BFBC2 and xfire on 6970

simbady · 22 Feb 2011 at 14:43

I found with my 6950@70 when playing BFBC2 the GPU would overheat causing the computer to crash, then made a custom profile on afterburner and it hasn't crashed once. The GPU fan profile on the 6970 seems silly, it will go to around 92C on ~35% fan speed. Usually the fan with my new profile ramps up to around 50% and keep it GPU around 78C, played for hours, not one crash yet.

ashmanuk67 · 22 Feb 2011 at 16:03

simbady said:
I found with my 6950@70 when playing BFBC2 the GPU would overheat causing the computer to crash, then made a custom profile on afterburner and it hasn't crashed once. The GPU fan profile on the 6970 seems silly, it will go to around 92C on ~35% fan speed. Usually the fan with my new profile ramps up to around 50% and keep it GPU around 78C, played for hours, not one crash yet.

Ok thanks for that info

I have set mine to 43% on first card and auto on 2nd through CCC all is good in the cooling department now, but I have done a fresh install of win7 and after that I have not had a single computer shutdown so all good there too

But I do feel what is the point in Xfire if there is such low level loading of each GPU so if anyone can check there Xfire loading through GPUz on each card you will become my FRIEND lol.

^Andy^ · 22 Feb 2011 at 18:58

Something doesn't sound right to me - I have crossfired 6870's and have not had any experiences resembling yours.

Have you tried both cards one at a time to verify that one of them isn't hosed? - i.e. remove both cards - put one back in primary slot and test the fps and then pull that card and repeat with the other card.

Also do you have another crossfire bridge to try - perhaps your existing one is damaged in some way?

mountaincow · 22 Feb 2011 at 19:14

Yes something is wrong, you should be getting close to twice the performance, ie 100% load on each gpu. Sorry though I have no experience using crossfire, only SLI.

My friend had a strange problem similar to yours whereby his cards (GTS 250s) would stay around 50-60% usage in games, only going up if needed to maintain a minimum of ~40fps. They ran at 100% running benchmarks though, and after a bit of searching we found some reviews where the SLI scaling on his motherboard was being praised. They were getting the same results as him though, it really smelt quite nasty.

He never fixed/understood the cause of this problem and has now moved back to a single card, although it likely was the mobo (Asus M3N72-T Deluxe 780a), it's interesting that we couldn't find anyone complaining about the same thing.

413x · 22 Feb 2011 at 19:47

i know why i bought the g15 keyboard now.. so i can view the gpu clocks, temps and usage via afterburner!

i have a 6950 flash crossfire [lots of issues but working now]..i have to boot gpuz to stop the second gpu hitting 100% usage with nothing on issues with clocks etc etc, i also have a custom AB fan profile as like others the default AMD one is pathetic, the card would get to 90s without it, mines aggressive as i cant hear it much and run 2 monitors

using the g15 keyboard i can see the 1st card sis at 500/1380 and the 2nd card clocks down to 250/150 when not in a game or benchmark,

another of my personal issues was the second card not using any GPU and not clocking above the 250/150, but with several different [and seemingly random] fix attempts now i can see when i run a game maximised [must be maximised] both cards clock to 880/1380 and use 100% GPU if required, [880/1380 is all ive got so far on 1.1V]

coincidently my board is an asus too.. im not majorly impressed, my g15 doesnt work in BIOS, my pc never wake up properly, im wondering if these gfx issues are to do with it too

ashmanuk67 · 23 Feb 2011 at 08:07

Thanks for your help guy's,

I had my Tuesday night clan game session on Black ops and computer did not crash once

yes i am happy.

What I done last night was put most settings in CCC to high and Black ops played well apart from those areas in the map where you get poor FPS though I think that's a game problem.
Anyway went back to GPUz and on each card I was seeing 70-80% load

wow

So can someone explain to me if this is whats to be expected ?

RichardH754 · 23 Feb 2011 at 14:05

On BC2 I only get 38%-48% use on each unless I take V-Sync off then it goes to 99% on both.

mountaincow · 23 Feb 2011 at 15:10

al4x said:
coincidently my board is an asus too.. im not majorly impressed, my g15 doesnt work in BIOS, my pc never wake up properly, im wondering if these gfx issues are to do with it too

I have the same board as you flashed to p6t bios so I could SLI, I never had any issues with gpu usage being lower than 100% on each card. I also have no wake up problems, but can't comment on your keyboard; I have a razer lycosa which works fine in bios.

