should I swap my two Evga Gtx 580 3gb's for 2x Ati Radeon HD 7970's? if so why? thanks for the help guys
Difficult one. I would ask someone on the board (1 that I know of?) that has crossfire 7970s what their opinion is. The 7970s have dropped in price and there is question marks over crossfire performance in certain games but the 580s will continue to fall in value with the full 6xx range lining up shortly. I would do it if I was certain I would see no performance/driver issues in CF
hmm, I don't know anybody on here that has them :/ don't really know many people here actually :/ hopefully someone jumps in to the thread
I don't see the point of upgrading, unless you are not getting the fps you want in the games you play.
The performance increase would not be significant. In some games it could even be worse. I don't know if you overclock, but those 580's are capable of up to 1000mhz on water.
I'd say stick to the 580's as well, Unless you're trying to game at some crazy resolution, SLI has a better track record (in terms of drivers and compatibility) than CF but I'm sure it the right games CF works pretty well too. I'd try and dig up some benchmarks and see if the 7970's have got the performance you want. Personally I'd stick with the 580's or think about 680 4GB's
Apparently Eyefinity is slicker than Nvidia's version, but driver support has always been a bit of an issue with AMD/ATI, might take even longer to get games to take advantage of both cards.
I wouldn't, as I had 2 EVGA GTX 580 Classy's, and the upgrade to the GTX 680's wasn't worth it in my opinion. Not for a mere 10% increase that I can see. I would sit tight for the HD8970 or GTX 780.
This could be argued as correct but from my own experience (HD6970 / HD7970 Eyefinity & now GTX680 Surround), I would say they are both as good (or bad) as each another. Generally I would say Surround is easier to setup from the get go - I was presented with extended mode in the correct orientation and resolution. This is unlike setting up Eyefinity with my AMD cards where I was presented with 3 1080p monitors in cloned mode and in the wrong orientation. It also works without profiles from a gaming / desktop mode point of view - by this I mean games automatically maximise to Surround mode whereas desktop screens will "snap" to each individual screen. You can do the same with Eyefinity but you have to use different profiles to do so. Surrounds "ease of use" advantage could also be considered its disadvantage as Eyefinity has more options/choices available to the end user.
Well the drivers for the 580 are much more mature, aswell as the fact that historically SLI has had better driver support than Crossfire. Whilst you might see a small increase in performance with the 7970's in benchmark scores, to the naked eye during gaming, it would be negligable. I would only suggest looking at a next gen gpu if your 580's were really struggling, which would seem unlikely. If you were looking at a single card, then it may be a different story.
