers, its not as big of a deal.

What it is, is that I would like to see games that I, or even most other people play. Can you honestly say that you play Pacific Fighters, Lock-On, Colin McRae Rally 2005, GT Legends, or Richard Burns Rally? Im sure some do, and Im sure some enjoy them greatly, just not very many. Im all for the "widen the spectrum of games" for video card reviews. Using only these games, just looks like they went out of their way to find games that had problems with CF. FS has used Lock-On and Pacific Fighters several times in reviews with CF, and never said it didnt work. But as I said, you can now force AFR in CCC, so most of this is moot. GRAW and GT2 demo work fine when doing this, I just tested them today. Two game they show as not working.

Highligted: Sounds exactly like what a ATI PR representative would say.

Can you show Ratchet what you did to get them to work? I'm sure he would love to know. I guess he just wanted to see out of the box functionality. Not every gamer is a savvy computer enthusiast.

My comment was, that you're a little late slamming ATi. I would have expected you to be more on top of it, but I guess you're slipping... They didnt slam SLI at all, just IQ for NV. In fact, he said there was nothing negative to say about SLI at all. Guess he forgot about the horrid SLI AA performance compared to Super AA?

Highlighted: Looks like somebody had to add a slam of their own. Infantile. And that's being generous.

How did I slam anything, Ackmed. Would you please leave your bias at the door, thanks.
If you can't get along with the other kiddies, then please leave the sandbox.

cliffs
You can force AFR thru the drivers now, resulting in CF working fine, in the games I tested that he said didnt work.

 

[aka1nas]

Why the heck did they test Morrowind in that nvnews review? That game is almost completely CPU-limited with anything faster than a 9800 Pro due to the engine being an inefficient, steaming pile.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

NO need to rename with Cat 6.7. IN fact, its easier now with crossfire to force AFR than it is with SLI!!! (albeit, 1 or 2 secs less!)

This is issue is DEAD.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: Ackmed
[
cliffs
You can force AFR thru the drivers now, resulting in CF working fine, in the games I tested that he said didnt work.

About forcing AFR with Crossfire, ATI themselves say it can cause corruption, and this B3d user reports it doesn?t work for Hitman Blood Money, a very popular new game.

Text

 

[josh6079]

Both can't support dual monitors yet, so to me both are still in need of some revisions. It's pretty sad that two cards can't even do something that one can, whether it is ATI or Nvidia. All of this multiplication of GPU's is IMO just an attempt to close the gap that developing software makes without investing time and effort into the design of quality GPU's. It's cheaper for corporations to slap GPU's together instead of making more powerful GPU's them selves in order to compensate demanding softwares, and its use is short lived as another single GPU comes out before too long that gives nearly the performance as the two predacesors.

LONG LIVE THE QUALITY-MADE SINGLE CARDS!!!!

By the way, renaming .exe's is not a pain. Most have done "hacking" with resolutions to get their widescreens to work long before CF's .exe's were in question. Also, keys wasn't trying to slam you nor ATI Ackmed. I would have posted that if I had found it. I do think it is crap that the games weren't newer ones, but to me if a top-of-the-line setup can't even do something with a X year old game that allows similar features, what does that say about it? My old modded Xbox could play N64 games really well, I would expect the same for my computer if it was a CF setup.

In short, I think most reviews are wrong in some area or another and shouldn't be taken so harshly. If someone doesn't like the review, make their own. I myself am trying to get a review going covering BF2, HL2, Prey, COD2, TR:L, FC, SC:CT, Oblivion, and FEAR, but due to power problems in my area that has been halted a little.

Ackmed, gersson, you both have CF setups and I'm sure the AT community would take interest in some results that you both have with your games.

Wreckage, don't you have a 7900GTX? If all of us are going to complain about other sites benches, I would think that we could set up a few of our own to elaborate on what we want from other sites.

 

[schneiderguy]

Originally posted by: gersson
NO need to rename with Cat 6.7. IN fact, its easier now with crossfire to force AFR than it is with SLI!!! (albeit, 1 or 2 secs less!)

This is issue is DEAD.

Originally posted by: gersson
I tried these again with oblivion and I got very noticeable slowdown compared to the oblivion 6.6. Crossfire was enabled too (I also forced it with CAT AI advanced) and it ran visibly worst than 6.6 chucky.

Strange! Back to 6.6 chuck and all is well.

according to you, the 6.7's are also bad drivers, so the issue isnt dead???

 

[josh6079]

according to you, (gersson) the 6.7's are also bad drivers, so the issue isnt dead???

Yeah, I thought you said that FEAR performance dropped gersson?

