7970 CF issues

[The RealRollo]

******* - - AMD CrossFireX Drivers - Opportunity Lost

Last year, we saw many games launched, many of those were AAA titles, and there were issues with CrossFireX support not being available at launch. In fact, sometimes it took AMD a month or more before CrossFireX was working..... is this issue behind us? Apparently not for the 7970 as we still do not have a CFX driver to put together a CrossFireX review.

We have to just sit here with our heads in our hands and wonder why AMD is seemingly trying its best to piss off its customers that spend the most on its retail products; the CrossFireX gamer. We have seen more than a few AMD video card owners openly express that AMD’s lacking driver support is pushing them to not consider an AMD GPU for their next buy. And honestly, it is hard to hold that decision against them.

Remember the days of monthly Catalyst Driver releases? Remember the days of Terry Makedon, the "CatalystMaker" pushing those out? That all seemingly ended when Terry moved to CPU marketing and AMD seems to think that all of those efforts are no longer important. Let’s sit back and see if AMD squanders what could likely be it best GPU ever.

[SKYMTL]

I don't think the issues are widespread.

They have problems with a few games but by no means is Crossfire NOT working.

On the other hand, AMD hasn't seeded reviewers with second HD 7970 cards as promised. That in and of itself says a lot IMO.

[Jebusman]

Originally Posted by SKYMTL

On the other hand, AMD hasn't seeded reviewers with second HD 7970 cards as promised. That in and of itself says a lot IMO.

They originally promised they'd send two cards? Was there any official reason why they didn't?

[SKYMTL]

The seconds cards were supposed to be sent after our reviews went live. Still waiting....

[Keltron 3030]

Hardware Heaven got Quadfire reviews up, however they got their cards from Saphire Sapphire Radeon 7970 Quad-CrossFire First Look Performance - Quad Graphics Cards

[jibz]

I got a client a great deal on some 5770s lately to crossfire. Needless to say SWTOR doesn't have a crossfire profile yet and bf3 isn't happy with crossfire either, I will never recommend multi-gpus from AMD again as it has been nothing but problems.

[techman95]

Originally Posted by jibz

I got a client a great deal on some 5770s lately to crossfire. Needless to say SWTOR doesn't have a crossfire profile yet and bf3 isn't happy with crossfire either, I will never recommend multi-gpus from AMD again as it has been nothing but problems.

but arent all multi card setups nothing but problems overall?

[jibz]

I personally run 3 nvidia cards, I use to run surround 3 monitors but that gimmick was minimally functional and I wouldn't recommend that either, So back to one big main screen for me. The competition has some short comings as well. But AMD's driver support for new and up coming titles really needs to step up and clear some of this frusteration.

If AMD released driver updates more frequently and listened to their customers I would have no problem giving them the thumbs up again. But currently to get crossfire to work in some new titles you need to use a registry hack ontop of a custom user made crossfire profile in a beta driver. I have no issue with single amd cards.

[The RealRollo]

Originally Posted by techman95

but arent all multi card setups nothing but problems overall?

For single computer monitors SLi is almost flawless. I haven't had less than 2 GPUs in my computers for about 7 years now. SLi just works.

It's true that Surround (and 3d Vision Surround have some issues but those are very non standard resolutions and some game engines just don't play nice with it. (this isn't isolated to NVIDIA or ATi)

[Phill]

I personally run 3 nvidia cards, I use to run surround 3 monitors but that gimmick was minimally functional and I wouldn't recommend that either, So back to one big main screen

That is my testimony as well. Tried Surround and quickly determined that one big display was the way to go. I bought a U2711 and have not looked back.

For single computer monitors SLi is almost flawless. I haven't had less than 2 GPUs in my computers for about 7 years now. SLi just works.

Same here. 7900GS SLi, 8800GT Sli, GTX 260 Sli, GTX 470 SLi, currently gtx 570 Sli.