Widescreen Gaming Forum

Whats the performance hit in Eyefinity vs. regular AA? :)

Has a fairly significant blurring effect on text there... but otherwise it doesn't impact image quality too badly, IMO. Either that or my eyes are bad at the minute... :lol:

Terrific, and I just replaced 10.4 with 10.9 yesterday :oops:

I noted no change on games I play, I just did it as it's been a few cycles since my last driver update.

I haven't been able to get any concrete view on the one thing I am interested in. Has ATI resolved Eyefinity+Crossfire yet?

I run one HD5870, and have considered a second to get Crysis to work smooth at 5760x1200 with max settings on the busiest levels.

However, I have not bothered as I assume Crossfire and Eyefinity don't work together unless you have the dual GPU HD5970.

Anyone know if this is still the case with the newest drivers?

From what I've seen, ATi has "fixed" crossfire with the new 6xxx series (almost 100% increase), but I have yet to see anything from sites about Eyefinity, let alone Eye+Xfire.

From what I was seeing goofing around this morning with the hackery, this new MLAA and "Surface Format Optimization" don't do anything spectacular with my 5870. Won't matter in a few months, since I'll be getting a 6970 (or maybe a couple months later, a 6990).

SFO "reasoning":
Surface Format Optimizations

Recently a storm-in-a-teacup developed over something called target format substitution. In six titles, AMD developed a profile that intercepted calls to FP16 formats and substituted them for FP11. In practice this made a noticeable performance difference at the time on the titles used, which are all DirectX 9. This substitution is a widely used technique by developers to increase performance without substantially, if at all, reducing image quality. The optimization could be turned off, but only by disabling Catalyst AI - which disables all performance and quality profiles, and alternate frame rendering. The kickback, generated from Nvidia review guides highlighting the substitution and advising that Cat AI be disabled, caused a consensus amongst the community; 'We want enhanced profiles, but we want the option to disable - consumer choice.'

AMD listened to this, and now offers a checkbox to disable surface format optimizations. Use this option if you are experiencing quality issues in a game and suspect that this is the problem; not many times will you find it solves the issue. Additionally, AMD combined the Catalyst AI and mipmaps detail level sliders, to make the new texture filtering quality slider. This offers performance, quality and high quality modes, with quality and surface format optimizations enabled by default. This will apply to HD 5000 series as well as HD 6000 series, to be introduced in the AMD Radeon HD 6000 launch driver due now, Catalyst 10.10.

I read this a couple times, and I still don't "get it". Maybe it's just my alcohol of choice...

From what I've seen, ATi has "fixed" crossfire with the new 6xxx series (almost 100% increase), but I have yet to see anything from sites about Eyefinity, let alone Eye+Xfire.

From what I was seeing goofing around this morning with the hackery, this new MLAA and "Surface Format Optimization" don't do anything spectacular with my 5870. Won't matter in a few months, since I'll be getting a 6970 (or maybe a couple months later, a 6990)...
...I read this a couple times, and I still don't "get it". Maybe it's just my alcohol of choice...

From what I have seen ATI needs to update its marketing staff more than the drivers. Naming conventions appear to change every generation for no good reason. I read somewhere that the new 6xxx currently on the table aren't quite what was hoped for due to some manufacturing limitations (can't make the nm small enough or something) so they are continuing the 57xx line. But... they think no one will buy the 6xxx if they named it 67xx as it should be, so they named it 68xx... erm... or something like that... Now they are worried what to name the ones that should have been 68xx, so they are thinking 69xx, and then the dual GPU version of that would be erm... 69xx.5...? LOL

:mrgreen: Ok, might be just me, but why not name the new ones 61xx or 63xx or 65xx...

As for the new chips themselves, called Barf or something, I wonder if they are actually worth upgrading to from the 58xx? There was a reasonable jump from 48xx to 58xx in power. Is it the same with the 68xx or is it fear of missing out releasing something this year in case NVidia takes the slot?

No, I don't think so. AMDs roadmap for graphics has had the 6000 series released at approximately this time for quite a while, and it makes sense really to start with the mid-range parts before releasing the higher-end ones... because it will allow time for some more bugs to rear their ugly little heads in time to get fixed. ;)

Oh, and these cards are codenamed "Barts" (not barf :lol:) much like the high-end chips are codenamed "Cayman" - they're named after islands.

And ATi/AMD have had a very consistent naming scheme since the 2900 series... it's nVidia that keep chopping and changing, although I'll fully admit to confusion as to why AMD decided that calling the midrange parts 6800 and high-end parts 6900 instead of 6700 and 6800 respectively was a good idea this time... 8)

The 6800 series look like almost 5800 series performance for considerably less money and further improved power efficiency... which is good. Time will tell what Cayman (the 6900 high-end chips) bring in terms of performance, although I hope that it'll be the sort of performance jump evidenced by the 5770 to 6870 shift.

