Hello all.
I have a Gigabyte Ex58 Extreme UD5. For the last 3 years or so I've been using a HD 6970 and noticed that newer games were getting harder and harder to run at a reasonable visuals/fps (this is obvious, but I've done ok for the most part).
So I figured I'd give crossfire a go and see if I can hang on a bit longer, picking up an additional 6970.
Installing it was a real ballache, but most of those issues were driver related. Now it's running just fine and both cards seem legit. However, instead of some improvement, the games I got it for are running worse than with a single card. Especially Shadow of Mordor, screen flickering and chugging, it settles after a while and it plays just fine, but then starts chugging again.
Some trawling suggests that crossfiring 6xxx series is silly since they're awful for some reason.
As you can see from this http://www.manualagent.com/gigabyte/ga-ex58-ud5-rev-1-0/owners-manual/page-7
The ex58 has an awful PCI slot design layout. The PCIEX1 & 4 slots are blocked off by the northbridge heatsink rendering them useless. My soundcard was originally in the X16_1 slot and the vcard in _2.
Since adding the additional video card, the soundcard is currently in the lower x8 slot.
Further reading will show that if the x8 slot is used, due to shared bandwidth, the x16_2 slot will be cut down to an x8 in speed.
I was thinking, if, as some have suggested on various forums, mostly TomsHW, that crossfire is straining the cpu, maybe overclocking it would give me the improvement I was expecting. I've never managed to have an overclock last longer than a month or two without the bios defaulting on it's own, so I'm hesitant.
After reading more I'm wondering if the diminished bandwidth is more likely the cause of the problems.
Dumping the soundcard sucks, although I mostly use a pair of usb headphones, the soundcard is handy for whenever I'm not using it, or when I play my ps3. I use the optical lead running into the soundcard and outputting to headphones.
I have a Gigabyte Ex58 Extreme UD5. For the last 3 years or so I've been using a HD 6970 and noticed that newer games were getting harder and harder to run at a reasonable visuals/fps (this is obvious, but I've done ok for the most part).
So I figured I'd give crossfire a go and see if I can hang on a bit longer, picking up an additional 6970.
Installing it was a real ballache, but most of those issues were driver related. Now it's running just fine and both cards seem legit. However, instead of some improvement, the games I got it for are running worse than with a single card. Especially Shadow of Mordor, screen flickering and chugging, it settles after a while and it plays just fine, but then starts chugging again.
Some trawling suggests that crossfiring 6xxx series is silly since they're awful for some reason.
As you can see from this http://www.manualagent.com/gigabyte/ga-ex58-ud5-rev-1-0/owners-manual/page-7
The ex58 has an awful PCI slot design layout. The PCIEX1 & 4 slots are blocked off by the northbridge heatsink rendering them useless. My soundcard was originally in the X16_1 slot and the vcard in _2.
Since adding the additional video card, the soundcard is currently in the lower x8 slot.
Further reading will show that if the x8 slot is used, due to shared bandwidth, the x16_2 slot will be cut down to an x8 in speed.
I was thinking, if, as some have suggested on various forums, mostly TomsHW, that crossfire is straining the cpu, maybe overclocking it would give me the improvement I was expecting. I've never managed to have an overclock last longer than a month or two without the bios defaulting on it's own, so I'm hesitant.
After reading more I'm wondering if the diminished bandwidth is more likely the cause of the problems.
Dumping the soundcard sucks, although I mostly use a pair of usb headphones, the soundcard is handy for whenever I'm not using it, or when I play my ps3. I use the optical lead running into the soundcard and outputting to headphones.
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