View Full Version : Which is better, SLI or Dual GPU card?
Yo!
I would like to upgrade my graphics card (AMD HD5970) and I was waiting for Nvidia to release the GTX590 dual GPU card because I want to try Nvidia again instead of AMD. I also want PhysX back to add that little extra eye candy to games and the ability to use 3D Vision if I get a new monitor.
I would like to know if it's better to wait for this dual GPU GTX590 or get 2x GTX580s and SLI them. I have enough PSU power, cables, mobo slots etc to run an SLI setup so there are no problems with that. I assume that having a dual GPU card means that the cores can communicate with each other easier and might be in better sync, but I also know that some games have compatibility problems with SLI so with 2 cards I can just disable 1 in the settings if a game won't work.
With my current dual GPU card I can't disable one of the cores in CrossFireX so I just have to hope that AMD's CrossFireX profiles support new games properly. I don't know how stable Nvidia's SLI support is but ever since I had this card I've had trouble in at least 1 game with every driver/profile release so they've got to be better than AMD!
The reason I want so much graphics power is because of my 30" monitor. Running games at 2560x1600 with high graphics settings makes normal single GPU cards have heart attacks.
SorryGuys
11-01-2011, 19:04
You want to upgrade a 5970!!! That's a very good card...i think you can stay with that...don't spend money to have 3 fps more!
I have no issues with the 30" and 5970 m8y, i may be able to help?
Anyway, look at the memory bandwidth of a single GPU gfx card and then double it (roughly) for SLI. The 5970 is a dual and mem bandwidth of 256gb/s and ATM it'd be madness to upgrade
You're best to wait longer.
I don't know if this card is slightly faulty but I've always had some kind of problem with BC2 while I've been using it, from drivers that drop the frame rate to single digits, to in-game grass showing in wrong places. There's nothing I can do to get it replaced because the issues aren't regular, and it's generally put me off AMD. It seems to start overheating a little bit (even though I've set the fan to run at maximum speed) when playing BC2 and the screen randomly flickers to black and stays like that for a few seconds. When this happens the map, ammo, health, etc all stay visible, it's just the 3D stuff on the rest of the screen that goes black... WTF?
I can't remember exactly when this started but it wasn't too long after I got the card that I noticed it kept happening. I also had a problem where it would randomly cause an AMD red screen of death when I was watching YouTube videos and tried to get it replaced under warranty. I had to get AMD support to confirm it was a problem but they fixed that by helping me upgrade the card's firmware. So now I'm stuck with this card...
As I said before, I want to have the benefits of an Nvidia anyway so I'm happy to upgrade. So you think the GTX590 will be better?
The black flickering is a common issue with both crossfire and SLi in BC2 from what i hear.
As for the actual question, I have been told numerous times that a single dual GPU card is much better to have than 2 lesser ones in crossfire/sli, but i have never seen any evidence etc
The flickering was only on crossfire not sli at start of BC, but they fixed it later with new drivers by amd. What u heard about single and multi GPU systems is right, its better to have a single GPU gfx card today because BC is not the only game that show graphicbugs like flickering textures. The point is no game out there is optimized for dual graphiccards, nearly same prob like with CPUs which when have more than 4 cores couldnt make any advatages out of it.
The GTX 590 is not using 2 x 580 full chips on it, ok they are the same chips but NVIDIA locked some cores to not climb above what 2 x PCIe 8 pin cables can deliver on power. So if u would buy 2 GTX 580s and would combine them to sli rendering u would be faster than with the GTX 590 but.... hell m8y serious what u want with such a waste ? U think ur wizzard or elf is faster with it in WoW ? For any game out there u dont need higher than a GTX 460 or a Radeon HD 6870, anything more is just a waste of money and polluting our air ( Just as a lil hint our oil is empty in 40 years, then no more oil on the planet and the only cars that still can drive are Diesel. Our coal reaches for 200 years more but then its also empty ). If u just have this strengh Adolf eyes and say haarrrrrr i want an NVIDIA, i recommend u getting a 570. The GTX 570 is faster than the 6970 and uses less power, its atm one of the best cards out there u can buy but..... is it necessary or could u wait 6-8 more months ? Around August 2011 there are coming the new gfx cards from NVIDIA and AMD in 28nm process ( atm all are 40 nm ), the GTX 600 series and the Radeon HD 7000 series, i recommend getting one of those and not some of this 40nm refreshed stuff which the GTX 500 and the HD 6000 is. But its ur decision, if ur current 5970 is faulty and u def cant have longer this bugs and errors then go for a replace, as said best for an upgrade is the GTX 570 just forget this useless 580 thing its unecessary.