Do you mean that they just aren't as good performers as the 6.6's or are they just bad all around?

 

[5150Joker]

Looks to me like ATi needs to continue to work on Crossfire. Hopefully they get it working a bit better with R600 since it will be built into the cards GPU like nVidia's SLI.

 

[fierydemise]

schneider, what his post in this thread is saying is since with the cat 6.7s you can force AFR which fixes the problems Ratchet mentioned in his review, the second post is saying the cat 6.7s also caused some slowdown so he is switching back to the cat 6.6s because he wants more performance. The 2 posts are referring to 2 separate issue.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Let me explain myself. The drivers DO suck IMO BUT the feature is now implemented. Maybe it's not a dead issue D) but it is this close to getting there. I don't mean it as an ATI vs Nvidia issue. I mean it as a crossfire use issue.

 

[josh6079]

Ah, gotya. Thanks for clarifying.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: schneiderguy

Originally posted by: gersson
NO need to rename with Cat 6.7. IN fact, its easier now with crossfire to force AFR than it is with SLI!!! (albeit, 1 or 2 secs less!)

This is issue is DEAD.

Originally posted by: gersson
I tried these again with oblivion and I got very noticeable slowdown compared to the oblivion 6.6. Crossfire was enabled too (I also forced it with CAT AI advanced) and it ran visibly worst than 6.6 chucky.

Strange! Back to 6.6 chuck and all is well.

according to you, the 6.7's are also bad drivers, so the issue isnt dead???

Nice catch. :thumbsup:

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Originally posted by: josh6079
Ah, gotya. Thanks for clarifying.

You're welcome heh I was pissed off reading some of the trollish posts in other threads I was reading...

Nice catch

lol I already explained myself.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: gersson

Originally posted by: josh6079
Ah, gotya. Thanks for clarifying.

You're welcome heh I was pissed off reading some of the trollish posts in other threads I was reading...

Nice catch

lol I already explained myself.

Ah, sorry. missed that one.

 

[josh6079]

Anyways, I think it's safe to say that CF and SLI both need to have some tweaking done before they are as versatile and recommendable as single setups. However, I think single GPU's are going to exist until GPU's themselves get phased out (if that happens).

 

[BFG10K]

but NV's AA is at least as good as ATI's.

This is false; ATi's Crossfire AA modes use sparse grid while nVidia's SLI AA modes still conform to a regular pattern.

In addition to having better IQ ATi's modes are much faster since each card is still only taking the performance hit of doing MSAA and there is no overhead of combining the two GPU rendered portions because there is dedicated hardware to do it.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

but NV's AA is at least as good as ATI's.

This is false; ATi's Crossfire AA modes use sparse grid while nVidia's SLI AA modes still conform to a regular pattern.

In addition to having better IQ ATi's modes are much faster since each card is still only taking the performance hit of doing MSAA and there is no overhead of combining the two GPU rendered portions because there is dedicated hardware to do it.

Well the beauty of it is currently I can employ the following AA modes with 45-50+ FPS in these games:

Far Cry: 10xSSAA
BF2: 10xSSAA
All Steam games -- including Day of Defeat Source (HDR) @ 14xSSAA. Completely maxxed. Looks beautiful.

@ 1680x1050 amazing!


Here's a left over pic (it's 1.5mb! png)

BF2 pic

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: gersson
Here's a left over pic (it's 1.5mb! png)

BF2 pic

Hahaha...TaxMan Gersson...nice.

Thanks for the pic btw.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Originally posted by: thilan29

Originally posted by: gersson
Here's a left over pic (it's 1.5mb! png)

BF2 pic

Hahaha...TaxMan Gersson...nice.

Thanks for the pic btw.

he he, yeah watch out -- if you see my name in a server -- you know you're gonna get head-shotted soon enough

I did really good that round with my team. It was fun cos I provided on que air support. The other team didn't have a competant jet pilot. I wasn't abusive, though -- I hate jet jocks

good nigh, all :moon:

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: josh6079
Anyways, I think it's safe to say that CF and SLI both need to have some tweaking done before they are as versatile and recommendable as single setups.

Maybe you should read the article....

NVIDIA?s SLI is clearly more stable and mature than ATI?s Crossfire, there is no debating that fact. I never experienced any game crashes or rendering errors with SLI, and the one game I was expecting to have some problems with (Pacific Fighters) was apparently recently fixed and now works and scales fine. With Crossfire not only did most games not scale, but I actually had to disable Crossfire just to get them to launch. Elegant degradation is not in ATI?s vocabulary, apparently.

