Widescreen Gaming Forum

OMG. If this is true I love you.
Are we saying that if I swap out my i5CPU for a phenom, the crappy crappy Crossfinity crappiness will go away? I think that would be cheaper than selling my 6850s and upgrading to a better single card set-up.
Can anyone confirm that AMD CPUs are really the fix?
It seems too good and too simple to be true.
This issue has been an ache in my soul ever since I put this my dream machine together.... sob.....

To add to the picture of consensus:
I have:
2x 6850
i5 quad@ 3.3GH

and eyefinity blows on all games. I think the latest driver just straight up turns off crossfire when you launch games which to me is hilarious.

There is a setting in W7 power management. Under PCI- Express

"Link State Power Management". Wonder if that effects anything.

I am 100% convinced that this is somehow related to the sub-system of the PCI-E bus, or the way the cards swap info across the PCI-E bus, and not a driver problem. Although, I don't have anything I can test with, my 939 system is in England, and I have just sold my CPU (E8400) from my 775 system. That would of given some interesting points of comparison anyway! There is a very slight chance I could get my hands on an older, and a newer AMD system, a 4 core and 6 core phenom. Must speak to the GF's cousins!

"Link State Power Management". Wonder if that effects anything.

Already tried changing that setting, but the problem is still there.

There is a very slight chance I could get my hands on an older, and a newer AMD system, a 4 core and 6 core phenom. Must speak to the GF's cousins!

If you can somehow test this theory, it would help me and others that are having the same problem a lot. I would like to be testing myself, but would have to buy an amd cpu + board, because nobody I know has a AMD board which supports crossfire/sli.

Maybe we could make a list here to see who has that micro stuttering and on what config and what drivers:

So for Bushmaster it is (if I have it wrong just let me know):
No stutter:
intel q 9300 - AMD 6970 x2 - driver ?
i7 2600k - Nvidia 460 x2 - driver ?
Phenom x 6 - Nvidia 460 x2 - driver ?
Phenom x 6 - AMD 6970 x2 - driver ?

Micro Stutter:
i7 2600k - AMD 6970 x2 - driver ?

I have been using this forum for awhile trying to find solutions. I have read a lot of people thinking that it seems to be only Sandy bridge CPU's causing the crossfinity microstutter... I felt I had to register after reading to tell you the bad news. in my situation I am using 100% amd platform sabertooth 990FX mobo, 2x 6950, and an AMD FX 8150 (used to be phenom II 965) both CPU's produce microstutter when using crossfire or eyefinity. seems I can use only 1 or the other. updated my bios, drivers, everything. never found a solution... just letting you guys know before you go buy a phenom or bulldozer that it probably won't fix the issue unfortunately.

Bushmaster, I thought I was the only one having issues with my Asrock z68 extreme 7 board, like you I have massive stuttering when I use my 6950s in crossfire mode. Tried every thing you have done to fix the issue and can not for the life of me find a solution. So I ended up buying gtx 580s to do sli guess what? The Nvidia cards worked like a charm go figure!

wow,

I just read all of the posts since my last post. I sympathize , relate and understand all of you that have replied to this post. There are a few posts that I feel are questionable or that I disagree with however there is only ONE in particular that I will quote because I have completely proved wrong.


First. I would like to say...

I build my new system Friday night. Asus Crosshair V Premium, with a 1100t . I am still using the same 8 GB of Corsair XMS 3 1600 mhz Ram. In fact the only thing that has changed on my system has been my MOBO, and CPU.


This WAS, the first weekend that I spend PLAYING games on crossfire and Eyefinity rather than tweaking settings and trying to decide whether my system sucks or not. ALl of my games Run smooth on Eyefinity now, and VSYNC works 100 % with this setup. I was initially going to post some videos for you guys of how the system plays games. I took a few videos of BF3 and will post them shortly. I will also Post Dirt 3. Both games run awesome. BF3 was unplayable before with crossfire and Eyefinity.

I have been using this forum for awhile trying to find solutions. I have read a lot of people thinking that it seems to be only Sandy bridge CPU's causing the crossfinity microstutter... I felt I had to register after reading to tell you the bad news. in my situation I am using 100% amd platform sabertooth 990FX mobo, 2x 6950, and an AMD FX 8150 (used to be phenom II 965) both CPU's produce microstutter when using crossfire or eyefinity. seems I can use only 1 or the other. updated my bios, drivers, everything. never found a solution... just letting you guys know before you go buy a phenom or bulldozer that it probably won't fix the issue unfortunately.

