Frame Rating: AMD Improves CrossFire with Prototype Driver

[Suarez7]

As I've said in the other thread I may go crossfire when these drivers pop, all of these benchmarks showing problems with crossfire and minimum FPS really put me off. But if they nail this then I guess it will be a much better sell.

Hmmm, I wonder if I can get hold of the prototypes...

Try using the new 13.5 beta 2 drivers, they have some of the fixes in I think.

 

[LtMatt]

Try using the new 13.5 beta 2 drivers, they have some of the fixes in I think.

Welcome back Ace! How's that Tattoo?

 

[Suarez7]

Welcome back Ace! How's that Tattoo?

Lazer removal my friend. I'll be getting an AMD one it its place if they keep up making these awesome drivers.

 

[LtMatt]

Lazer removal my friend. I'll be getting an AMD one it its place if they keep up making these awesome drivers.

Bravo, excellent retort.

 

[Random Guy]

The latency will always at least double though with a second gpu rendering an alternate frame even if the frame times are lower.

I don't see it either but others have mentioned they can when enabling V-Sync.

Whether you can see it or feel it is down to the person, same with this supposed smoothness factor it seems. You're going to get more input lag from two gpu's than you are one though and this will be noticeable more if using vsync id imagine as there will be a delay on each gpu while you wait for the monitor to draw the frame and each frame from each gpu is held in the buffer.

Can't say I ever notice input lag with my 680 SLIs.

 

[flopper]

Can't say I ever notice input lag with my 680 SLIs.

some never notice microstuttering either or the difference between 60/120hz monitors or input lag from one monitor to the next.

 

[humbug]

PCPER did do a dodgy thing earlier though. They actually worked with Nvidia over FCAT for the last year,and then did three articles where they did not mention the Nvidia involvement at all,and indicated it was 100% their own effort. Their involvement with Nvidia was confirmed by the graphics card editor over on Anandtech,the editor over on HardOCP and hinted at by TR. In fact it seems according to the HardOCP editor,Nvidia had been fishing around with review sites to look for partners for FCAT.

That is nothing unusual, and i'm sure AMD do it as well, and Intel.

Its part of the hardware wars, they use reviewers as an advertising arm or to try and establish a bad name pinned on the competition.

pcper ignored the early stuttering in BF3 when they had the FPS upper hand, they ignored the GTX 680 stuttering in Crysis 3, they ignored past Nvidia Driver issues.

Nvidia have had problems, they still have problems and yet in pcper's apparent mission to highlight GPU problems they have not pulled Nvidia up for any of this for a very long time.

While making a huge issue out of AMD's problems and stay silent about Nvidia having the same problems in other games.

This is why reviewers should never be believed or trusted, just taken with a pinch of salt.

 

[TheRealDeal]

That is nothing unusual, and i'm sure AMD do it as well, and Intel.

Its part of the hardware wars, they use reviewers as an advertising arm or to try and establish a bad name pinned on the competition.

pcper ignored the early stuttering in BF3 when they had the FPS upper hand, they ignored the GTX 680 stuttering in Crysis 3, they ignored past Nvidia Driver issues.

Nvidia have had problems, they still have problems and yet in pcper's apparent mission to highlight GPU problems they have not pulled Nvidia up for any of this for a very long time.

While making a huge issue out of AMD's problems and stay silent about Nvidia having the same problems in other games.

This is why reviewers should never be believed or trusted, just taken with a pinch of salt.

The simple fact that there's loads of happy xfire users pretty much tell's its own story. Pcper and other sites are trying to say that a second card pretty much gives no real benefit which has to be wrong or xfire users would not be able to game with much higher settings over a single card. While at the same time amd have admitted there is a problem, i still think it's not as big a problem as certain sites are making it out to be. If it was no experienced users would be using xfire end of.

 

[andybird123]

The simple fact that there's loads of happy xfire users pretty much tell's its own story. Pcper and other sites are trying to say that a second card pretty much gives no real benefit which has to be wrong or xfire users would not be able to game with much higher settings over a single card. While at the same time amd have admitted there is a problem, i still think it's not as big a problem as certain sites are making it out to be. If it was no experienced users would be using xfire end of.

yet at the same time, lots of reviewers who have both setups in front of them have been saying "the AMD cards give better FPS, but just don't feel as smooth as the nvidia setup"... have then been ripped to pieces on here saying that FPS is the be all and the reviewers are lying because they are pro NV

anyone who posts up having tried both who agrees is also then nay sayed in to not posting their opinion

I'm sure many people don't notice the problem, in the same way that some people don't notice input lag, or the difference between 60hz and 120hz... however for many others the problem(s) are very real and could be a consideration on buying or changing something about a setup

anyway, if AMD are close to a solution then this is a good thing

 

[anthony566]

Why is it we always look to the hardware to solve frame rate issues when often game code improvements do solve a lot of he issues ... You see this with supported/promoted titles buy Nvidia or AMD ....

