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Xfire noob - some advice please

thecremeegg

thecremeegg

thecremeegg

Soldato
Joined
13 Oct 2006
Posts
8,152
Location
Surrey
Just installed a 2nd 5870 for Xfire and I wondered what the best Catalyst drivers were for it? Currently running the 11.1a set but getting texture flickering in games. Is there a driver set that is known for best performance?

Cheers
 
10.5 Hotfix were regarded as one of the best sets. Used them with 2 5770's

I've found 10.8 & 10.10e to be ok as well, but this is with 48xx series cards.

What games are you getting flickering in ?
 
Crysis and Bad Company. I'm really struggling to see any increase in performance in games which is annoying me. Was hoping that BC2 would run at 70+ but instead its running barely any better than with one card, 50 max?
 
I take it GPU-Z shows that crossfire is enabled ?

You don't have supersampling AA forced in CCC do you ?

Are you using MSI Afterburner ? That way you can check what load each card is getting using the OSD.
 
On 2nd thoughts, is your motherboard the Abit IP35 Pro ?

If it is the 2nd pci-e slot only runs at x4 speeds, and if it's also pci-e v1.0 that's what is crippling your speeds.
 
MoodyB said:
On 2nd thoughts, is your motherboard the Abit IP35 Pro ?

If it is the 2nd pci-e slot only runs at x4 speeds, and if it's also pci-e v1.0 that's what is crippling your speeds.
Click to expand...

Ah no it isn't, forgot to change that. Its an Asrock P45XE so the 2nd slot is pci-e v2.0 slot.

Afterburner shows both cards are being used, but in say Black Ops my frames dont go above 55-65 with vsync disabled? I was getting the same without the extra card!
 
What resolution ?

Doesn't Black Ops run badly on everyone's pc as it's an iffy port ? :)

One thing to remember with crossfire is that the gain isn't always liner. Say you get 50fps, with 2 cards you might get around 80fps, not 100. And it's VERY game dependant unfortunately.

Is your cpu overclocked ? If it isn't, I imagine it'll probably be holding back the 5870's.
 
I'll run that tool tomorrow, cheers. My CPU is running at 3.2Ghz currently, so it is overclocked. Using MSI afterburner I can see that in BC its only using 60% of each GPU but this seems to be a common problem. I was hoping to see Black Ops run a bit smoother though :( Oh and I play at 1920x1200
 
It's the minimal gain for BC2 that I find surprising. Of all the recent games I have, BC2 is one that benefits most from extra gpu's (although for me the jump is 2 to 4 so I don't know if that makes a difference). The flashing textures seem to be just a flaw in ATI's drivers, when an update fixes something you can pretty much guarantee it will break something else in another game.
 
Been fiddling with it and tbh I'm very disappointed :( Black ops runs at around 60 fps, dropping to 45 regularly up to a max of 70. BC2 will run at 70 until I get to a map with buildings then it plummets. Is it my processor that's holding me back possibly?
 
I found my CF setup didn't make much difference with Crysis, though I haven't yet tried OCing my CPU. I do think it's your CPU holding you back.
I did find other games saw significant improvement though - Just Cause 2 was well over 50%, and AvP was even more. It does vary from game to game.
 
Really suprised by the lack of improvement in BC. I have my 5850 OC to 810/1100 and i get a solid 60fps most of the time with d3doverider enabled apart from in epic battles it drops to 45fps. Im using the 10.3 drivers and will never change as they seem to work great with all top spec games like BC and gta 4. Not sure wat 10.3 would be like in xfire but could be worth a shot, id like to get at least 80fps with a xfire setup.

Also if your monitor is only 60hz tho is it really worth the extra cost going xfire? Maybe look into a 120hz monitor if your looking for high fps.

Hope you manage to get it sorted tho crysis is out soon :D im sure there will be a few machines catching fire trying to run that beast of a game
 
liamcrane said:
Really suprised by the lack of improvement in BC. I have my 5850 OC to 810/1100 and i get a solid 60fps most of the time with d3doverider enabled apart from in epic battles it drops to 45fps. Im using the 10.3 drivers and will never change as they seem to work great with all top spec games like BC and gta 4. Not sure wat 10.3 would be like in xfire but could be worth a shot, id like to get at least 80fps with a xfire setup.

Also if your monitor is only 60hz tho is it really worth the extra cost going xfire? Maybe look into a 120hz monitor if your looking for high fps.

Hope you manage to get it sorted tho crysis is out soon :D im sure there will be a few machines catching fire trying to run that beast of a game
Click to expand...

I got the second card free so the only cost was a new motherboard ;)

I've tried the 10.4s and 10.5 drivers with no improvement at all, I seem to be getting no better framerates than people with one card. I'm just going to have to accept that I'm probably CPU bound annoyingly!
 
Have you tried the card on it,s own ? bench that card first then remove and put back old card and carry out same bench, see if there is any noticeable difference.
Also is device manager all good ?
 
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