Crossfire questions.

[ALXAndy]

Well I'm nothing but honest.

Basically I have come into a very large sum of money. Most of it I am giving to my mother so she can get a new washing machine and oven, but I'm left with a nice chunk for myself.

This is 100% disposable money. I could set it alight and it wouldn't really affect my day to day living.

Now I was considering getting a 7970, but it won't really do anything that my Lightning card doesn't. Infact, it won't do anything my lightning card does and that's a fact. However, even if I decided to (which would be really stupid) I would then have a month old Lightning card as a paper weight.

I don't like selling things, so 99% of the time I don't, I simply stuff it all under the bed. Dealing with people annoys me and I don't have much patience.

So, I would like to frivolously waste some money.

After thinking about it for a couple of days I am tempted to get another 6970 Lightning. Again, this is 100% a waste of money and purely for s**ts and giggles. Thus, I have a few questions.

I don't want you to tell me that Crossfire is awesome because I know it isn't. So please, drop that line of thought and just be honest about it.

So, here are the concerns I had, I would prefer if you can answer with experience and not just guess because I could do that myself.

1. Does any one here run Crossfire on a micro ATX board and if so, what are the temps like ?

2. Is it as easy to disable Crossfire and use one card as it is to disable SLI? would it be a royal PITA?

3. Is the TFIII suitable for butting up like that? please remember that the cards will literally become siamese twins. I know with the older Radeons running those horrid blower coolers that it works pretty OK because they can pull air in from the end of the card (the Batmobile bit).

4. What games don't work very well in Crossfire. And by "very well" I mean, what games does it not like and how much aggro is it now? The last time I ran Crossfire I depended on it, and that was stupid so I got rid of it. This time, however, one card alone is more than man enough for the task so I can always disable it, can't I?

Please, if you can, list to me the games that you have had problems with. Be honest.

Thanks !

 

[BaDBoY_uK]

Changed your tune...

 

[MDPlatts]

 

[Surveyor]

Hello guys I'm looking to plunge into the world of Crossfire & just wanted to know whether multi-gpu's are worth the headaches of drivers, profiles, scaling, caps etc. What are your experiences? & please don't let the fact you've paid more for a multi setup sway your opinion, if its been a waste of time & money then please say. Likewise for good experiences

Rely:

No.

A sample of other posts:

Crossfire is a PITA even at the best of times.

Avoid multiple GPU setups unless you really, really have no other option (folding, Nvidia surround, enough grunt for Eyefinity with reasonably sized monitors ETC)

All of the above = aggro you don't get with one card.

Do you see?

As I have said before. If you like piddling around and messing with everything and not actually playing games - go multi GPU.

There's no reason to multi GPU as there is a single GPU card good enough for every resolution. So you're doing it for the scores.

Unless of course you want to run Nvidia surround or get a decent framerate in Eyefinity. Otherwise? overkill, pointless indulgence.

As you can see you're wasting your time and money

Spend it on something else instead.

 

[bridder]

I can give you some input on some of the questions, hopefully others can chip in and fill in the blanks...

1. No.
2. It's a checkbox, never used it though when I was crossfiring so aren't sure if a reboot is required.
3. Don't know.
4. Modern tombraiders don't work with CF, Legend, Anniversary, Underground. Trackmania does work with CF but the menus etc are streched, the game is fine though.

hope my tiny input is of some use,

regards,
J.

 

[Si105]

Yeah, you can disable it pretty easy if it gives you problems. That's why crossfiring higher end cards isn't so bad, as you still have decent performance with just 1 card active.

 

[ALXAndy]

Changed your tune...

Yeah.

I know it's a stupid thing to do, but tbh when I have disposable income it goes.

I don't have any credit cards, no loans, no overdrafts and I only buy what I can afford.

TBH I'm already changing my mind. I don't think I could stand the heat or noise. I would have to crank the Deltas that do the intake and it would get noisy quick.

Yeah, you can disable it pretty easy if it gives you problems. That's why crossfiring higher end cards isn't so bad, as you still have decent performance with just 1 card active.

Just out of interest could you tell me how much it clocks to and the idle temp when you disable it? The problem is that logically it is still there.

It's just the heat man. When I ran the 295s I could stick my feet at the back of the rig and keep them toasty. More heat means you gotta get rid of it, meaning I would need to up the Deltas to audible levels.

As you can see you're wasting your time and money

Spend it on something else instead.

Very true. TBH by tomorrow morning I'll probably have changed my mind. Problem is if I buy anything at all that doesn't either go in or relate to my PC I just never use it.

 

[ThePengu1n]

Your money would be better spent on either more ssd's or custom watercooling tbh, as you hate multi-gpu setups so much.

 

[Daichin]

I have never had an issue with crossfire personally. It's smooth and it works fine. Maybe you just had bad luck in the past.

Anyway, I'll attempt to answer your questions:

1. No, I don't. I don't see how the board would make any difference to temperature since it quite clearly doesn't affect the cards at all. It's not like it is blocking airflow and I'm pretty sure the spacing in between card slots is standard.

2. In the latest catalyst (preview) drivers, you can setup profiles that automatically turn off crossfire for games that don't work. The only game I have to do this with is Section 8: Prejudice. It takes about 10 seconds to set up and once you have set it you don't need to think about it again.

3. I have no clue, but I imagine it would be slightly louder. I don't have any temperature problems personally. My sound card makes more of a difference to temperatures than the second GPU but that is just me.

4. Skyrim still has some problems but it works fine now. Section 8: Prejudice. Some old games don't like it very much (flickering) but you can set a profile for them.

Since you don't seem to like crossfire very much, perhaps you should look into case/ssd's/watercooling or whatever? A 6970 is more than enough for mostly everything.