 

[TheRealDeal]

yet at the same time, lots of reviewers who have both setups in front of them have been saying "the AMD cards give better FPS, but just don't feel as smooth as the nvidia setup"... have then been ripped to pieces on here saying that FPS is the be all and the reviewers are lying because they are pro NV

anyone who posts up having tried both who agrees is also then nay sayed in to not posting their opinion

I'm sure many people don't notice the problem, in the same way that some people don't notice input lag, or the difference between 60hz and 120hz... however for many others the problem(s) are very real and could be a consideration on buying or changing something about a setup

anyway, if AMD are close to a solution then this is a good thing

How do you then explain the other people that went from sli to xfire and thought xfire was better. While i think there is a problem with xfire as amd have admitted, i still think its blown way out of proportion. Rusty has used both and is still using 7950 xfire and never returned to sli so surely it can't be as bad as some sites report. You state that some people can't see it, surely they must be blind if it's as bad as reported.

There's also the nvidia stutter bug that users are reporting. I find it slightly odd that not one site reports about this. They can easily see stutter with amd but not with nvidia. Strikes me as a little favoritism.

 

[humbug]

yet at the same time, lots of reviewers who have both setups in front of them have been saying "the AMD cards give better FPS, but just don't feel as smooth as the nvidia setup"... have then been ripped to pieces on here saying that FPS is the be all and the reviewers are lying because they are pro NV

anyone who posts up having tried both who agrees is also then nay sayed in to not posting their opinion

I'm sure many people don't notice the problem, in the same way that some people don't notice input lag, or the difference between 60hz and 120hz... however for many others the problem(s) are very real and could be a consideration on buying or changing something about a setup

anyway, if AMD are close to a solution then this is a good thing

Again... reviewers, pinch of salt and all that....

The only thing that maters is an every day user (not dependant on revenue from hardware makers ) with cited device / setup in their own rig.

I would believe Tom and MR Harry far more readily than pcper, Anand......

 

[Rroff]

While making a huge issue out of AMD's problems and stay silent about Nvidia having the same problems in other games.

Depends how you look at it being the same problem, the 600 series clock adjustment stutter isn't the result of the same underlying problem even if the end result of both issues is that the end user gets a less smooth experience than they should - so I don't think not reporting on one has any relevance as to the validity or bias of reporting on the other - also the 600 issue didn't affect all users (tho it does/did affect a large number) whereas the issue with crossfire will affect all users. Still its something that shouldn't be ignored by any tech site that is being objective.

The simple fact that there's loads of happy xfire users pretty much tell's its own story. Pcper and other sites are trying to say that a second card pretty much gives no real benefit which has to be wrong or xfire users would not be able to game with much higher settings over a single card. While at the same time amd have admitted there is a problem, i still think it's not as big a problem as certain sites are making it out to be. If it was no experienced users would be using xfire end of.

If you watch the side by side videos is quite evident that without the prototype drivers theres a lot lacking in how much benefit the 2nd card is giving with almost a third of the time its of no benefit. I think even those who are saying they are happy with crossfire now will probably report a pretty big difference if they sit down and do a before and after comparision once the prototype drivers come to release.

 

[TheRealDeal]

Depends how you look at it being the same problem, the 600 series clock adjustment stutter isn't the result of the same underlying problem even if the end result of both issues is that the end user gets a less smooth experience than they should - so I don't think not reporting on one has any relevance as to the validity or bias of reporting on the other - also the 600 issue didn't affect all users (tho it does/did affect a large number) whereas the issue with crossfire will affect all users. Still its something that shouldn't be ignored by any tech site that is being objective.



If you watch the side by side videos is quite evident that without the prototype drivers theres a lot lacking in how much benefit the 2nd card is giving with almost a third of the time its of no benefit. I think even those who are saying they are happy with crossfire now will probably report a pretty big difference if they sit down and do a before and after comparision once the prototype drivers come to release.

While i agree you can see a difference when the 2 are slowed way down it could also be a little like viewing aa. When its zoomed in 100x you can see the difference between different level's but when playing a game you rarely notice the difference between 8x msaa and above. We don't play games slower than normal so tbh if it feels smooth at full speed who cares how bad it looks in slow motion.

 

[humbug]

Depends how you look at it being the same problem, the 600 series clock adjustment stutter isn't the result of the same underlying problem even if the end result of both issues is that the end user gets a less smooth experience than they should - so I don't think not reporting on one has any relevance as to the validity or bias of reporting on the other - also the 600 issue didn't affect all users (tho it does/did affect a large number) whereas the issue with crossfire will affect all users. Still its something that shouldn't be ignored by any tech site that is being objective.

We can engage in a circular blanket argument all day about how many were affected vs how many not and cause vs effect.....

