Widescreen Gaming Forum

I hope this hasn't been beat to death already, but has anyone had any luck with 5800 series eyefinity/crossfire stuttering. I tried using the 10.2 beta's last night and I am STILL getting really bad stuttering. I have yet to see an improvement to any game outside of Dirt 2. Please weigh in with your feedback.

5970 + 5870 tri-fi cfx eyefinity is lame crap, it's a stuttery, slugish slide show fest and thats putting it mildly. Sure hope ATI get crossfire/eyefinity sorted out soon or else I'll have to sell off the 5870 and just use the 5970 for eyefinity.........which is a pitty because at 5040x1050 the 5970 struggles with some games and that is why I want the 5870 to play nicely with the 5970 with crossfir eyefinity but it's not looking promising at all atm.

by the lack of any positive replies I will say that crossfire and eyefinity is rubbish when used together. With that said I did download cat. 10.3 rc/beta and my stuttering did go away when I used crossfire with eyefinity for the most part.. the thing is I cant seem to force v-sync with crossfire and eyefinity enabled, and tearing sucks too! (not as bad as stuttering) When using 1 card in eyefinity, I dont think I am forcing 60 fps but the tearing isnt as bad, I notice it a bit on the peripheral monitors.

Bezel management in 10.3 works awesome!!

Stuttering? I don't recall having stutters to the point where it'd affect gameplay. Microstuttering? Yes, but not to the point where it'd affect gameplay either. I'm playing AvP in DX11 mode, Advanced Shadow + Tessellation on, Very High detail in EyeFinity mode @5760x1200.....pretty smooth with mild microstutter. I've already completed the CM part, so I'm now playing as a Predator and it's been problem free. :cheers

I'm pretty stable right now with 10.2, but I haven't gone through a great number of games. Dirt2 and BFBC2 really good for me right now.

Tried setting AA and VSync through CCC instead of in-game? Motherboard isn't 16x/4x right? Cards getting full power? (ie...if you have 'dirty' power at home, you get less from a 850w ps).

Also if you have a game performing good and one bad, use MSI Afterburner and check the GPU usage. Bouncing around on the bad, stable on the good?



...just thinking aloud...can't think of anything else right now...

hmm I havent really considered lo oking at my bios configuration. I know my mobo supports 2x 16x pci-e slots. I use the blue pci-e connectors but it goes like blue, black, pci, blue, black. I noticed other boards have both there primary slots right next to each other and the crossfire cables that came with my cards are not long enough to use, luckily my motherboard supplied me with 2 longer crossfire cables. But I will definatly look into that.. bfbc 2 seems to be working fine with cat 10.3 and crossfire.

hmm I havent really considered lo oking at my bios configuration. I know my mobo supports 2x 16x pci-e slots. I use the blue pci-e connectors but it goes like blue, black, pci, blue, black. I noticed other boards have both there primary slots right next to each other and the crossfire cables that came with my cards are not long enough to use, luckily my motherboard supplied me with 2 longer crossfire cables. But I will definatly look into that.. bfbc 2 seems to be working fine with cat 10.3 and crossfire.

I have the same issue with 2x5870s! The only solution is to sell the 5870s and get a single 5970.

The 5970 has NOT AT ALL stuttering as I have seen in my own eyes!

Vsync doesn't help at all. I believe this is something that drivers can't fix.

I'm pretty stable right now with 10.2, but I haven't gone through a great number of games. Dirt2 and BFBC2 really good for me right now.

Tried setting AA and VSync through CCC instead of in-game? Motherboard isn't 16x/4x right? Cards getting full power? (ie...if you have 'dirty' power at home, you get less from a 850w ps).

Also if you have a game performing good and one bad, use MSI Afterburner and check the GPU usage. Bouncing around on the bad, stable on the good?



...just thinking aloud...can't think of anything else right now...

Are you using multiple monitors with crossfire? If yes, Can you force v-sync when 3 monitors are in eyefinity mode? When single screen gaming I have no screen tearing or stuttering. But when I use eyefinity I get screen tearing and cant force 60 fps.

Yes & yes. Using 3 Samsung 2494's. VSync set to Always On in CCC. The only thing I really know about VSync is that people usually turn it off, but somebody else suggested turning it on in CCC and it works fine for me.

Also, I get the water effect on the windshield now in Dirt2

Yes & yes. Using 3 Samsung 2494's. VSync set to Always On in CCC. The only thing I really know about VSync is that people usually turn it off, but somebody else suggested turning it on in CCC and it works fine for me.

Also, I get the water effect on the windshield now in Dirt2

hmm well v-sync bascially when working properly will keep your fps to 60 frames per second which in return will keep your picture quality nice and clean.. no tearing or stuttering ( not microstuttering)

some people say v-sync increases input lag and some people are sensitive to that. I always keep v-sync on because I hate screen tearing it drives me nuts. Unfortunatly for me forcing v-sync via CCC isnt doing a damn thing which it rarely worked for me anyway. I always used d3doverrider with the riva tuner download and it was a god send. D3doverrider isnt working when multiple monitors are enabled.... Maybe I am doing something wrong.

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

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?

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.