Micro-stutter

[dechy]

Subject is about the only thing preventing me & my bro from pulling the trigger on what exactly to go with...

2x 6950 / 560Ti or 1x 6970 / 570

Yes the performance between the 2 setups are basically in different leagues, but the thought of experiencing this micro-stuttering is more than enough to have us nervous on going SLI/CF. Last time I had a duel video card setup was in the good 'old 3dfx days.

Sure some people may or may not see / register the issue, but some would probably go ape sh*t experiencing it, enough to return a card maybe?

Seems like the whole subject exploded when a few articles about it surfaced semi-recently, but it seems to have died down; so either people just got used to it or just don't touch SLI/CF anymore until its fixed.

So, to whoever has recent generation video cards in SLI/CF, do you experience it? a lot or barely? (like every 30 seconds, every 5 minutes) I'm leaning more towards an ATI setup because of Eyefinity, so the horsepower is needed.

It would be easy if we could settle for a single 6950/560Ti, then we'd buy 2, test it out ourselves, and if no micro-stuttering, the other person can just buy another 2, but if it's hell, then we'd just split the cards heh.

 

[Mousemonkey]

I've still yet to see this microstutter.

 

[dechy]

Been scouring the massive amount of data on every hardware site there is for SLI/CF setups for hours with my brother, and he finally pulled the trigger (he has until the 31st to decide, I'm waiting for cyber black Friday).

2500k/P8P67 Pro/8GB/XFX 6950 2GB x 2

If it's sorta like the problems people have with DLP TVs, then I'm in the clear, my eyes/brain might be too sluggish to register tiny dips/flickers/etc... guess I'll know first hand soon enough.

Thanks!

 

[iam2thecrowe]

many of the people who believe they see microstutter get it confused with stuttering that is not caused by the graphic cards at all, it can be ram, hard drive loading, poor game coding etc. I have even read a thread where the fan speed ramping up and down was causing stuttering, setting a fixed fan speed profile fixed this issue.

 

[bystander]

It also appears that the higher end cards have less issues with this. At least by the testing done on this site. Unfortunately they didn't use a large sample. There have been very few complaints about micro stutter from your selection, but there was a lot with the 6800 cards.

 

[ilysaml]

It also appears that the higher end cards have less issues with this. At least by the testing done on this site. Unfortunately they didn't use a large sample. There have been very few complaints about micro stutter from your selection, but there was a lot with the 6800 cards.

Yes that's true Microstuttering occurs with low & mid range GPUs such as 6850/70, barley noticeable with HD 6950/GTX 560Ti, never existed with 3-way CF/SLI.
Also the article claimed that some cheap LCD monitors hide it.
From my own experience, when V.Synch is enabled, V.Sync can help to prevent "Microstuttering" by enforcing a fixed regular frame update rate no matter how quickly the next frame is or isn't ready the framerate will always be at 60 (and it all depends on the monitors referesh rate, but since the most are 60 not 120 Hz you won't find any lag)
So, i would recommend you to go with the CF of the HD 6950s