You can use the overlay on afterburner to display gpu info and fps though, and toggle it on and off using a key binding.

ashmanuk67 said:
So can someone explain to me if this is whats to be expected ?

As long as you have vsync off (which you said you do) you should get 100% usage pretty much all the time.

ashmanuk67 · 28 Feb 2011 at 23:18

Can someone please explain GPU usage in crossfire ?

If Vsync is on then GPU load on both cards should be low ?
And if Vsync is off then GPU load should be high ?

So for a 6970 crossfire set up gpu load of 35% on each card is Low ?

Single card is 80-100% load diffo but crossfire is low I don't understand :confused:

Davedree · 1 Mar 2011 at 00:05

this probably isn't of much help but I used to suffer the same problem with my old 4870 in bfbc2, and no other game would make my pc restart.

Where the game is so demanding , overclocking using overdrive in ccc caused the gpu to
flutuate between overclocked and standard clock speed. If I turned off overdrive the game would run without crashing or gsod, So i used rivatuner to overclock and never had a problem after. 2x 6970's at 50% fan load must be deafening lol

Surveyor · 1 Mar 2011 at 00:08

Can someone please explain GPU usage in crossfire ?

If Vsync is on then frame rate is limited to 60fps.

A single 6970 might have to work at 80% to produce 60fps.

Two 6970's might work at 40% each to produce 60fps, i.e. 2x30.

If Vsync is off then the GPU(s) should work at 100% to produce as many fps as possible.

~>Dg<~ · 1 Mar 2011 at 00:13

have you tried the cpu at stock

ashmanuk67 · 1 Mar 2011 at 01:16

CPU @ stock ? no I have not would would this tell me ??

Just been Playing BFBC2 for over an hour and buth GPU's showing 30-40% load each (VSYNC OFF) so why do I not get anywhere near 80-100% load on each GPU ?

Gelly54 · 1 Mar 2011 at 01:55

I feel for ya man, I hope you sort it out soon. I'm no expert but I'd say its maybe something to do with motherboard or some settings you may have missed?

ashmanuk67 · 1 Mar 2011 at 08:17

Ok Update,

I am used to the old style Cat's so missed this,

I,am on win7 so went to "show hidden icons" bottom right of screen,right mouse AMD icon, which then shows you all the cards "select top one" then select "3D Settings, then select "Standard settings" now my set was set to BALANCED so I have now set this to OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE then when I went back to BFBC2 I had 70-86% load

I used this setting in the old style CCC but does not show in new style unless you do what I done above.

I will do more testing tonight.

ashmanuk67 · 2 Mar 2011 at 08:23

Well I done a whole night of gaming last night, And GPU load was around 30-60% in BFBC2.
I think I will give up on it now, I cant work out if this is normal for this game or I should be getting more ?

Final8y · 2 Mar 2011 at 10:26

ashmanuk67 said:
Well I done a whole night of gaming last night, And GPU load was around 30-60% in BFBC2.
I think I will give up on it now, I cant work out if this is normal for this game or I should be getting more ?

You can be CPU bottlenecked in that game.

ashmanuk67 · 2 Mar 2011 at 12:43

Final8y said:
You can be CPU bottlenecked in that game.

OK Final8y I did ask that question on CPU forums and people there felt the Q9550 was good enough ? but I also get low GPU usage on COD Black Ops.

If this is normal then I am happy but a few people have said that I should be seeing 80-100% load ? The way i am looking at it is that those games are not stressing out the 6970 Crossfire, so I am seeing this low loading.

When I run Heaven bench I do get high GPU loading, Fluctuates but it's from say 60-90%.

On another note I over clocked both my cards to 920 core and 1400 memory and my Heaven score's went down ? only by about 100 or so BUT went DOWN why would that be ??

Sorry to be a pain

Ezyryder · 2 Mar 2011 at 12:57

The memory might be the culprit there... have you got proper 6970s or are they unlocked 6950s?

ashmanuk67 · 2 Mar 2011 at 13:36

Hi Ezyryder

Nope these are real 6970's

when I bought the second card a month and a half later the BIOS switch was set to position 2 out of the box
? I have set it to 1 on install. I don't know why that was set like that ?

On the new 6990 the 2 BIOS switch's positions are for (standard clock 1) and overclock on position 2

GPUz shows up all good here each at 880 core and 1375 memory.