In chimax's world, if any individual doesn't own every video card combination in existence, the people who *have* tested them, aren't allowed to point out flaws, if the flaw is in an amd product.
Reviewers say there is an issue, but that is invalid, because posters in a thread don't all have both sli and cfx...
The logic is baffling.
You know I've actually asked reviewers who have done SLI/Crossfire reviews, and have made no mention of smoothness, if one was better than the other. The answer has always been, "Outside of a particular game or two, there is no difference".
Also, SLI being smoother in the conclusion seems to contradict the context of the review itself.
Sleeping Dogs has proven to be a graphics challenge even on a single-display, so when expanding to three displays the demand is that much greater. We were able to run it at the highest resolution of 5760x1200 with the highest in-game settings on both GTX 680 SLI and HD 7970 GHz Edition CrossFireX. The primary option that caused the most decrease in framerate was the AA settings. We found that different AA settings were playable between both configurations.
It was clear from the get-go that AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition CrossFireX was a lot faster in this game. We were able to play at the "High Quality" AA option. This enables High FXAA and Medium SSAA. The fact that we are running at Medium SSAA at 5760x1200 is incredible to begin with. The performance was there with HD 7970 GHz Edition CrossFireX that we were averaging 50 FPS and performance was smooth.
This was not the case with GeForce GTX 680 SLI. When we tried to play at High Quality AA performance was a lot slower, and we will show you this in the apples-to-apples performance. The only option that was playable was the lower "Normal Quality" AA. At Normal AA FXAA is at Normal and there is no SSAA at all. Raw performance was higher than the AMD setup, but the overall image quality was a lot less with the lower AA settings. Visually, and in terms of the overall gameplay experience AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition CrossFireX was superior in this game.
In Sleeping Dogs the 7970 crossfire was superior
In Max Payne 3 we were able to play at 5760x1200 with both setups, with the highest in-game settings. Once again it came down to what AA settings were playable. We started off with FXAA, and found this to be playable on both setups, so we pushed the MSAA setting up to the highest playable setting. We found that this was 2X MSAA on both GTX 680 SLI and HD 7970 GHz Edition CrossFireX. We find this impressive because MSAA in this game does cause a large performance drop, and at this resolution it is even greater.
While the gameplay was the same between both video card configurations, technically AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition CrossFireX was faster by 9% in this game.
Here, it was the same gameplay wise. The 9% difference in performance couldn't be leveraged to improve gameplay.
In Battlefield 3 Single Player we experienced a distinct performance difference between GTX 680 SLI and HD 7970 GHz Edition CrossFireX. In this game, there was a performance advantage on the 7970 GHz Edition CrossFireX platform. This performance advantage allowed us to play this game with 4X MSAA enabled in the game, meaning the game was running at its highest possible in-game settings at 5760x1200. The GeForce GTX 680 SLI was a bit slower, and struggled at 4X MSAA for an overall unplayable experience. We had to drop the AA setting to 2X MSAA, and then it was playable at 5760x1200.
The framerate in the table shows the GTX 680 SLI being faster, but this is with a lower 2X MSAA versus 4X MSAA on the 7970 GHz Edition CrossFireX. Note also that it is only a frame difference on average, yet 7970 GHz Edition CrossFireX is running a whole MSAA level higher. In the apples-to-apples tests below you'll see just how much faster CrossFireX is at the same settings.
In BF3 single player 7970 crossfire dominated the 680's forcing lower IQ settings.
Battlefield 3 Multiplayer is more demanding than the single player mode. Also, we aim for higher framerates in multiplayer for smooth gameplay and the best multiplayer experience possible. Once again though, just as we saw in single player, there is a distinct performance advantage under AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition CrossFireX.
With AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition CrossFireX we were able to play at 5760x1200 with 2X MSAA and the highest in-game settings. This is good because this gives gamers a choice in AA. There are many that don't like FXAA due to possible issues of blurring textures. In this case, HD 7970 GHz Edition CrossFireX is powerful enough that you don't have to use it at 5760x1200. You can turn off FXAA and instead use 2X MSAA, still giving you MSAA, but with the sharpest textures possible. Now, we did disable motion blur, to give us the "smoothest" experience under HD 7970 GHz Edition CrossFireX. We didn't have to do this with GTX 680 SLI.
With GeForce GTX 680 SLI you do not have the above option. 2X MSAA is unplayable, so your only options are playing with FXAA or No AA. Since No AA looks bad in multiplayer, our only option for playability is FXAA. What is even more remarkable is that even with a higher 2X MSAA setting, HD 7970 GHz Edition CrossFireX is still providing us higher framerates compared to GTX 680 SLI with FXAA in multiplayer, granted motion blur is off but that really doesn't affect framerates, it is more of a smoothness feeling it helps with.
Looks like the 7970's are better here too. (Note the bolded part and the comment on how that helps smoothness.)
We turned on 2X MSAA on both GTX 680 SLI and 7970 GHz Edition CrossFireX. AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition CrossFireX is 34% faster. However, also notice how much the framerate jumps all over the place with CrossFireX, whereas with GTX 680 SLI it is more consistent. This consistency helps provide GTX 680 SLI gaming with smoothness, whereas with 7970 GHz Edition CrossFireX we notice these wild fluctuations in framerate.
Then further down they say this^. This looks like a classic case of being influenced by the benchmark results. But, let's say that we are going to accept this assessment. It's 3 games, not much at all really, and 4 tests. Only in one of the four, do they make any mention of smoother gameplay for nVidia.
Per usual, there is more than just performance, i.e. framerates, when determining the "best" platform for gaming. We of course speak about the real-world "feel" of gaming between SLI and CrossFireX on a multi-display setup. There is no question that SLI feels smoother, thanks to the added technology that NVIDIA employs to address this very topic. That said, you can still have a good experience with AMD CrossFireX in Eyefinity given enough framerates. In those terms, this is where AMD CrossFireX has excelled today in our testing.
Once again the bolded part seems like classic subjective response being influenced by what the reviewer's been told. He's been told it will be smoother because of nVidia's frame metering tech, therefore he perceives that it's smoother. This is why subjective testing has to be done double blind. If the reviewer knows what hardware is in use it's
impossible to not be biased by that knowledge.
Overall this review makes a pretty weak case for nVidia superiority in any way. Actually, if someone were to buy 680's over 7970's based on this review it would be pretty obvious they didn't read the review and jumped straight to the conclusion. Or, suffered from a major lack of reading comprehension.