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Crossfirex headscratcher.

Mtmagz

Mtmagz

Mtmagz

Associate
Joined
15 May 2011
Posts
17
Hi guys, I have an issue here I can't find the answer to myself so I hope someone on here can shine a light on it.
Basically I have put together a crossfire system with 2 x HD6870's, running both cards in BF3 gives only 15 - 25fps, running with 1 card enabled gives 65 - 75fps.The question is why the huge drop? This just makes the game unplayable. The cards have both been installed with the latest drivers and are registering in ATI CCC. Other games run OK and Furmark also gives good results.
System :M/board - Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H
PROC.- AMD Phenom 3 core black
HDD.- 650GB WD black
MEM - 6gb ddr3 1600 Kingston
PSU - 600W BEQUIET.
1 X XFX 6870 BLACK 1 X SAPPHIRE 6870
I have tried swapping the cards over but no diffirence, does anything in the bios need to be changed?
 
is it mayby ur board is running the 2 cards at x8? mayby not, im just spitballing here.
any option on the bios regarding the pcie rails?
boath cardds and the xfire bridge seated properly?
 
opstrat said:
is it mayby ur board is running the 2 cards at x8? mayby not, im just spitballing here.
any option on the bios regarding the pcie rails?
boath cardds and the xfire bridge seated properly?
Click to expand...

Two cards @ 8x are about 3% slower than two at 16x. I know this only too well, because I used to run a pair of 5770s at 8x8x. And when I compared them to a system running 16x16x the differences were so minimal they could have even been margin of error.

His issue, I am assuming (and I stick my neck out) is simply down to him not installing the CFX profiles which remain separate to the drivers.

The same profiles that even when you install them sometimes don't register or work. Or, are just broken.

I distinctly recall having to rename my shift.exe (for NFS : Shift) Grid.exe before Crossfire would work. And yeah, I was running the very latest profiles they just didn't seem to like my set up.

By which time I had played through half of the game as a stuttering mess.

Hence why I'm not really a big fan of CFX, but each to their own :)
 
what settings is battlefield at when in xfire?

when i ran my 2 6850's i had to use 14 month old drivers and newer caps before it was stable. as andy says sometimes xfire isnt worth the hassle. only some games fully support it.
 
opstrat said:
what settings is battlefield at when in xfire?

when i ran my 2 6850's i had to use 14 month old drivers and newer caps before it was stable. as andy says sometimes xfire isnt worth the hassle. only some games fully support it.
Click to expand...

And you'll still run into problems because BF3 devours vram. So all of that additional horsepower is simply flushed down the proverbial swanny.

The only real piece of advice I would be prepared to offer on any multi GPU set up is ; make sure one card is up to the job incase you have to disable multi gpu rendering and fall back on one card.

Never, ever, buy a multi gpu system that can not cut it using one card. Quite simply because there will be too many situations where two will run worse than one and you'll be falling back onto one card.

Which, if I'm perfectly frank is what renders a multiple gpu system utterly pointless. As if you can buy one gpu that can cut it why even bother with two?

Sure, there are very very rare circumstances where you don't have a choice, but for the most part people do have a choice and choose problems :confused:
 
I had the same problem with a pair of 5850's. After given up and selling one of my 5850's and reading ppl's problems with crossfire later on. It may be down to your CPU bottlenecking.

I had phenom x4 clocked to 3.8ghz with my 5850's.

I tired everything from new motherboard to new PSU. Reinstalled Windows, reinstalled drivers, used driver sweeper etc. Only thing i didn't change was my CPU or xfire bridge.

Games like Dirt 2,3 worked great.
Games like Crysis had no impact.
Games like TF2 would play at 15fps.

And i dont think 8x/8x is a problem at all.
 
ALXAndy said:
very very rare circumstances where you don't have a choice, but for the most part people do have a choice and choose problems :confused:
Click to expand...
Agreed. 2x6870s roughly about £250-£275 ish depending on where you got them or the brand, and one 6970 which will play practically everything at a very reasonable setting doesn't get a look when it's practically the same premium, with no problems. Also probably using less power, no micro stutter, no pain in the arse problems such as this, i'd sell them to be honest and get yourself a single gpu setup, like a 6950/70 2gb.
 