The simple fact is many trust worthy people here say they don't experience the issues cited by pcper. and i have an AMD GPU myself, while also having used Kepler GPU's.

 

[Rroff]

While i agree you can see a difference when the 2 are slowed way down it could also be a little like viewing aa. When its zoomed in 100x you can see the difference between different level's but when playing a game you rarely notice the difference between 8x msaa and above. We don't play games slower than normal so tbh if it feels smooth at full speed who cares how bad it looks in slow motion.

Those videos are mostly fullspeed with some sections slowed down to only 50% so the effect can be seen on youtube videos - anything thats noticeable in those videos will be having a tangible effect when your ingame and interacting with it.

We can engage in a circular blanket argument all day about how many were affected vs how many not and cause vs effect.....

The simple fact is many trust worthy people here say they don't experience the issues cited by pcper. and i have an AMD GPU myself, while also having used Kepler GPU's.

I'm talking how many users have the underlying effect happening on their setup whether they notice it or not - agreed in terms of perception, etc. its a fruitless arguement.

TBH a lot of users around here (way higher ratio than I've experienced in most other gaming circles) seem to use vsync even when playing online - something I've said a lot when the subject of multi GPU comes up - if your using multi GPU purely to make sure your holding 60fps (capped) as much as possible then a setup that manages that will see the least amount of issues from microstutter and related problems. In the wider gaming world vsync for playing games online especially FPS games is generally spurned and issues like this are a much bigger problem if apparent hence neither kepler or crossfire are particularly well regarded if you drop into say random COD, BF3, etc. PC gaming community.

 

[layte]

We can engage in a circular blanket argument all day about how many were affected vs how many not and cause vs effect.....

The simple fact is many trust worthy people here say they don't experience the issues cited by pcper. and i have an AMD GPU myself, while also having used Kepler GPU's.

And many people have voiced their issues.

If it was not such a big deal, then AMD wouldn't suddenly be putting so much time and effort into resolving the problem. Thankfully they have not just dismissed the findings as some on here seem to be happy to do.

Whatever PCper's reasons for doing the tests and publishing the results. The end result of it all is going to be a drastically improved xfire experiance. So in the end everyone wins, as xfire users get a better drivers and frames that actually make it to the display, while Nvidia are kept on their toes by very strong competition.

 

[TheRealDeal]

Those videos are mostly fullspeed with some sections slowed down to only 50% so the effect can be seen on youtube videos - anything thats noticeable in those videos will be having a tangible effect when your ingame and interacting with it.



I'm talking how many users have the underlying effect happening on their setup whether they notice it or not - agreed in terms of perception, etc. its a fruitless arguement.

TBH a lot of users around here (way higher ratio than I've experienced in most other gaming circles) seem to use vsync even when playing online - something I've said a lot when the subject of multi GPU comes up - if your using multi GPU purely to make sure your holding 60fps (capped) as much as possible then a setup that manages that will see the least amount of issues from microstutter and related problems. In the wider gaming world vsync for playing games online especially FPS games is generally spurned and issues like this are a much bigger problem if apparent hence neither kepler or crossfire are particularly well regarded if you drop into say random COD, BF3, etc. PC gaming community.

Again those video's look pretty bad. You would have to be blind not to notice that. I find it hard to believe that's the experience everyone gets from xfire.

Playing high level fps only requires a fast single card as for the most part the best players use pretty much the lowest in game settings to get the best frame rates and the benefits of spotting targets more easily.When i was just starting out i used vsync and tbh it never really affected me that much. I soon learned that 125fps in some games let you jump to places that could not be done without so never used it again. I always used a high end single card setup which was usually enough to push 200fps average. I certainly would not use sli because of input lag and if crossfire was stuttering like that i would certainly not have considered it either. I know really good players who use sli/xfire and don't find it any handicap.

 

[humbug]

And many people have voiced their issues.

If it was not such a big deal, then AMD wouldn't suddenly be putting so much time and effort into resolving the problem. Thankfully they have not just dismissed the findings as some on here seem to be happy to do.

Whatever PCper's reasons for doing the tests and publishing the results. The end result of it all is going to be a drastically improved xfire experiance. So in the end everyone wins, as xfire users get a better drivers and frames that actually make it to the display, while Nvidia are kept on their toes by very strong competition.

Well, AMD aren't going to do nothing while a big reviewer says "there is a problem" that would be suicide, the only thing they can do is what they did.

And if they don't do the same with Nvidia then no, there is no competition. Just mud slinging.

 

[Rroff]

Thankfully they have not just dismissed the findings as some on here seem to be happy to do.

I think this is the best thing to come out of it - too often in the past these kind of things would just go unresolved and/or they'd make a lot of noise about but not actually do anything which is where a lot of my dislike of ATI/AMD comes from. Seems to reinforce the effort they've been putting in of late to turn things around on this front (assuming the drivers do actually come out and within a reasonable time frame).