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Battlefield 3 5770 crossfire poor scaling

eWasteman

eWasteman

eWasteman

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Joined
6 Nov 2011
Posts
17
So I bought another 5770 to crossfire as I wanted to have a bit more graphics horsepower to play BF3 and so far it seems im generally better off having crossfire disabled - espcially during online play.

I did a little benchmark test using FRAPS during the opening sequence of the campaign level where you're in the car with the ruskies. Graphic settings set to "high". Results were:

Crossfire enabled:
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
3225, 60000, 21, 92, 53.750

Crossfire disabled:
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
2610, 60000, 34, 55, 43.500

Usage averaged about 60%

As you can see there is only a 10fps average increase, and actually a lower minimum fps with crossfire enabled. This is my main problem as in multiplayer say i'm flying a jet on caspian - the frames will drop horribly low sometimes and i'll just end up crashing into a hill - not a problem I have using just one card.

It's been suggested that my other hardware could be bottlenecking the setup so here's what i'm running:

Vista 64
Asus P5E intel X38 mobo
Intel core 2 quad Q9300 2.5Ghz
2 X 2GB corsair DDR2 XMS2
Sound Blaster x-fi fatality sound card
2 X Samsung harddrives
1 X Enermax Galax 850W modular PSU

Graphics software - Cat 11.10 + CAP4 after an atiman driver removal run.

I've ordered an aftermarket CPU cooler so I can overclock and see if this remedies the situation. In the meantime does anyone have any suggestions as to why this is happening?

Any help much appreciated!
 
Yeah, most likely a CPU bottleneck. Check your CPU usage with crossfire enabled on Caspian Border and it is probably 100% with your GPU's at 60%.
Check with one card disabled and your CPU usage is probably down to 85%.

I have a Q6600 at 3.2ghz and crossfire 5850's and I've had to disable one of them for the game.
 
I am not having any issues with scaling my 5850s in BF3. Infact even with my CPU (i7 920) on default both GPUS are showing 99% usage.

Even the beta was fine for me with my old Q9450 @ 3.4Ghz
 
I'm not saying it's a crossfire scaling issue, I'm saying it's a CPU bottleneck. :)
Although infact after re-reading the OP post, you should have no problem in single-player with your CPU. It was multiplayer I was talking about.
 
Irish_Hawk said:
I'm not saying it's a crossfire scaling issue, I'm saying it's a CPU bottleneck. :)
Although infact after re-reading the OP post, you should have no problem in single-player with your CPU. It was multiplayer I was talking about.
Click to expand...

Yeah in single player I haven't noticed any excessive frame drops or poor performance, it's multiplayer were my problems lie....and it's multiplayer i'm only really interested in. I did the benchmark in singleplayer to provide fair test.

Like I said I hope overlclocking resolves it! Fan is being delivered tomorrow.
 
im surprised at ur frame rates, not sure what would cause that as my minimum doesnt go that low and i have a weaker system, i got a 5770, athlon dual core 3hz (am2+) 4gb 800mhz ddr2 ram and i have most things on ultra.
ive always heard that bf3 has good crossfire scaling so i believe irish hawk may be correct, a cpu bottleneck could well be the problem.
 
I have 5770 crossfire and have no problem with BF3. I play at 1680x1050 with all set to ultra apart from textures which are on high & motion blur set to off. Am getting 55-65fps most of the time in multiplayer on big maps like caspian, but I have an i5 2500k at stock and my lower res helps.
Overclocking your cpu should help I would have thought, maybe check with msi afterburner to see what your gpu use is in game (mine is 98-99% on both cards most of the time).
 
If I put my textures on ultra I also get mad lag spikes in the fps, I am not sure if i'm running out of vram or ram, but the fps go from like 45-50 to 2 for a couple of seconds. But it really does sound like your not able to push your cards to 100%.
 
Still working at this...

Upgraded to windows 7 just on the offchance vista was causing problems but it doesen't seem to have made any diffence.

Got my aftermarket CPU fan installed but now i've got to flash my BIOS as it doesen't want to let me change any settings for overclocking
 
I'm curious to see how this plays out.

Are you running MSI Afterburner? Whats your GPU usage and with task manager, whats the cpu usage on the bf3.exe when you're doing this?
 
Are the cards the same make? I had 2 different make 5770's at 1st and they never seemed quite right, slow downs etc. Now they are identical I gained 20fps in furmark and seem to run much more smoothly.

Get that CPU overclocked!
 
eWasteman said:
Still working at this...

Upgraded to windows 7 just on the offchance vista was causing problems but it doesen't seem to have made any diffence.

Got my aftermarket CPU fan installed but now i've got to flash my BIOS as it doesen't want to let me change any settings for overclocking
Click to expand...

we are both running the same motherboard and processor "there about's" and i have the same problem as you, i am suspecting my motherboard is not allowing my crossfire to perform as it should.
someone suggested maybe my CPU is letting me down?? in crossfire for me cpu is about 98% and in single card cpu is about 70-75% usage
 
Whats your GPU usage though?

If your CPU usage is close to 100% then it can't feed any more data to the cards to process so that'll be your bottleneck I'd think.

Do you know what speed your pci-e slots are? Are they both x16?
 
ToejaMz0r said:
Whats your GPU usage though?

If your CPU usage is close to 100% then it can't feed any more data to the cards to process so that'll be your bottleneck I'd think.

Do you know what speed your pci-e slots are? Are they both x16?
Click to expand...

In crossfire my GPU usage is around 45-55% and CPU is very close to 100%

If this means I have a CPU bottleneck how can this be with a Q9550 ? Know it's not the last word in CPU's but its no slouch either ??
 
Just to add my 2cents,
I'm running the spec in my rig, nothing is overclocked.
MSI afterburner shows 100% usage of both cards when running multiplayer on latest drivers and caps.
This allows me to run @ 1920x1200 default high spec with ultra textures.
I get about 30fps on Caspar border with the default ultra settings but I like the extra frames by leaving it on high.
High with ultra textures gives me 50-70 fps average.
By contrast when I ran BC2 with a dual core my cards only ran at 60% each with the CPU at 100% with is why I knew the CPU was causing me issues.
Hopefully this helps somewhat...
 
chid76 said:
I have 5770 crossfire and have no problem with BF3. I play at 1680x1050 with all set to ultra apart from textures which are on high & motion blur set to off. Am getting 55-65fps most of the time in multiplayer on big maps like caspian, but I have an i5 2500k at stock and my lower res helps.
Overclocking your cpu should help I would have thought, maybe check with msi afterburner to see what your gpu use is in game (mine is 98-99% on both cards most of the time).
Click to expand...



Just an update to my previous post, I just upgraded to a 27" 1080 monitor and still get about the same frames with the same settings (apart from the higher res). To be honest I'm really surprised how well these cards do with BF3. Hope you get it sorted as your cards should be more than capable of some nice results.
 
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