As for this quote. I have not read this anywhere else. I searched for about 4 days in a row looking for a resolution to my problem .. I NEVER read anyone mention that the problem is that you need to run AMD cards on an AMD system ( I dont even believe that this is 100% true.. I think its a sandy bridge and AMD issue)

Regardless of your comment. I proved that this works 2 times now. Once on my friends system, and now on my own. AND the ironic thing is.. I NEVER believed that this was gonna work! I was going to sell these 6970s to spend more money on gtx 590s ( one at a time of course)


... gonna go post these videos on YouTube now or something so you guys can have a visual..

edit: btw my system does run 5760x1080 ... as you may recall the original testbed on my friends amd ran 5400x1050(or whatver).

I have HAD microstutter before, but have been able to solve it in all games except skyrim.

My system is a Phenom2 x4 and Radeon 6850 x2, with Gigabyte 16x/8x (8x/8x crossfire)

In witcher 2, I was crossfired, playing on ultra at 1920x1080 and had intermittent MS. Interestingly, I noticed the board's GPU (radeon 3xxx) was enabled even though not used. Updating drivers and disabling it eliminated microstutter. My opinion is that MS is not a foregone conclusion and is related to device conflicts, sharing, or interrupts. These may be difficult or impossible to track down in some system configurations.

Also, I did not know there was a MOBO that could run both SLI and crossfire? Maybe that was the original posters problem, that his board was not an official CF board.

Also, I did not know there was a MOBO that could run both SLI and crossfire? Maybe that was the original posters problem, that his board was not an official CF board.

Dude as of 3 or more years ago most of them support both... Find me one made within the past 24 months that doesn't support both... They all do now a days.

.............................

... gonna go post these videos on YouTube now or something so you guys can have a visual..

edit: btw my system does run 5760x1080 ... as you may recall the original testbed on my friends amd ran 5400x1050(or whatver).

I don't want Videos! I wanna see "Frametimes.csv" recorded via Fraps! If you can upload that file to RS or here i'd be happy :)

[quote].............................

... gonna go post these videos on YouTube now or something so you guys can have a visual..

edit: btw my system does run 5760x1080 ... as you may recall the original testbed on my friends amd ran 5400x1050(or whatver).

I don't want Videos! I wanna see "Frametimes.csv" recorded via Fraps! If you can upload that file to RS or here i'd be happy :)



Ok .. So show me how to do that ...Your video you posted previously is way too much for my attention span .

All I know is that my games now run awesome. Before they didn't even run on crossfire and eyefinity. It was a joke. I am very happy now. !.


Here are some you tube videos I took last night. Please dont laugh at my playing abilities. I had a few too many beers while doing this. I would also like to mention that the phone I recorded with this seems to give a brief stutter every now and then . I noticed this while watching the videos. I see it more on Dirt 3 really. I think my battery was dying .. I will take another video tonight of Dirt 3 and repost it.
Here you go.

BF3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxpV7bVUcMc&context=C2a115ADOEgsToPDskKGCH4zP5m8T6KFvYd7iJVD


Edit. I took down the Dirt 3 video. the playback Im getting from these recordings on my phone just does the game no justice. The game is 100% smooth. Ill try again with my digital camera that does 720 p once its charged.

Thanks for posting the vid, the game looks smooth. But to be honest, since you made the video using your phone there is no way to tell. When I show my friends the microstuttering, they don't notice it unless I disable crossfire and show them how that is different.

Where do you live, maybe I can come by... ;)

But seriously, if you could cap some vids this weekend with a program like fraps, it would be much appreciated. And/or try Haldi's suggestion.

As for this quote. I have not read this anywhere else. I searched for about 4 days in a row looking for a resolution to my problem .. I NEVER read anyone mention that the problem is that you need to run AMD cards on an AMD system ( I dont even believe that this is 100% true.. I think its a sandy bridge and AMD issue)

Regardless of your comment. I proved that this works 2 times now. Once on my friends system, and now on my own. AND the ironic thing is.. I NEVER believed that this was gonna work! I was going to sell these 6970s to spend more money on gtx 590s ( one at a time of course)

You definately missed the point I was trying to make. Go read it again, All I was trying to say was that using an AMD exclusive system does "Not" necessarily fix the issue as some of the previous posters suggested.

