5970 and 480s are failures waiting to happen. too much heat and power into a small area. Get two 5850s just as fast as 5970 , cheaper, quieter and if something happens you still have one card while other is in the mail. I will never buy another x2 card after many issues.
Hi, Zebo. Long time no see...
What kind of problems did you have with your dual GPU card and which card did you have?
Since my GTX 280 FTW from EVGA kicked the bucket (BTW, I'll never buy an air cooled FTW card again, they are overclocked too aggressively with reference cooling, and the failure rate is outrageous), I've been running a GTX 295 single PCB version.
In fact, I kinda like this card because:
a) microstuttering is not an issue, it seems blown out of proportions by German journalists,
b) the card performs WAY better in many games, with a clearly visible advantage in terms of smoothness/FPS (Fallout 3, LotRO DX10, Crysis, etc.) and image quality (8*AA is often "free"),
c) it's actually quieter than the 280 FTW - the fan has a more pleasant sound and the card is stressed less often
but there are minor, yet annoying issues sometimes like e.g. a bug in Fallout 3 where the daytime sky with HDR flickers with every elevation change or mouse panning movement in SLI mode.
Therefore, my next setup will be single GPU again. The 480 disappointed me - I don't care so much about power draw but noise and heat simply suck and performance ain't that stellar, either, especially in older, yet demanding games like Crysis. I'd gladly buy a powerful single GPU card with large VRAM for GTA IV but I have literally nothing compelling to upgrade to.
I was wondering what your X2 issues were.