Not only is stability on NVIDIA?s side, so is ease of use and practicality. There is no master/slave stuff and there is no giant pain in the ass dongle with thumb screws that break off and are way too small and cables that are way too stiff to bend nicely like the monstrosity you get with hardware Crossfire. NVIDIA?s SLI bridge-board is elegant, easy to use, and doesn?t get in your way. Granted you can?t defend yourself against hordes of evil undead zombies with it like you can ATI?s dongle, but really, who wants zombie goo all over their computer anyway.

SLI works great :thumbsup:

 

[imported_Crusader]

Anyone with a working brain already knew that SLI > Xfire.
Now, even Rage3D itself backs it up. They couldnt LIE for any particular huge Crossfire supporter here. Truth is just the truth, and we didnt need this article to prove that SLI > Xfire when everyone, even ATI fans already knew ATIs poor driver support and half baked multiGPU implementation shot their Xfire setup in the foot to begin with! :disgust:

 

[josh6079]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: josh6079
Anyways, I think it's safe to say that CF and SLI both need to have some tweaking done before they are as versatile and recommendable as single setups.

Maybe you should read the article....

NVIDIA?s SLI is clearly more stable and mature than ATI?s Crossfire, there is no debating that fact. I never experienced any game crashes or rendering errors with SLI, and the one game I was expecting to have some problems with (Pacific Fighters) was apparently recently fixed and now works and scales fine. With Crossfire not only did most games not scale, but I actually had to disable Crossfire just to get them to launch. Elegant degradation is not in ATI?s vocabulary, apparently.

Not only is stability on NVIDIA?s side, so is ease of use and practicality. There is no master/slave stuff and there is no giant pain in the ass dongle with thumb screws that break off and are way too small and cables that are way too stiff to bend nicely like the monstrosity you get with hardware Crossfire. NVIDIA?s SLI bridge-board is elegant, easy to use, and doesn?t get in your way. Granted you can?t defend yourself against hordes of evil undead zombies with it like you can ATI?s dongle, but really, who wants zombie goo all over their computer anyway.

SLI works great :thumbsup:

I did read it. SLI is more easy to use than CF. That's basically the summary of the article which failed to carry through with some modern games and simple optimizations that would allow CF to work with most games. I myself have had SLI and because it can't run my second monitor, it doesn't work great. In fact, that part of it doesn't work at all. All I got was horrible vsync and higher frames with games with more clutter in my case. Traded it for more fluent vsync, higher frames in games, and dual monitor support and less clutter in my case. SLI wasn't right for a gamer like me, and I'm sure there are many gamers who love their dual monitors if they have them who feel the same way. I'm not saying that no one should have it. I'm just saying that they as of now they are not as versatile and recommendable as single setups because of their elemental lack in dual monitor support and high cost for practical gaming.

 

[josh6079]

Originally posted by: Crusader
Anyone with a working brain already knew that SLI > Xfire.
Now, even Rage3D itself backs it up. They couldnt LIE for any particular huge Crossfire supporter here. Truth is just the truth, and we didnt need this article to prove that SLI > Xfire when everyone, even ATI fans already knew ATIs poor driver support and half baked multiGPU implementation shot their Xfire setup in the foot to begin with! :disgust:

Here we go again. Nvidia hasn't ever shot themselves in the foot or left there buyers dissapointed right? As far as half baked multiGPU implementations......LINK

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: josh6079
I did read it. SLI is more easy to use than CF. That's basically the summary of the article which failed to carry through with some modern games and simple optimizations that would allow CF to work with most games. I myself have had SLI and because it can't run my second monitor, it doesn't work great. In fact, that part of it doesn't work at all. All I got was horrible vsync and higher frames with games with more clutter in my case. Traded it for more fluent vsync, higher frames in games, and dual monitor support and less clutter in my case. SLI wasn't right for a gamer like me, and I'm sure there are many gamers who love their dual monitors if they have them who feel the same way. I'm not saying that no one should have it. I'm just saying that they as of now they are not as versatile and recommendable as single setups because of their elemental lack in dual monitor support and high cost for practical gaming.

Your view differs from, well every review site....no suprise.

As far as dual monitor..... Go on ebay and spend $5 on a good PCI video card.

 

[josh6079]

Your view differs from, well every review site....no suprise.

Yeah because I am pretty subborn when it comes to listening what the other side of the market is like and I really only buy one kind of product..............oh.............wait.............

As far as dual monitor..... Go on ebay and spend $5 on a good PCI video card.

So basically depend on a cheapy to do something that a $500+ SLI setup can't do? :roll:

I've already taken the step I needed to in order to have what I want for the better performance, dual monitor support, and IQ, but thanks for the suggestion.