Widescreen Gaming Forum

I have to say I am very anal about any unsmooth gameplay, wich makes this problem even more annoying.

Yes .. I feel the same way. I know if a game is micro stuttering, and I can deal with a certain degree of micro stuttering, but what I am getting right now on crossfire is completely unacceptable. Cant wait for me new system tomorrow!

I have done some digging around, I haven't been able to find out exactly how crossfire works. AFAIK, the crossfire bridge keeps the 2 cards in sync with each other, and the PCI-e bus is used to swap data between the cards, and from the system to the cards. I wonder if the there are any big differences on latency or such on the Intel sub-system, compared to the AMD sub-system.

Would be cool to see how a Intel CPU WITHOUT integrated PCI-e controller copes with micro-stutter.

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Some1 knows a Tool which records FPS ever 100 miliseconds? So we had a fact how much it would stutter!

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Interesting post. I'm on the 1366 platform with 2 x16 lanes and for 3 screen eyefinity have found cross/tri/quad fire to run games smoothly.

Initially bf3 was a bit of a mess but driver updates sorted that out.

With quadfire running 5x1 bf3 is quite smooth as well.

Who knows, maybe there is an issue with the sandy bridge platform for crossfire and bf3.

Who knows, maybe there is an issue with the sandy bridge platform for crossfire and bf3.

Playing BF3 on a single monitor with crossfire enabled works just fine. For me this micro stutter problem appears in every single game I play, when both eyefinity en crossfire are enabled. But you may be right that a sandy bridge platform plus crossfire plus eyefinity somehow are not 'compatible'.

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[quote]Who knows, maybe there is an issue with the sandy bridge platform for crossfire and bf3.

Playing BF3 on a single monitor with crossfire enabled works just fine. For me this micro stutter problem appears in every single game I play, when both eyefinity en crossfire are enabled. But you may be right that a sandy bridge platform plus crossfire plus eyefinity somehow are not 'compatible'.

Yep I meant for my comment to apply to eyefinity only.

I think AMD drivers can't be ruled out either. Who knows it may be that the drivers work fine on some configs and not others. I know when trying crossfire eyefinity with the 5800 series that there were many issues which I found and others reported regarding stuttering. Though there were some people who reported smooth performance. Never figured that one out, I simply sold the additional 5800 cards and stuck with one card back then.

The thing is I almost hope that it is the sandy bridge platform and not the driver since I can change the platform, but not reprogram the driver. This problem has been around since eyefinity was introduced, so I think it is very unlikely that AMD would put effort into solving this thing in the near future. There is however a third viable option: everybody that uses eyefinity + crossfire has the same amount of microstuttering, but all our brains are different and so we perceive it in different ways (the psychologist in me speaks). If some of the forummenbers would be living close together, this theory could be tested.

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I like to think I am quite sensitive to micro stuttering. Crossfire eyefinity with 5800 series was a complete and utter disaster when I tried it. My 6900 series testing with 3 screen eyefinity has been far better. I don't play a huge list of games but the ones I have tried (which are fairly popular so have CFX support) play smoothly across 3 (unless I up the AA levels in some situations then yes stuttering may become apparent).

Upping it to 5 screens can introduce stuttering if the frames are too low (particularly under 40 fps) and I think this comes down to the resolution demanding too much and crossfire with low fps giving a poor gameplay experience. This is why I went quad-fire, and in bf3 I have it running smoothly at 5250x1680 with all GPUs at high utilization.

The microstutter problem we (or at least I) am having is also quite apparent even if the game runs at a constant 60 fps with v-sync on and everything. 'Normal' stuttering from either low or inconsistent fps is fixable by turning v-sync on or lowering the graphical settings. Running a game in eyefinity and with crossfire enabled at 60 fps can feel like 20-30 fps, so that would make a second card useless. If 5000 series was even worse, then maybe the 7000 series might improve on the 6000 series when it comes to combining crossfire and eyefinity. Fixing this problem in the driver would never be a priority for AMD, since a very small percentage of the users are combining both technologies.

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Yep that is the stuttering I'm speaking of - decent fps reported but feels like half of that. For me the 6900 series crossfire eyefinity combination has been fairly good in that regard. Certainly the popular games (where AMD has put a decent amount of resource into the driver and CAP) have run well so that the issue isn't there or at least isn't noticeable.