choice of the people 480 versus CF 5870

So with all the speculation i was just wondering if alienware decided to throw a single 480 nVIDIA card in the m17x would you guys take that over a crossfire 5870? The CF is faster but does seem to have some issues.

 

If anyone wants to give a couple reasons for thier choice that would be cool. Personally i have an older M17x with nvidia GPU never really had any issues, great comp. But alas is getting old and about time to upgrade and been watching the forum, and the CF scares me a tad lol.

 

I just prefer NVIDIA, and think they have far better driver support

 

Not sure which way I would go, but Nvidia has a lot of custom driver support as well, like from places such as laptop2go.com

 

I perfer 5870CF.

 

The only problem I seem be having with crossfire is older games not out right supporting them.
Mainly hitman blood money. But quickly using the provided config tool and forcing SLI my frame rate went from a up to 15 fps to a rock solid 60fps.

 

CrossFire 5870's for me. I could care less about both manufacturer ati and nvidia, they both have their issues to be honest.

 

With the new vbios + driver release for the CF 5870, I'd go with that. It will be much faster than a single 480M. Not that there's a choice right now, I don't see a 480M making it's way to the R2 anytime soon.

 

Cost wise, CF 5870M would probably be cheaper than a single GTX 480M. Performance wise, it's obvious which setup is better though the GTX 480M would most likely have better performance in high tessellation. That said, a GTX 460M SLi soluton should give the 5870m CF a good run for its money if nVidia's pricing isn't absurd.

 

i would take the 5870s as well. nvidia has "better" driver support but its bad too. they don't release 15 drivers per day beacuse they are all awesome. until a better dual card setup comes along in the m17x, the 5870 will always get my vote.

 

i'd get the ati any time every one complains about the diver suport but except the resume on sleep issue and issue when reinstalling them the wrong way i never encountered an issue with these driver

 

latest vBios and 10.8 driver means CF5870 is back in the game. definately going for CF5870 now.

 

What version of the vbios driver that support crossfire 5870 and the ati catalyst 10.8 and the 10.8 profile...???

Can somebody post the download link...???

i have problem with my crossfire...
it seems that my bios incompatible with the 10.8 catalyst and its profile...
Other said that i should update the Vbios...
Is that true...???

By the way, according to the vote, I Vote Crossfire 5870....
Its Faster, and its cheaper...
Both 5870 and Nvidia GTX 480 has the same performance...
But to me ATI HD Crossfire is a bit faster than the 480 GTX...

 

Prefer Nvidia because the drivers have more consistent behaviors, and Nvidia is faster than ATI at fixing problems. ATI can spend months just trying to figure out what went wrong, and Nvidia often has a fix in a few weeks.

Further don't know how many people use multimonitors, but the support and simple function is far better on Nvidia hardware. ATI gets serious, and I mean SERIOUS kudos for Eyefinity. That is simply great tech and when the M17x gets 3 mini displayports, 5870/6870 are going to be in their glory land. But if you've ever not rebooted and simply plugged in a monitor on a machine with each kind of card you know that with ATI you are likely to have a "must reboot" problem where as the Nvidia driver will just figure it out.

Driver installs are smoother (sometimes with problems but rarely) on Nvidia. I'd say in 50-75 drivers over the many years I've had possibly 5 go seriously wrong and need a full clean out of all driver components. ATI has had less driver revisions over time (which is possibly a "pro" if that's how you prefer it), I can't even count the number of times something got messed up and I had to revert a driver, almost ALWAYS requiring a driver cleanout to get rid of the nasty bits.

Now Nvidia has had some nearly stupid "issues" as well, failing to be on board for HDMI for way too long, and now they still don't have a lot of Displayport, whereas I can count on ATI to be up to date on specs and abilities. So in terms of hardware features I can USE, vs the useless Cuda crud, I like ATI very much. And I have much hope, maybe pure faith, that they will be very driver savvy in a few more years. I bet we won't even remember the troubles we have now. I remember when Nvidia didn't do so well too, so they have a history as well.

But for the "right now", I can plug in any program from any vendor on a Nvidia equipped machine and 98% of the time there are zero issues with display. I can attach or remove a screen and the driver will figure out what I'm doing and it will correctly remember those screens settings and placement whether I'm at work, home or visiting friends and relatives. Digital vibrance lets me extract a bit more contrast out of a cheap screen that can't do it on it's own. And it does it with a slider bar so I don't have to mess with 5 settings (like ATI) just to fix something I only need while I'm using some cheap screen at work or someone's house.

If something goes wrong with my machine, 98% of the time I don't have to install a different display driver to find out if it's causing or contributing to the issue. I can't tell you how many times I've argued with someone saying "the display driver couldn't be causing that problem" only to remove the ATI driver and have the problem vanish. Not good.

It's not a night and day difference. And I don't think most folks are going to be "unhappy" with the M17x and the CF 5870's as long as they stick with the known working drivers and such. But for me, those driver issues can cost me hours I don't have to spend on something I'd rather not be doing, which is fixing them. And in the many years I have owned both, worked with both, and installed and used many types of software on both, I know from painful experience how valuable a basic and solid driver is. At this point to save those hours, I don't honestly care if I lose a few FPS. I like high resolution so I can't lose tons of FPS, but I will err on the side of slower but more durable just so I don't have to fix the stuff that breaks.

Not everyone will see things through these goggles. And that's just fine. But if asked to elaborate on just why I have my preference, this is it. ATI is nearly there. They know what to do and they are working on it steadily. So please don't count them out, because we all need vendors competing for our business, even the vendors need that to keep their skills sharp. And feature wise I think ATI is exactly where the market needs them to be. Cuda might be something interesting for Nvidia, but it has zero use (but is still inherent in the cost) to those of us who just want to display an image or program on a screen. It's a waste of effort, money and resources that drives up our cost pointlessly. ATI chose features far more wisely in that area, and kept costs down in doing so.

That's the long version, sorry

 

QFT Nvidia's drivers are light years ahead of ATI, and I am so tired of ATI's at this point, this may be my last notebook with an ATI card. Thereofore the 480 has my vote.

 

This is only my second laptop w/ ATI cards since my first generation XPS laptop back in 2004, but I did have 3-4 laptops w/ nvidia cards dying on me too often in the past. I just hope the ATI's in my M17x will run for a long time like it did w/ the first XPS x). I still have it some where lol. 3.4ghz w/ ATI (forgot the series), and skull paint on LCD lid x).