Every time I try to use Fraps to benchmark frametimes, the games becomes unplayable(feels like 5fps or something) until the bench ends. Which means that it is impossible to make a frametimes.csv since I am not measuring what I want to measure. Any ideas?

what -.o you sure you're benchmarking only FPS and Frametimes ? And no Video recording or stuff? Same button for Video and Benchmarking ?

Cuz when i tried to record Frametimes while Recording video with MSI Afterburner it goes haywire! (see picture!)

But normal Benchmarking i didn't realise any FPS change from normal! which version of Fraps do you use ?
I did with newest 3.4.7

Attached files

That was so obvious. No idea why I didn’t see that. You were right. It was the same hotkey as for starting to record video.

Anyway, here is a 2 minute file of Dirt 3 with both Eyefinity and Crossfire enabled. I have seen your instructional video, but am not sure how to do it myself. If you can help out, that would be awesome. If you need anything else, let me know.

could put in my old HD3870X2 to my C2D E8400, if i had to!



Edit:

How To: Record Micro Stutter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfl7-3J1hA0

Edit: Changed Video, made a New one!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw3h8_4XTCk

i'd gladly help with editing the Frametimes.csv But please send it per E-mail (can be found in Profile page) or upload it to a oneclick hoster like mediafire or some FTP server.
Because Google documents already deleted your file "Sorry, the page (or document) you have requested is not available." (maybe wrong settings, and its private?)

btw.

Made a New video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw3h8_4XTCk

Same like last, just better explained i hope.

This link should work.

I can't seem to find you e-mail address. Are you sure it is on your profile page?

Okay... somehow i managed to send some1 a Email via Profile page...

Well, this Link worked!

here you go!

You have an Average of 16.6ms between each image.
Maximum is 30.9ms
Minumim 2ms.

(someone has an analystic software(or knows how) to make a spread image, so 100 frames are 16ms, 200 are 17ms, 150 are 18ms.... ? Gonna try it out with Excel later)

As you can see on the Pictures ( Each Diagram is 2-3 seconds long Time is written on it! and 100 Frames) you have at least one significant drop in each 2-3 seconds and that while running something around 50 fps!


Oh, and i made a Widescreen version of Graph xD 500 Frames! Span over 3 screens to see all at once!



so thats what Micro Stutter looks like! Thanks a lot for showing!

Now we need such a benchmark of Dirt 3 with the same GPU's from a AMD system!



Edit: Please tell me! your CPU, GPU and Driver, at the time of Recording Frametimes! just for comparission when there will be others!

Edit 2: made something that looks at least a little a diagnostic. total Amount of Frames, Amount of Frames with 16 ms, amount with 17 fps.... etc


Edit 3: Oh, and something Fundamental important about Microstutter that we can see here! it's NOT that the frames are coming to late! No! there is a Frame coming WAY to fast (2-5 ms) so the GPU's don't have the time to calculate the next Frame (they calculate the Frame exact as fast as all others!) and this one is coming later (28-31 ms) !
So what i mean is that, by example, taking frames 100 till 200, Frame nr 107 is shown after 4.6ms and 108 after 28.77ms, so Frame nr 108 is shown 33.399 ms after 106! Thats equal to Frame nr 106 which is shown 33.42 ms after 104! and nr 104 which is shown 33.34ms after 102!
it's just that the Flow is broken because there is 30ms gap instead of the normal 16ms.
Now why this Frame is shown directly 2ms after the last one and the next 30ms later..... maybe to balance for it ? maybe the GPU realy did calculate the Frame nr 107 to fast and driver problems couldn't stop it from showing on the screen but manage to hold the second image till its time for it to show up ? Maybe would use to much ressource to controle EVERY frame when it should show up, so only every 2nd frame is controled.

Hell i have no idea! If i had i think i'd be working for AMD xD

Attached files

dirt3_game 2011-12-17 19-35-16-10 frametimes.xls (631.5 KB)