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The AMD Driver Thread

Hey everyone,

I've not used AMD cards in a good number of years, but I'm extremely tempted by a pair of R9 290s right now (able to return 970, would be doing so for reasons of buyer's remorse/can't afford to SLI).

My question is how widespread are crossfire profiles, and how quickly do they surface?

From what I have gathered reading here it can be a bit hit-or-miss and take a good amount of time to get them out, but when it does work scaling is generally great, as is the frame-pacing. Am I wrong in my observations?

Finally, would there be any impact of running 5760x1080, or is that mostly unrelated to drivers?

Thanks for all your advice guys, and sorry for jumping in to ask this! If it's in the wrong place just let me know and I'll not do it again :P

Chris
 
Tacitus said:
Hey everyone,

I've not used AMD cards in a good number of years, but I'm extremely tempted by a pair of R9 290s right now (able to return 970, would be doing so for reasons of buyer's remorse/can't afford to SLI).

My question is how widespread are crossfire profiles, and how quickly do they surface?

From what I have gathered reading here it can be a bit hit-or-miss and take a good amount of time to get them out, but when it does work scaling is generally great, as is the frame-pacing. Am I wrong in my observations?

Finally, would there be any impact of running 5760x1080, or is that mostly unrelated to drivers?

Thanks for all your advice guys, and sorry for jumping in to ask this! If it's in the wrong place just let me know and I'll not do it again :P

Chris
Click to expand...

Hi Tacitus,

Crossfire works well in most titles, however there are some games that are just not multi gpu friendly. Generally though, these games are in the minority.

If a big title launches without a working Crossfire profile, then rest assured we work hard to get one implemented as soon as possible.

One thing to consider is that sometimes a Crossfire profile may not be available at the launch of a game for many different reasons, It's not always the case that we just don't have it ready. In some instances there may be an issue with the game that needs fixing before we can enable safely enable Crossfire.

Our 290 graphics cards are well suited in Crossfire to high resolution gaming. You will have a lovely gaming experience. :)
 
Final8y said:
Tacitus At the moment i would say its not a good time for multi GPU with new games, to many broken games and beta games atm.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your advice. Is this across the spectrum, or more narrowly relating to AAA games? I don't play that many games, I simply don't have the time right now, and I have a decent back-log of games to get through. The only game I feel really compelled to get at launch this year is Witcher 3.

By beta games do you mean games literally in beta, or games which feel like early-purchasers are beta testing?
 
S2KIP said:
All you would have to do is add (upscaled to) 1080p and you could say 'console gamer'. :p
Click to expand...

Fortunately don't need to stoop THAT low yet! :D

AMDMatt said:
I've already raised an issue with Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition Stu, however in the meantime please try AFR Friendly as a custom Crossfire profile in this title.
Click to expand...

Bonjour said:
Spent hours getting CF working on SD: D the other night.

The default AMD profile doesn't appear to work. I get both GPUs dithering around 50%. Create a custom profile and set to 'AFR friendly'. Seems to work well. Sleeping Dogs can now hammer both GPUs at 95%+, and I get great frame rates.
Click to expand...

Thanks guys, I'll give that a shot tonight. I only got the game a couple of days ago (loved original Sleeping Dogs and fancied getting DE for the bundled DLC and to reward the developers a little as I got the original game free with an AMD Reward), had a little play, found issues and figured I'd come back to it in a while when the issues are sorted. I've always got Just Cause 2 to keep me entertained between other games - averaging 90FPS at 5760x1080 at full settings looks very nice! Shame there was never a benchmark thread for that game, but a bit too old now.

Cheers for the responses guys, will have a play when I'm home and get some time on the PC.
 
Tacitus said:
Thanks for your advice. Is this across the spectrum, or more narrowly relating to AAA games? I don't play that many games, I simply don't have the time right now, and I have a decent back-log of games to get through. The only game I feel really compelled to get at launch this year is Witcher 3.

By beta games do you mean games literally in beta, or games which feel like early-purchasers are beta testing?
Click to expand...

With older games things are allot better but the AAA games atm are just not up to scratch even with single cards.
 
Tacitus said:
Thanks for your advice. Is this across the spectrum, or more narrowly relating to AAA games? I don't play that many games, I simply don't have the time right now, and I have a decent back-log of games to get through. The only game I feel really compelled to get at launch this year is Witcher 3.

By beta games do you mean games literally in beta, or games which feel like early-purchasers are beta testing?
Click to expand...

It's more that a lot of games come out feeling unpolished (Alien Isolation being the big exception). I too am psyched about Witcher 3, and I have a feeling my 290s are going to come in handy.

I will say that xfire has not always been the best experience, but it works very well in most of games and has been worthwhile for me. I couldn't go back to single card performance now. Not at 1440p anyway. I just max out the settings and play now.

Except for Dying Light, which doesn't work yet and gives me 45fps if I'm lucky :/
 
Final8y said:
With older games things are allot better but the AAA games atm are just not up to scratch even with single cards.
Click to expand...


Devrij said:
It's more that a lot of games come out feeling unpolished (Alien Isolation being the big exception). I too am psyched about Witcher 3, and I have a feeling my 290s are going to come in handy.

I will say that xfire has not always been the best experience, but it works very well in most of games and has been worthwhile for me. I couldn't go back to single card performance now. Not at 1440p anyway. I just max out the settings and play now.

Except for Dying Light, which doesn't work yet and gives me 45fps if I'm lucky :/
Click to expand...

Thanks guys.

Leaves me with quite a dilemma - try and justify spending £260-300 on another 970, or send it back and spend about an extra £100 getting the 290s. I kind of need SLI/CFX since I'll be running 5760x1080p, but with the high-res stuttering of the 970s, extra cost, plus a third monitor to factor in, it's looking a costly solution.
 
Crossfire has felt like pretty much a waste for me lately. Yes I love having so much GPU horsepower and its great because your system will last much longer but since I went to a 3440x1440 monitor I need crossfire more than ever and im finding that so many of the newer games have issues. Dying light for example is a nightmare with crossfire and im having to run it with a single card where it works fine and its a much better experiance but at that res and with high settings its not as smooth as I want it to be and when I know I have a second card just sitting there as a paper weight its even more frustrating so I haven't touched that game once since release. With 4k and ultrawide high res monitors becoming more available two cards seem to be needed more than ever at the moment but I find myself rarely being able to use both lately, at least with new games.
 
Matson said:
Crossfire has felt like pretty much a waste for me lately. Yes I love having so much GPU horsepower and its great because your system will last much longer but since I went to a 3440x1440 monitor I need crossfire more than ever and im finding that so many of the newer games have issues. Dying light for example is a nightmare with crossfire and im having to run it with a single card where it works fine and its a much better experiance but at that res and with high settings its not as smooth as I want it to be and when I know I have a second card just sitting there as a paper weight its even more frustrating so I haven't touched that game once since release. With 4k and ultrawide high res monitors becoming more available two cards seem to be needed more than ever at the moment but I find myself rarely being able to use both lately, at least with new games.
Click to expand...

That's disappointing to hear :(

I had been under the impression most of the issues with CF had been ironed out over the last 18 months or so.
 
Crossfire works great.

AMD just don't release updates to support new games fast enough for our liking. Dying light doesn't work well because there isn't a crossfire profile for it now.
 
VincentHanna said:
Crossfire works great.
Click to expand...

Thanks! I'm just curious because on paper it looks great - it seems to scale very well and benchmarks look very promising. But that doesn't say anything about how long it took for drivers to mature and reach the end-user, which is my concern and something you at least sound unhappy about :/
 
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