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MSI Lightning 7970 CF or 680 SLI Queries
- Thread starter Watlinguk
- Start date
Cheers that should confirm or blow my theory out the water.
Got roughly the same result in Crysis 2.
For me his cards aren't being pushed hence
lower Gpu usage in Sli.
They're not being pushed because the game is badly optimised for 2 or more cards. I get near perfect scaling with less than 12 players on any map. When it goes over 48 scaling can drop to the mid 50's in the worst areas.
It may be something to do with the engine not being able to handle the amount of people.
Either way when you spend that much on cards it should just f'in work!
I think in this case I'd have to agree the 680s seem like your best bet
How could such a big company alienate such a large user base?
Thankfully my monitors are not 120hz (never thought I'd say that)
It's not "AMD" cards it's the Lightning 7970 specifically.
But it's easy enough to overcome:
Patching single link to 120hz!!
Firstly we need to thank Vega for finding this and ToastyX from 120hz.net/monitortests.com for creating this patch.
Original guide: http://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-AMD-ATI-Pixel-Clock-Patcher
All I'm going to do is throw in some fool proof screens of what to do, this is now a hell of a lot simpler than it was a few months ago too
1. Download atikmdag-patcher-test.zip from above link (if this doesn't work let me know and I will mirror it). Inside will be 2 .exe files, atikmdag-patcher.exe and testmode.exe
2. Open up atikmdag-patcher.exe, it will say (as in pic below) what limits it has found and if you want to patch them, press 'YES'. Once patched you can close atikmdag.
3. Open Testmode.exe, you will simply get a small window asking you to enable test mode, click yes, once complete exit.
4. Download Custom Resolution Utility from the above link and open CRU.exe.
Click the 'detailed resolution' highlighted with blue with a black arrow pointing towards it, then click 'Edit' which the red arrow is pointing at:
5. In the Edit box, the area I have boxed in red, it will probably say "60.00hz" Change this as I have to "120.00" Press OK and exit CRU. Now reboot your machine.
6. Open up your advanced monitor options and you will now be able to force refresh rates up to 120hz
Hope this helps those that need it, to push 120hz over a single link DVI connection
The best value for money set up to get out of 680 SLI and 7970 Crossfire is the 7970s. They give you more performance than the 680s.
your friend might like the suggestion of getting 2x 7950s instead as they offer very high performance, overclock well and can be had for considerably cheaper than 7970s.
A 7950 will overclock well in excess of 7970 stock performance.
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Ohh fantastic this changes things now that there's a fix for the 120hz. Will he still need the adapter or will this do the job out of the box?
I've seen with the new drivers that there run fantastic right now too!
He can grab a pair of lightning 7970 for just under £700. Which i said is a bargain!
I've seen with the new drivers that there run fantastic right now too!
He can grab a pair of lightning 7970 for just under £700. Which i said is a bargain!
When I use surround I get 95%+ usage on 2 cards on what ever sized player map I'm on.
Its only a issue when using a single 1080 screen that there is a issue with 2 cards or more.
So therefore higher res better card usage(IMO)
Thats why I said for me his cards aren't being pushed by a 1080 monitor,
which reflects in the 80% ish usage on 2 cards.
A 680 as we know can virtually max out any game on a
1080 so it stands to reason 2 cards aren't going to be
pushed.
All this is what I've found testing on my rig
so others may or may not agree
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But that's the thing - nobody has shown any proof that the fix works on this specific card? I've been looking around (as I'm interesting in watercooling a 7970 Lightning), and cannot find anywhere someone that has actually done it!
The fix is FOR that specific card. Other 7970s have at least one DVI-D port that will do 2560x1600/1440 or 120Hz out of the box.
Oh right ok I didn't know, cheers for that info.
Does this fix work on BOTH DVI outputs or just one of them? This may change me moving back to a lightning (was going to get a EVGA 670 Superclocked 4gb and watercool that instead).
They can't max out BF3 on their own at 120hz, not a hope. I wouldn't mind if usage was bad after 120fps was attained but with usage being so bad there's no need for an OC since it won't make any use of it.
I tested it myself for about 20 hours with a 2500k then the 2700k and although scaling is 10-15% better with the 2700k it's still a shambles on >16 players. Conquest 64 seems to suffer the most by a long shot with the worst areas dropping to 50%
I'd often be able to play a game of rush or medium size TDM and scaling being near the 90's or maxed all game.
There's 2 users now who say they get perfect scaling with 2 cards on any map size and ye both have the 3930k.
There's 3 differences I can think of between the 2 processors:
1) Extra threads, 50% more cores/threads which BF3 loves.
2) 50% more cache
3) Native PCI-E 3.0 support
It must be one of or either a combination of all of the above that lets scaling go to 99% in 64 man CQ for 2 cards.
I just had a play and can confirm that SLI scaling is poor @ 1080P. I get around 75% GPU usage (max) at this res with a 3930K @ 4.625. Scales nicely in surround, just not at 1080P. Also worth noting is the cap of 201 fps. I would factor this as a reason for the GPUs not hitting 99%.
Can you change the cap and re test if you don't mind? Hit the console key next to 1 and type gametime.maxvariablefps 400. Do you have your CPU in PCI-E 3.0?
I things like Heaven and such scaling is perfect for me even with a huge OC. It's a pity it can't be transferred to games
I tested it myself for about 20 hours with a 2500k then the 2700k and although scaling is 10-15% better with the 2700k it's still a shambles on >16 players. Conquest 64 seems to suffer the most by a long shot with the worst areas dropping to 50%
I'd often be able to play a game of rush or medium size TDM and scaling being near the 90's or maxed all game.
There's 2 users now who say they get perfect scaling with 2 cards on any map size and ye both have the 3930k.
There's 3 differences I can think of between the 2 processors:
1) Extra threads, 50% more cores/threads which BF3 loves.
2) 50% more cache
3) Native PCI-E 3.0 support
It must be one of or either a combination of all of the above that lets scaling go to 99% in 64 man CQ for 2 cards.
Also we both use surround so the cards are rendering more.