Widescreen Gaming Forum

there are still loads of people posting in the forums here and ati's etc with the eyefinity crossfire issue.

same here, i can use a single 5970 with eyefinity and its fine, app 60 fps and smooth, but if i enable crossfire with the second 5970, then frame rates drop to about 20 and its stuttering.
so far ati wont even admit its an issue, and sapphire support refuse to answer and support ticket on it

but crossfire works beautifully with a single display, just not with more then 1 monitor in eyefinity

_________________
intel x79
2 way 780ti's under water
Intel 4760 extreme @ 4GHz
3 x 42 inch screens @5860x1080
16 gigs xmp ram @2200

The only game I have exp stuttering or micro stutters in would be NFS Shift but that seems to be a common problem with the game. Everything else plays fine.

So thats interesting. I was looking for a 5870 CF just for powering an Eyefinity-Setup. Whats the idea of 5870 CF if not Eyefinity? Maybe one 5870 2GB may be enough to play 3x24"? Now afaik driver version 10.4 is out. Is it any better now?

_________________
Intel i7 980X | MSI Big Bang Xpower X58 | 12GB G.Skill Pi Black DDR3-1600 | Sapphire 5870 Vapor-X 2GB | 2x Intel X-25M 160GB | SB X-Fi | Seasonic X-750 | Silverstone FT01 black | 3x HP ZR24w @ 5760x1200 Triplehead

AMD X2 4800+ | Gigabyte K8N Ultra-SLI | 2GB Kingston VS DDR1-400 | Zotac GTX260 AMP! + Gigabyte 8400GS | 3x Samsung HD 2.1TB | SB X-Fi | Seasonic M12-600 | Chieftec CS-601 blue | Dell 2407WFP + Dell 1707FP Dualhead

I just got my 2nd 5870 a few days ago. I'm running at 5760x1080.

So far I've only experienced unplayable stuttering in Crysis Warhead (a shame). I've tried it in about 10-15 other games and there was no stuttering.

My chief disappointment with Xfire Eyefinity is the overall poor scaling. Some games scale great, but others fall flat especially Just Cause 2 which scales at a measly 120-125%. I tested single monitor (1920x1080) vs. triple monitor (5760x1080) scaling in numerous games and the general conclusion is that scaling gets WORSE when going to triple monitor, sometimes MUCH worse. This is a big problem because I don't need good scaling at low resolutions of course.

I just got my 2nd 5870 a few days ago. I'm running at 5760x1080.

So far I've only experienced unplayable stuttering in Crysis Warhead (a shame). I've tried it in about 10-15 other games and there was no stuttering.

My chief disappointment with Xfire Eyefinity is the overall poor scaling. Some games scale great, but others fall flat especially Just Cause 2 which scales at a measly 120-125%. I tested single monitor (1920x1080) vs. triple monitor (5760x1080) scaling in numerous games and the general conclusion is that scaling gets WORSE when going to triple monitor, sometimes MUCH worse. This is a big problem because I don't need good scaling at low resolutions of course.

I assume that is more of a performance hit the higher your res and not a scaling issue this should be obvious.

I assume that is more of a performance hit the higher your res and not a scaling issue this should be obvious.

? That makes no sense. One reason to get multi-gpu setups is for scaling at higher resolutions. Lower res = less GPU intensive.

I don't know what you mean by 'more of a performance hit'. I don't know what that has to do with scaling at all. Obviously 5760x1080 performance is worse than 1920x1080. When I say scaling, I mean 2x 5870 performance vs. 1x 5870 performance. If it's 'obvious' that Xfire 5870 will scale worse with higher resolution, then it's got to be the worst possible buy ever.

For example, here are some games I benched:

Crossfire scaling comparison:
1920x1080 / 5760x1080
Just Cause 2: 152.5% / 121.4%
Dirt 2: 164.2% / 154.6%
BC2: 163% / 143.9%

I didn't run any other hard benches, but I did notice in general lower scaling at 5760x1080 than 1920x1080 as I played each game.

bowenac might be on to something here. As you can see from Ibrins review, there is a framebuffer problem when running higher resolution. If the card runs out of memory due to higher res (and AA), I would imagine there would be more swapping in the memory from this. That might be a reason to get some stuttering. I don't know, but its likely. :)

bowenac might be on to something here. As you can see from Ibrins review, there is a framebuffer problem when running higher resolution. If the card runs out of memory due to higher res (and AA), I would imagine there would be more swapping in the memory from this. That might be a reason to get some stuttering. I don't know, but its likely. :)

If there's a general problem with xfire and eyefinity, then shouldn't everyone who's running it see the stuttering? I personally see no stuttering except for one game. And running out of memory should be a problem with single cards as well.

[quote]bowenac might be on to something here. As you can see from Ibrins review, there is a framebuffer problem when running higher resolution. If the card runs out of memory due to higher res (and AA), I would imagine there would be more swapping in the memory from this. That might be a reason to get some stuttering. I don't know, but its likely. :)

If there's a general problem with xfire and eyefinity, then shouldn't everyone who's running it see the stuttering? I personally see no stuttering except for one game. And running out of memory should be a problem with single cards as well.

Yes, if the problem is general, everyone should get it. If only some get it, it might be wise to see what differs from their setup. PC is not consoles, so the hardware soup people put together might not always be perfect.

Single cards don't share the framebuffer as with dual cards and don't have crosstalk between cards. This might contribute to stuttering especially in cases where it might be more visible (as if the card runs out of framebuffer). :)

Yes, if the problem is general, everyone should get it. If only some get it, it might be wise to see what differs from their setup. PC is not consoles, so the hardware soup people put together might not always be perfect.

Single cards don't share the framebuffer as with dual cards and don't have crosstalk between cards. This might contribute to stuttering especially in cases where it might be more visible (as if the card runs out of framebuffer). :)

I'm sure you've seen the thread on [H] about crossfire and eyefinity. I decided to try it out for myself and see if this stuttering is really an issue. Ibrin said there was no stuttering during his tests, no other review has mentioned it, and I don't have stuttering either. The hardware for those that stutter seems to vary wildly in the [H] thread. It bugged the hell out of me for a long time until I tried it out for myself.

I'm really surprised no one's mentioned the apparent degrade of xfire scaling with resolution. Maybe I'm overplaying it because I'm very disappointed with the terrible JC2 scaling since it's one of the reasons I got the 2nd card. I'm overall satisfied with performance in BC2 however.

Also, I'd like to note that there's a noticeable amount of games I have that experience no scaling or only very little scaling. Those games however are older and run well with 1 card anyway. I'm just hoping that new games coming out will scale well.