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Thanks for the help guys!
GUNter, it would probably be fine for me to get 2x GTX570s instead of 2x GTX580s because in SLI the performance will still be really high. The reason I want 2 GPUs is because I want to run all my games on high graphics with all the nice graphics extras turned on at 2560x1600 and I doubt 1 card will be able to do that. My old GTX285 couldn't do that in BC2, and although new cards are more powerful I still don't think it would work very well.
I suppose if I do actually go ahead with buying GTX500s, I can always buy 1 GTX570/580 and see how well it performs, and buy another to SLI if the performance isn't good enough. I would like to wait and see the new Nvidia GTX600 cards so I'll see if there's any way I can get this card working properly. Do you know if AMD have released any more drivers to fix the flickering? I'm currently using v10.10 drivers/profiles because 10.11 reduced my frame rate in BC2 to about 5 and 10.12 stopped BC2 from running at all!
GUNter, it would probably be fine for me to get 2x GTX570s instead of 2x GTX580s because in SLI the performance will still be really high. The reason I want 2 GPUs is because I want to run all my games on high graphics with all the nice graphics extras turned on at 2560x1600 and I doubt 1 card will be able to do that.
Do you know if AMD have released any more drivers to fix the flickering? I'm currently using v10.10 drivers/profiles because 10.11 reduced my frame rate in BC2 to about 5 and 10.12 stopped BC2 from running at all!
1. Sure 1 card can easy do this, lol even my 5770 is running on 1080p all maximum settings and 4xAA and 8xAF on like 40 fps, on 2560x1600 it would be still around 25-35 enough ( smooth play for eye is 25 fps )
2. u got that 10.10c hotfix or did u installed any crossfire hotfix extern to driver ? There are so called crossfire hotfixes for AMD cards, i found a few but dont know exactly which one would be the one for u, my guess it is 10.10c but there might be another newer hotfix, i was in AMD forum for u and found out that the 5970 performs better on the older 10.5 driver evrything above this revision reported as choppy gameplay. Maybe give it a try
Here a hotfix driver, its an older one but also specialized for Bad company 2, just click the link and then in the post on the Important Links button http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33960976
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I quite agree with roz tho, we get sround 60fps(the sweetest spot) and maxed out on BC2 with 2560x1600.
IMO you'll need the same mem bandwidth or similar, around 256gb/s bandwidth to do this so 2x 128gb/s gpu's will will be of similar performance roz.
SO, you'll be best to wait for these single gpu's to power up but by then you'll also probably want to max out DX12. Hold on to the 5970 unless its faulty. (I have no issues - - now ;))
Bleh! I suppose I'll keep trying to get these problems with the HD5970 sorted then. I can't remember if I'm using the 10.10c hotfix, I'll see if I can find out later tonight.
I found a video someone made with exactly the same screen flickering problem I have. Notice how all 2D objects such as the HUD and flag markers stay visible but everything else goes black. http://www.nazif.info/videos/battlefield-bad-company-2-screen-flickering-problem/dVrLjxA02Jo
Storm_Seraphin
12-01-2011, 18:23
I used to have a couple of years ago 2xATI's crossfired & they were matched pairs. Had a few troubles in general with game play with Bf2142 & Crysis + a couple of others. Things like artifacts appearing here & there, flickering, scan lines apearing, waypoint icons blacked out, players names being blacked out, textures being blacked out or glitchy. Found that you had to leave the catalyst settings on standard & not to overclock the cards for it to be stable(sort of). stuff like that. So i went & just got 1 new ATI card & tada sorted.When rendering with 2 cards it was great, playing games was a bit bleh. just my experience with crossfire, good for work, not so much for play just to gain a few frames per sec.
If I had a smaller screen I would probably use a normal single GPU card but even with my 5970 if there's an explosion next to me and all the dust, etc is blasted into the air my frame rate drops below 25. If a dual GPU card like the 5970 can't keep up with BC2 at my screen res and settings, a single GPU card has no chance! I need as much power as possible!
Here an eyecandy
notice its not to change ur mind and make horny, k here we go its the
EVGA GTX 590 lmao
534353425341
:D
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this 590 is 2x 560 i think and will give you 210 to 256gb/s.
