Better Driver Support / Performance - AMD CrossfireX or nVidia SLI?

Which offers better driver support for dual card performance? AMD CrossfireX or nVidia SLI?

I am still bent on moving up to a 17" and would like to go with an NP9370. AMD Enduro is not an issue, so which has better support and performance when it comes to a dual card configuration? AMD or nVidia?

 

Whenever I hear about crossfire or sli, I almost always hear about issues. Even if one company has better dual card driver support, it will still be the lesser of two evils. I naturally think of Nvidia having better dual card support, but I am not sure.

 

I had Crossfire 6870's in my previous desktop and I had zero issues with them. AMD is pretty active with doing updates with their crossfire optimization. My vote is for the crossfire setup.

 

I voted for nVidia;
First cards in my X7200 were 6970m´s crossfire.
It wasn´t fun at all; I had black screens, blue screens, freezes many times.
Crossfire didn´t work on a bunch of games, sometimes you could trick it to work with some tools around, but that led you often to freezes etc.
It was a so horrible experience for me that I said "no crossfire" in the next 3-4 years! There were always new drivers coming soon and you always hoped that they would fix the issues, but no, most of them didn´t, and if they fixed one problem, you had another one instead.
I replaced the cards with GTX 485m SLI and I swear I had never ever a bluescreen, freeze, black screeen or whatever... it just worked as it should.
And even now with my GTX 680m´s (SLI) and I have to use a cracked driver to use SLI, it works without any problems. SLI profiles like the one for Far Cry 3 are coming quick with driver updates...

I know that some people reporting no issues with crossfire, some reporting issues with SLI, but my experience is just as I stated - maybe others play different games or use other software. Or they have bad luck/ good luck.

I am no AMD-basher, my Desktop GPU is AMD and I have no problems at all - and of course it could be that Desktop crossfire works better than mobile crossfire, I only can tell what I experienced with my 6970m´s...
Ask sirana, he will tell you nearly the same problems with his config of X7200 and 6970m´s.

So, I say go for SLI!

 

NVidia - although when comparing multi-GPU setups, the gap is not so great. The cost to performance/stability ratio is in AMD's favor, but NVidia has yet to be trumped in both benchmarks and software support/market penetration.

 

DO NOT GO WITH THE 7970m XFIRE CONFIG IF YOU WANT PEACE OF MIND.

I have had the opportunity to test both the 7970m config and the 680m sli config.

While the 7970's are significantly cheaper than the 680's, they have some serious issues.

For some odd reason, the slave GPU on my 7970 setup would often shoot up past the 95C mark, and could actually hit 100C if left alone long enough. The overheating issues happened in furmark, kombustor and metro 2033 on high-ultra settings. Repasting did NOT fix the issue, and I am not the only one to experience high temps on the slave GPU. You may need a modded bios from your vendor to fix this issue, and even then I suspect heat is still higher than the 680m's.

In addition stability is a concern. I would get odd crashes/system lockups/bsods in certain applications/games with the 7970's (When HWinfo can lock up your system with the 7970's, there is an issue). This was with the later version of the 12.11 catalyst beta drivers and the 13.1 WHQL.

With the 680m sli setup on the other hand, my slave gpu rarely goes past 80C. The highest I've had is 85C on metro 2033 on ultra settings, and 10 seconds after it hit that point the fans kicked it and dropped the temps into the high 70's. You don't even need to Fn+1 as the temps don't get high enough to justify it.

The 680m sli setup is also stable as a rock. I've thrown every game I've had in my steam library at it and haven't experienced any crashing of any sort. Also, I find Nvidia's geforce experience to be a very nice piece of software. That being said, I'm not the most tech savvy person, so I like the convenience that the Geforce experience grants me.

At the end of the day, the 680m's just give me peace of mind. With the 7970's I was constantly uninstalling and reinstalling my drivers to get something stable. With the 680's I don't have to give a care about anything D:

If you have the cash to burn, the 680's are a no-brainer imo.

 

Call me biased, but sli all the way. I don't ever see myself going back to AMD after living with Enduro for all those months. Even without Enduro, performance goes to Nvidia. You have a 680m, you know it's the better choice.

I wouldn't go with the NP9370 though. Way to many people complaining about temperature/cooling issues. 85C with the 680m is better than 100C with the 7970m, but you won't get past the 60s with an M18x. Come to the dark side, wingnut. Just think of the overclocking

 

Appearantly the situation on AMD mobile cards is way worse.
I too had nothing but trouble with my 6970M Crossfire setup, and nothing has changed with the 7000 series.
They might optimize their drivers, but still are not comparable to Nvidia's drivers in both stability and issue-free performance..

 

The cooling on the np9370 is garbage. Stay far away. If you want dual cards than go for an m18x with 680m's in sli. Or wait a bit for the 780m and it's fully unlocked core!

 

Nvidia SLI wins by a mile. Sometimes it takes AMD a month or more to get proper Crossfire support working for a new release. I remember Skyrim taking even longer than that.

The only downside is the cost of entry.