GTX 470 or HD 5870?

[mailman2]

Originally Posted by Xion X2

They're more mature, but it won't be long before Nvidia catches up and passes them. Nvidia apparently has a lot more resources for driver bugs/fixes and seems to care a lot more about the customer.

As an example, there's a group of 10-15 5970 CFX owners over on Rage3D right now, myself included, who are being left out in the cold by ATI and its driver teams / customer support. Eyefinity is broken on CFX, and there's not a peep from anyone about what the problem is or if/when it will ever be fixed. There has never been any kind of public announcement about this while the driver release a while back claimed to "fix Crossfire support for Eyefinity on the 5870 and 5970 graphics cards."

5870s drivers may be more mature now, but where I'd worry is if any future issues pop up in a new game. Takes ATI longer to fix, and in the cases of 5970 CFX above, some never get fixed.

Yeah, I'm rambling a bit because I'm *&*#@^ off. 1400$ for GPUs and 600$ for LCDs that were never needed. Money down the drain tends to do that to you.

Agreed it does take ATI longer, but lately they've been pretty good about hotfix drivers and now with profiles being a separate file that helps too. Sorry to hear about the CF issues, I learned my lesson with dual GPUs long ago and will only use the fastest single GPU now.

[Xion X2]

Originally Posted by mailman2

Agreed it does take ATI longer, but lately they've been pretty good about hotfix drivers and now with profiles being a separate file that helps too. Sorry to hear about the CF issues, I learned my lesson with dual GPUs long ago and will only use the fastest single GPU now.

Thanks. I agree they've been better, but at times they still sit on their hands like with this Eyefinity thing. They've been a little deceptive about this issue, and it's angering many of us.

The odd thing is that two 5870s work just fine in Eyefinity, so it's not an issue that's specific to Crossfire. It's some sort of issue with the 5970s, so users are "guessing" at what it could be--whether it's some sort of hardware limitation or software limitation that's keeping it from working. And in the end, nothing but crickets from ATI's direction after the card being out for 6 months.....

[mailman2]

Originally Posted by Xion X2

Thanks. I agree they've been better, but at times they still sit on their hands like with this Eyefinity thing. They've been a little deceptive about this issue, and it's angering many of us.

The odd thing is that two 5870s work just fine in Eyefinity, so it's not an issue that's specific to Crossfire. It's some sort of issue with the 5970s, so users are "guessing" at what it could be--whether it's some sort of hardware limitation or software limitation that's keeping it from working. And in the end, nothing but crickets from ATI's direction after the card being out for 6 months.....

Have you tried to contact Terry yet?
http://twitter.com/catalystmaker

[Xion X2]

Originally Posted by mailman2

Have you tried to contact Terry yet?
http://twitter.com/catalystmaker

Several already have, but thanks.

[Blacklash]

Yep Eyefinity seems to be limited to a 2 GPU affair now for whatever the reason.

Will that change? Who knows.

[Viral]

No offence, but I'd read up on CF 5970's not supporting Eyefinity since the release. It's never a good idea to buy an ATI product for what it might do in the future. That would have been like buying a 4870x2 expecting a performance increase once they enabled sideport, or a DX10.1 ATI card and expecting future games with tesselation to support it and perform at acceptable levels with it on.

I agree overall though, ATI is the better choice for the majority right now. I can see why many enthusiasts would want to go with nvidia though. Personally a single 5870 suits my needs just fine and I've had zero problems or complaints so far, but admittedly I'm not as much of an enthusiast as some here.

[Xion X2]

Originally Posted by Viral

No offence, but I'd read up on CF 5970's not supporting Eyefinity since the release.

Plenty of us "read up" on whatever info was released by ATI, and the following is the kind of stuff that was released.

On the official release notes for the Catalyst 9.12--

Originally Posted by AMD-ATI

Support for ATI CrossFireX on Eyefinity configurations

The ATI Catalyst 9.12 hotfix release provides ATI CrossFireX support on Eyefinity configurations, allowing users to take advantage of their additional GPUs for increased gaming performance when driving high resolution Eyefinity display groups

Supported on the ATI Radeon HD 5970 Series, ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series, and ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series

http://www.pcper.com/comments.php?nid=8135

5970 CFX is clearly included in their release notes as being supported.


From review sites prior to the release of the 9.12 Cat:

Originally Posted by Anandtech

Finally, AMD is also launching Crossfire Eyefinity support with the 5970and thus far only the 5970. Currently Eyefinity doesn’t work with Crossfire mode on any of AMDs cards due to driver limitations. The drivers that the 5970 will be shipping with enable Crossfire Eyefinity support on the 5970 for 22 games - currently AMD is using whitelisting and is enabling games on a case-by-case basis.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2877

Originally Posted by extremetech

Because the Radeon HD 5970 supports AMC's Eyefinity multimonitor technology, we wanted to see how well it worked. The 5970 is the first card in the 5000 series to support CrossFire Eyefinity...