OK ROZ PLEASE LISTEN THIS TIME (i told him this before) erhum... DISABLE THE ATI OVERDRIVE IN CCC
ok i wasn't shouting lolz.
Go to CCC / graphics / unlock the padlock / untick the enable ATI overdrive. Flickering done/black screen done. Faceman and I had the same problem. Its a known x-fire issue.
Get the latest drivers 1st m8, then do it.
One other thing: go here : C:\Users\rozandhis5970\Documents\BFBC2 then edit the settings.ini file : here's mine this will suit you perfectly roz
[WindowSettings]
Width=2560
Height=1600
Fullscreen=true
RefreshRate=60
VSync=true
[Sound]
Quality=high
VoipEnable=true
SpeakerCount=0
[Graphics]
Effects=high
Soldiers=high
Vehicles=high
Overgrowth=high
Undergrowth=high
StaticObjects=high
Terrain=high
Shadows=high
Bloom=false
HSAO=false
MSAA=1
Water=high
MainQuality=custom
Texture=high
DxVersion=auto
Aniso=4
Detail=high
RenderAheadLimit=2
Fov=55
turn that blinkin bloom OFF (false) Also you'll know that our 5970 will run maxed out 2560x1600 with 4x AA BUT with large explosions at very close range we
get a lil gfx lag (down to 20FPS or so) which for me is pants, so 2x AA is perfect. VSYNC needs to be ON (true) as you will deff get gfx tearing as your screen is 60hz and your FPS is over 60fps (not good)
Do these roz and be happy ! :pp: I hope so m8y
PS. where MSAA = 1 means 2xAA (2. would be 4xAA) and Aniso = 4 means 16xAF (2. would be 8x) ;)
Looks good so far, u can try that Roz m8,
but a few points are useless in this config. Set VSync false ( lol u dont want to limit horizontal to the possible vertical refresh rate, that limits ur fps ) and DXVersion=10 not auto ( on auto it uses DX 9 as standard ), DX10 has softshadow-technic which makes shadow rendering more stressless for ur GPU [ biggest upgrade when DX 10 came out, Crytek used it as first Dev in Crysis to show whats possible and how many more shadows u can render without loosing performance ( was necessary cause of the jungle in Crysis ) ]. And why Bloom off, theres not much difference u should notice u just get some wannabe-lightmap/specular-mapping-immitation which lets objects that should be metal or plastic look more after it. On Horizontal-Shadow-Ambient-Occlusion ( HSAO ) and Horizontal-Based-Ambient-Occlusion ( HBAO ) i m not sure to both, i know thats just a mapping/shading technique but in a BC developer post from Dice i read once HBAO is NVIDIA optimized in BC, HSAO should work fine on both shaderarchitectures ( NVIDIA Cuda 1 way / AMD 4-5 Way Shader ).
Just try it first with H0RNETs vanilla setup without edits, if it works u can adjust these settings with some of my tips
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Dunno if there is still issues with this brightness but always been better for me to have bloom off. I'll give it a try and compare.
eg below of how it used to be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCTkP6K4omM
OK ROZ PLEASE LISTEN THIS TIME (i told him this before) erhum... DISABLE THE ATI OVERDRIVE IN CCC
IT'S ALREADY OFF! I turned it off ages ago when you first told me about it but it made no difference to the flickering problem. The latest 10.12 drivers break BC2 for me, the game starts but just stays on a black screen and I have to force quit it. The 10.11 drivers make BC2's frame rate drop to single digits and the 10.10 hotfixes I've tried (10.10c and 10.10e) cause problems in other games I play so I had to go back to the normal 10.10 drivers. I'm using the 10.10 profiles because they seem ok but I don't know if the newest ones are better.
I already use virtually the same settings that you do but with no Vsync, no AA and 8xAF and I still get the noticeable frame rate drop in heavy action. I'll give your settings a go and see if it's any better.
Edit: I would like to have the Bloom, HSAO, etc enabled because I think it makes the game look nicer but I have them turned off to get better performance. I know that enabling HBAO in the in-game settings makes my frame rate drop a little bit, even with no Vsync, no AA and 8xAF... Why is that?! My computer is so powerful it should theoretically be able to run a game like BC2 with all graphics settings on highest with no problems, but it doesn't. I guessed it is because of DICE not fully optimizing the game to run at 2560x1600, is that correct?
well i have no probs roz, grr you say. I have had probs with flickering and a black screen thingi and sorted it run maxed out at 2560x1600 np.