Hi guys.

I'm relatively new here and thought I would share my thoughts on GTX 580 sli vs 7970 crossfire.

I'm a huge nerd so I tend to spend way too much on way too many gadgets. So i'll get on with it: I had GTX 580 sli in my system and couldn't resist the urge to give team red a go
this time around. I've used them before, I did have 6970 crossfire but lets face it: cayman was a disappointment considering it came a month after the 2nd gen Fermi, and was slower
to boot. Okay 7970 vs GTX 580. Holy baby jesus, the 7970 is fast. REAL fast. Across the board no exceptions, quite a bit faster in everything. And it overclocks ridiculously well, using sapphire trixx (I bought 2 sapphire cards) my cards both overclocked
to 1200/1600 effortlessly. Temps get high (88c) but they are stable. Just for comparison, I don't have any benchmark pictures to show but in DX11 games, in most games the performance
advantage over 580 sli would be 50-70fps. If not higher. In DX:HR, the performance nearly doubled. These cards are f**king ridiculously fast, and overclock so easily. The hardware is PERFECT.

Now here's my complaint. As usual, AMD is not as good as nvidia is with dual gpu support. When it works, it works well: My performance in bf3, crysis 2, was much much faster than 580 sli.
However, I had little scaling in batman: AC and witcher 2. This sucks. You don't buy another 600$ card to use it as a damn paperweight. Okay so now i'm pissed. These cards have so much potential
and they outperform the GTX 580 by a lot. But that doesn't mean SHIT if there isn't software to support the crossfire in various games. Now don't get me wrong, most games work. But witcher 2 and
batman AC don't scale well enough in crossfire. For comparison, Batman: AC in a single 580 vs single 7970 is about 45-55 fps faster than the 580 is, with heavy tessellation is enabled. So obviously the hardware is good
But what the f**k! CROSSFIRE ! I didn't pay 600$ additional for nothing.

Apoppin, do you have any contacts at AMD still? I feel this is unacceptable and should be brought up. I heard that catalyst 12 will fix many of these issues, and would love an ETA.

The hardware is so good but I don't really appreciate having crossfire issues. I'll wait for catalyst version 12, but this is not a good impression for user experience. With NV, sh!t just works. I expect the same for AMD. The hardware is amazing but the user pressntation / experience needs to be improved: Single 7970 is fine (and much faster than 580)! but crossfire! WTF! Xfire users deserve a better experience than this.

Yes i still do have contacts inside AMD and ABT is still a media partner with them

What you are describing happens every single time with new architecture. AMD is doing better each launch (generally) except for this one which has been described by others as "rushed". If you give the driver team a month or two, you will see bugs worked out and they are probably racing right now to put out new CAPs. Always try the latest drivers (but maybe look at the forums first).

The issue is the complexity of CrossFire. AMD supports so many variations of it. Also, (not making excuses for them) but they had a giant shakeup in the company and many of the senior driver team is now writing drivers for Fusion and the APUs also.

There is guaranteed to be a new WHQL driver due out this month. i don't have an ETA but there should be another beta pretty soon.

Good to hear. I'll wait for the next WHQL and see if this improves things. Makes me remember why NV is so loved: Their user presentation is miles ahead of AMD, and they pay attention to the community more (the geforce.com website is great - and devs post there from time to time). AMD needs to do stuff like that.

I remember watching the NV CES presentation and their CEO Huang repeated about the Tegra 3: "it just works". I can't remember having many issues with 580 sli, if ever. It just worked with no hassles. Oh well.

Don't wait for WHQLs. Check the HardOCP and ATF forums for user experiences and then try the betas. Especially the new CAPs as they come out.

AMD knows about their SW issues and i see them devoting a lot more resources to it. They have promised to also work on their community and also more closely with the game devs.

Hey, NV cards also don't scale that well in Batman: AC and Skyrim, IIRC.. they do scale a bit, but not more than 20% or so. Can't remember where I saw the benchies from. It's not just AMD.

Your overclocks of 1200Mhz for both 7970's are amazing!! That's almost 300MHz increase!

I can't believe that you didn't stick to the 580 SLI's for Stereo3D (or at least for PhysX in Batman:AC). 3D is an added dimension. If you have a multi-monitor setup, you could still do 3D. Apoppin sure knows how to enjoy his stuff.

Yet, AMD needs to resolve the FSAA problems in Starcraft 2:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphi ... 970_7.html

I've been trying to put together a 580 sli oc vs 7970 xfire oc comparison together and I gotta say I have an appreciation for what reviewers (and apoppin) do now.

This is very time consuming and frustrating. So far the 7970 xfire seems to have a big lead (when oc'ed) in quite a lot of games, lets just hope AMD continues
work on their xfire compatibility.

AMD is very proud of CrossFire as it distinguishes them somewhat from Nvidia in this regard, especially regarding its flexibility over SLI. CF scaling is probably one of their top priorities; especially for the newest games with the 7900 series.

If you need any suggestions, help, etc. with your SLI vs. CF comparison, please LMK.

HardOPC is being hard on AMD for a change ,,,, here is their editorial on the state of CF-X drivers
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/01/ ... unity_lost

thats a little strange. wow, they need to get it together.

Meh. The cards are new. A bit rushed so I have heard. Eventually, AMD will fix these bugs and create new ones. It's what's for dinner.