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...2356037,00.asp

Originally Posted by hardocp

The Radeon HD 5970 fully supports triple display (up to 2560x1600 each) Eyefinity configurations.

The reason why the Radeon HD 5970 supports Eyefinity now is because it was easier to get working first. The onboard PLX PCIe chip on the video card gives AMD a known set of PCI Express lanes to work with, and knowing that the configuration will never change they were able to get Eyefinity working with this configuration first. A future driver down the road (not Catalyst 9.12, so think 2010 for support) will enable CrossFire on Eyefinity for all other configurations.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/...o_card_review/

So right out of the gate, ATI was pimping the 5970 as the card to go with for Eyefinity while promises were made that eventually it would work for "all other configurations" according to some of the review sites. This was over 6 months ago, now.

If this were not the case, then ATI should have made that very clear right up front to dispel any confusion and keep many people like myself from wasting 700$ on an extra 5970 and 400$ for an additional two LCDs.

But no-- it's even included in their release notes with the Catalyst 9.12 that IT WORKS with 5970 CFX, yet it doesn't. Out of 10-15 users over on Rage3D, not one person has reported that this is working in any title. And not a single beta tester has proven that CFX works on 5970. No one can.. because it simply doesn't work.

[Viral]

Most of those initial claims refer to a single 5970, I don't remeber where exactly, but that was clarified quite a while back in another thread here in the rumour mill where shadow was unsure of it.

The 5970 is a CF on one card solution, so ATI made sure eyefinity would work for it. The reference to crossfire in all those quotes is actually just talking about a single 5970. The exception being the hardocp quote which states a future release will support ALL configurations. Still, that relates to what I said before. Don't take ATI's word on anything. I don't give them any credit for their future Physics capabilities, or 3D display capabilities. They get points when they deliver, not on empty promises.

If I were you I'd be pissed off too. Either sell one of those 5970's or get a couple of GTX 480's, but definitely make sure nvidias SLI only tri monitor support is actually doable NOW and not just a future promise. I have no idea since I havent seen anyone do it yet.

[Xion X2]

Bud, look at the release notes. ATI even stated "CFX" support and then listed the 5970 series right afterward along with the other cards.

To me, that's cut and dry as saying it's supported. And yet, it doesn't work.

Regardless of what the review sites said--and the impression to the reader was always that 5970 was the way to go with Eyefinity--ATI themselves even stated it worked in the Cat 9.12 release notes. Not once will you ever find a statement by ATI that says CFX for 5970 will have limited functionality or not work at all. Nowhere.

Anyway, this problem will be resolved by me dumping these 5970s in favor of 480s. I plan to put two 480s on water and go with Nvidia's 3-D technology on a 60" DLP display instead of three smaller LCDs like I had bought for Eyefinity.

[noko]

My 5870 is working great for me and well worth the cash back in December. Played more games on this one card then on my previous two Nvidia cards 8800gtx(retired)/260(in use) . If a 5870 is not too much more then a 470 then I would recommend a 5870 otherwise a 470 would kick some as well. In other words you win either way as far as I can see. If you are more interested in 3d and physX then the 470. While ATi promisses 3d in the future it is not here yet. If you want to expand you work environment for more screen space and some 3d gaming, then a 5870.

[ATOJAR]

I dont really care for 3D to be honest, As for physX .... Well as far as i have seen it seems like an overrated gimmick.

That reminds me ... Im sure ive read/seen(i may have been drunk)that somebody had a HD 5870 with a second 9800GTX for physX! Is this just my drunken imagination or is this actually possible?

[LurkerLito]

Originally Posted by ATOJAR

I dont really care for 3D to be honest, As for physX .... Well as far as i have seen it seems like an overrated gimmick.

That reminds me ... Im sure ive read/seen(i may have been drunk)that somebody had a HD 5870 with a second 9800GTX for physX! Is this just my drunken imagination or is this actually possible?

It works but you have to get some hacked physx drivers to make it work. Otherwise the official physx drivers lock out ATI + nvidia card users.