However, I can't help but look at the 6000 series so far, and think that it's an incremental release that fixes issues with the 5000 series rather than brings any truly "revolutionary" performance increases to the table. Having said that, when were truly "revolutionary" performance increases last seen? I'd be tempted to say the G80 (for nVidia) and the 9500/9700/9800 series for ATi. Everything else has been more incremental improvements, even when the technology has shifted (say from dedicated to unified shaders)...

From what I've seen, ATi has "fixed" crossfire with the new 6xxx series (almost 100% increase), but I have yet to see anything from sites about Eyefinity, let alone Eye+Xfire.

From what I was seeing goofing around this morning with the hackery, this new MLAA and "Surface Format Optimization" don't do anything spectacular with my 5870. Won't matter in a few months, since I'll be getting a 6970 (or maybe a couple months later, a 6990).

Check our review in the sticky and you get both Eyefinity and Eye+Xfire. :)

MLAA's effect is very game dependent and a mixed box, but it can give amazing results vs. the performance hit. Check out the images here vs. 4XAA and especially pay attention to wires on bottom left:
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,795264/So-aktivieren-Sie-das-neue-Morphological-AA-auch-auf-einer-Radeon-HD-5000-Update/Grafikkarte/Test/

Did MLAA give you less performance hit in Eyefinity resolutions?

No, I don't think so. AMDs roadmap for graphics has had the 6000 series released at approximately this time for quite a while... and these cards are codenamed "Barts" (not barf :lol:) much like the high-end chips are codenamed "Cayman" - they're named after islands... ATi/AMD have had a very consistent naming scheme since the 2900 series... it's nVidia that keep chopping and changing...

:hide

Happily, I stand corrected on some of my remarks. Since the late 90's, I have been soley ATI equipped, not ventured to NVidia really for high end cards. My recent upgrade path was like X1650>X1950>HD4870x2>HD5870. I never looked too closely at the naming conventions until recently. Truth be told, I think I was having a little poke at ATI :nudgenudge and being unfair in that view, but it's a reaction to the fact I really can't afford a HD6xxx series card to solve some issue that I don't feel should have been in the HD5xxx at retail.

However, I can't help but look at the 6000 series so far, and think that it's an incremental release that fixes issues with the 5000 series rather than brings any truly "revolutionary" performance increases to the table. Having said that, when were truly "revolutionary" performance increases last seen? I'd be tempted to say the G80 (for nVidia) and the 9500/9700/9800 series for ATi. Everything else has been more incremental improvements, even when the technology has shifted (say from dedicated to unified shaders)...

Agreed, I have always been satisfied with the quality and performance of ATI hardware :bowdown , but then I never ventured to any multi gpu/screen advanced gaming configurations until recently. I only got my HD5870 about 6 months ago when they became more available and better priced here. It's been many years since Crossfire has been around so I just assumed it was a mature technology without "ifs" and "buts. Then I found it couldn't be guaranteed that it would work with Eyefinity, and after the trouble I had trying to get a DisplayPort adaptor, I felt that ATI perhaps rushed things out to market get the upperhand on their rival by showing off new technologies asap.

In any case, I'll likely have to wait for the HD7xxx before I can upgrade, by which time I'm sure things will be improved a lot. In the meantime it means running anything Crysis like with AA off... :(

I never looked too closely at the naming conventions until recently. Truth be told, I think I was having a little poke at ATI :nudgenudge and being unfair in that view, but it's a reaction to the fact I really can't afford a HD6xxx series card to solve some issue that I don't feel should have been in the HD5xxx at retail.

Now you know how it feels to buy a product from Apple. :lol:

The 6800 series look like almost 5800 series performance for considerably less money and further improved power efficiency... which is good. Time will tell what Cayman (the 6900 high-end chips) bring in terms of performance, although I hope that it'll be the sort of performance jump evidenced by the 5770 to 6870 shift.

However, I can't help but look at the 6000 series so far, and think that it's an incremental release that fixes issues with the 5000 series rather than brings any truly "revolutionary" performance increases to the table. Having said that, when were truly "revolutionary" performance increases last seen? I'd be tempted to say the G80 (for nVidia) and the 9500/9700/9800 series for ATi. Everything else has been more incremental improvements, even when the technology has shifted (say from dedicated to unified shaders)...

For the most part, it seems to be giving more value for the money. You're getting a whole lot more performance in the 6870 and 6850 than you did last year for $179 and $239. And, once the higher end cards come out, you'll see the top end of the performance envelope open up. AMD stated that they named these cards 6800, versus 6700, (even though they were closer to the 5700 price point), because they wanted to leave more room at the lower mid range for more SKUs. So, there is a slight shift there. I'm guessing we'll see 6700, 6600, 6500, etc in FY11.