 

[ALXAndy]

Considering a 580 Classified.

Found one for a good price and they're roughly 10% slower than the 7970 at stock speed. However, it's also 10% cheaper than the 7970.

It's going to be a long couple of days.

 

[TheRealDeal]

Considering a 580 Classified.

Found one for a good price and they're roughly 10% slower than the 7970 at stock speed. However, it's also 10% cheaper than the 7970.

It's going to be a long couple of days.

The thing is the gtx580 is 10% slower at stock but around 40-50% slower when overclocking comes into the equation. I would not touch a gtx580 at only 10% less money than a 7970. The gtx580 is not gonna be much faster than your current card. The only real upgrade is crossfire or 7970 overclocked.

 

[MeMeMeMe]

Well I'm nothing but honest.
So, here are the concerns I had, I would prefer if you can answer with experience and not just guess because I could do that myself.

1. Does any one here run Crossfire on a micro ATX board and if so, what are the temps like ?

No, but I did run my two cards right next to each other for a while on my current board (no space between them), which is the same thing.

I found the temps in the top card unpleasantly high - i needed to have an aggressive fan profile in afterburner to keep it going above 80C in demanding games, and was idling at 65, and I didn't like that. It did work, keeping it hovering around 79, but was noiser than i would like.

I also found that I needed to wedge something small between the cards, to ensure the gap between them didn't close completely - the top fan was actually connecting with screws on the top of the card below. With something small to space them out, it was fine.

Moving the cards apart made a drastic difference, temps have dropped at least 15C.

2. Is it as easy to disable Crossfire and use one card as it is to disable SLI? would it be a royal PITA?

I've never used SLI, but it's ridiculously easy.
If you have CCC running, just rightclick the tray icon, select disable or enable crossfire from the options, and it's done.
I never use that method though - I have crossfire running all the time without issues.
I did have issues when I moved the second card to another slot, and crossfire wasn't being enabled properly so I had to use the above emthod a few times while testing, but an uninstall of drivers and reinstall fixed it.

There's another method, if you use RadeonPro. Create profiles for specific games, and set it to enable or disable games for those specific games. This feature will apparently be in the February catalyst too.

3. Is the TFIII suitable for butting up like that? please remember that the cards will literally become siamese twins. I know with the older Radeons running those horrid blower coolers that it works pretty OK because they can pull air in from the end of the card (the Batmobile bit).

I don't have the Lightning, I have the standard TFIII, and I found it worked with a bodge, as noted above, but wasn't ideal.

4. What games don't work very well in Crossfire. And by "very well" I mean, what games does it not like and how much aggro is it now? The last time I ran Crossfire I depended on it, and that was stupid so I got rid of it. This time, however, one card alone is more than man enough for the task so I can always disable it, can't I?

I've been using crossfire for 2-3 years now, so I missed out on the trouble early users may have ha. For me, Crossfire (first with 5850s and then 6950s) has been a painless experience.
I also tend not to buy games on release - I hear sometimes games don't support crossfire well on release but by the time I get them, all is well. The one exception I can think of is Crysis 2. I did buy this at release, and the game was playable, but there was visual noise that made it a lot less fun, till it was fixed around the time they brought out the DX11 update. It's fine now.

Crossfire didn't work in Dead Space 1, but it didn't matter - even with the 5850, performance was a rocksteady 60fps IIRC. It works in DS2.

 

[MeMeMeMe]

4. Modern tombraiders don't work with CF, Legend, Anniversary, Underground. Trackmania does work with CF but the menus etc are streched, the game is fine though.

J.

Menus are stretched? Are you thinking of eyefinity not crossfire?

 

[Si105]

Idle temp generally remains the same as the 2nd card is still there restricting airflow. My top card hangs around 31, with the second around 36, stays around same if disabled.

With crossfired 6950's with the same cooler as your card, it can get very, very noisy. However it's easily fixed by using a fan profile in afterburner and locking FPS to reduce usage when possible.

 

[ALXAndy]

The problem is it would be like this

And that is too hot to have on all day. I'm leaning more toward the 580 classified tbh. The 7970 is getting more expensive by the day now, and beginning to creep toward the £500 mark.

 

[ALXAndy]

Ooo I thought of another question. Firstly, thanks to those who have answered the ones I had I appreciate that..

Do the 6 series Radeons get hot when you connect more than one display? as I forgot about the Fermi "instant roast" when using more than one and it could be a deal breaker.

 

[coupe69]

ALXAndy, why don't you spend a bit of cash on a decent case and full sized mainboard before splashing out on a video card(s) you don't really need??

 

[ALXAndy]

ALXAndy, why don't you spend a bit of cash on a decent case and full sized mainboard before splashing out on a video card(s) you don't really need??

Because the case is awesome. I've owned pretty much every decent case there is to have, and I like it because it's compact and the cooling is excellent; contrary to what people think.

The motherboard in it is an MSI, so will do 4ghz easy.

I don't want a monstrosity in my house.

 

[bridder]

Menus are stretched? Are you thinking of eyefinity not crossfire?

How fos am I? Of course you are spot on memememe, I was on about eyefinity, total brainfart, sorry Andy I got my wires crossed...

J.

 

[lomez]

aint read everything but if you do you might as well discard your name on here after fighting against it for so long, how you can be so defiant then oh ive got a few spare pounds lets go xfire labels you in my eyes as someone who wanted it but never wanted to spend the money on it.

sorry if i offend you but you sir, cannot be consdering this considering your posting history of avid anti xfire/sli defence i find it laughable i even seen this post.

even though i respected your opinion a little bit of me died with this post.