Hi guys, thanks for all the info, still haven't cracked it yet. Removed all the drivers with driversweep and reloaded, put in the ATI bf3 cap profile, trawled through the bios looking for a clue but still 20 -30fps. Coming to the conclusion it's all wasted effort and expense.So I think I'll get rid and just settle for a decent single and hopefully goodbye to the hassle.
 
Ok, the proc is an AMD Phenom ii x3 720, stock freq is 2.8 but I'm running at 3.2, shuts down at 3.6.
I have now managed to get the game to run at reasonable framerate by turning down the eye candy, no way is it going to run acceptably with ultra settings.(Which is what I was hoping for with xfire)
As for 'operator error' yes there could be something in that, although I have built my last 4 pc's it doesn't mean I know what's going on inside, after all it's just assembly of suitable components. The real fine technicalities are way beyond me, and if I do need advice then this forum is as good a place as any to look for it.
 
You can't run it on Ultra due to vRAM limitations of 1GB for your cards - 1+1 doesn't mean 2 in this case. This may happen in other games with high in game settings or mods witch add bigger textures.
Try to donwload MSI Afterburner BETA, the latest one, and monitor the GPU usage for both cards and vRAM usage.
 
Mmmm, install 12.1's, ensure you have CAP three's on... I see solid scaling going from 6990 to trifire to quadfire in BF3... (although less with quad)... so I can't see what the problem is. Don't forget, you don' get near 100% scaling in BF3 especially on ATi as they've got problems with this game IMHO... however you sould deffo not be getting less no matter what RAM is on the card... if the ram is enough on one card it won't make ANY difference at the same ress with two cards.

As said above, ULTRA is for 1.5gb preferably 2gb cards only, so ULTRA is a no no, and I mean that only on textures, the others you may get away with as their just detail settings, NOT the sizeof the textures like the first setting. Run Medium or HIGH on textures then I'd put everything else on medium and High. My lads 2.8ghz Q duo and single 6850 is running 40-50fps at this kind of setting on a 1650x1050 monitor, looks and feel great!
 
Well I installed AFTERBURNER and the usage for gpu1 was 99% and 90% for gpu2. Memory and core clocks were what they should be. Memory usage for gpu1 was 58 out of 2048 which I take it is the total of the 2 cards. No memory usage available for gpu2.
As advised turning down the settings does give an increase fps but not as good as turning off the 2nd card. Pugheaven says turn CAP3 on not really sure what that is, although I have loaded the Bf3 CAP profile in ccc.
 
I saw great scaling from 1 5850 to CF. VRAM is a limitation but it isn't going to show itself as 60 odd FPS on 1 card down to 25 odd on CF. Is this single player we're talking about?
 
MSI afterburner might not show accurate memory usage for AMD cards in crossfire. (It didn't used to - maye have been fixed.)

Have you tested with other games and benchmarking tools besides BF3? That way you can find out if there's a problem with your crossfire setup, or if there's a problem with just that game.

Also try running with a single card - but swap which card is primary. That way you can find out if your second card is iffy.
 
d_brennen said:
I saw great scaling from 1 5850 to CF. VRAM is a limitation but it isn't going to show itself as 60 odd FPS on 1 card down to 25 odd on CF. Is this single player we're talking about?
Click to expand...

Depends, if he run at 60 to 70FPS with one card and medium to high settings and with two cards using ultra settings, might put him in that odd position.

But, that doesn't mean there isn't a problem somewhere in his setup or some conflict between the cards themselves.

By the way, the cards ran at the same speeds? Try to set them manually at default clocks and see if there is an improvement.
 
I can't reallty run Quadfire on my rig as with 4 GPU's enabled for BF3, I get around 1/2 the fps that I do with just 2 GPU's enabled. Whether the CPU doesn't know wtf is going on, not sure... however BF3 scales lovely with 2 GPU's and very nicely with 3 GPU's so... not sure what the OP's problem is here :-( Shame as he should be getting nice fps.
 
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