Quote Originally Posted by SKYMTL View Post
I think I understand what you are saying. However, I don't think the possibility of going from a HD5970 to a GTX 580 is even being discussed. What I did mention though is the inherent performance instability that dual card or dual GPU cards are known for. This isn't a case of "the drivers don't work" but simply an observation that single GPU cards will have consistent performance (most of the time) while dual solutions are usually waiting for driver updates, etc in order to live up to their absolute potential in the newest games.

I don't know about you but I am sure most gamers would want near-full performance from day one rather than waiting for drivers / app profiles weeks after a game is released in order to achieve full performance from their $500 purchase.
People that run 2560x1600 need dual gpu solutions at this moment in time because no single gpu setup can handle it. Most gamers know and understand the risks of using dual gpus. Yes it would be nice if the dual gpu setups worked like the old 3Dfx SLI, but that had to do with glide and it was the only reason worked it. People wait all the time for profile updates to their SLI/Crossfire setups all the time. Frame rates are not stable in a lot of games regardless of dual/single gpu unless you're capping the frames with vsync. Switching from different areas of a game cause dips in frame rates and you can't tell me a single gpu card can hold a certain fps throughout a game unless they are cpu bound and running a low resolution. If you want to talk about bad dual gpu performance look at the original 6800 SLI you could not play many games at all with a good fps without a profile. Both Nvidia and ATI have come a long way since and it is foolish to ignore this market segment of gamers and lately crunchers that want or need to use multi gpu setups. It would be good to realize that all the people that buy dual video card like the GTX460 or 6870 and X58 motherboards are going to run them in dual gpu setups. Check the Tech report and guru3d review they use SLI and crossfire in both.