Eyefinity + Crossfire = Stuttering

[l88bastard]

I am not looking to do a whole rant here, just to point out my observations.

I have a 980x, Rampage III, 12 gigs of dominator ram, and two Sapphire Toxic 5870 2gb cards, running on three Dell U2410s. I am running 10.5 drivers on my Vista 64 OS and 10.6 Drivers on my Windows 7-64bit OS and I am getting the same stuttering. Additionally, I have disabled the PCI expess link power management (which helped with Just Cause 2).

It seems that the best possible eyefinity experience is had with only one card versus two in crossfire.

Even when I am hitting over 60fps with games like crysis, Just Cause 2 and Dirt 2, things just don't seem "fluid." However, when I only run one card I get much smoother performance. In fact, even when I am only hitting 30 fps with one card, it seems so much smoother than when I am hitting 60 fps with two cards.

I am just finding that the whole multi card thing is a bit overrated and I have SLId 8800 ultras, 280 GTXs and crossfired 5870s & 5970s. I mean what is the point of having 60fps, if it seems like its only 20fps? For the record, the stuttering seems to be much more pronounced on Eyefinity setups versus single screens.

Does anybody concur or deny these findings? If you are running two HD5000s in crossfire and eyefinity and do not have any stuttering what are your secrets?

[r3v3nant]

I have read post after post about CF and EF not playing nicely.. it seems though that some people have it working fine.. it's got to be some hardware issue.. motherboard maybe? regardless, I'm really reluctant to try CF because I love my 5760x1080 res and I love my v-sync (the other thing that seems to break with CF and EF is vsync) and I don't want to spend the dough on CF only to have nothing but headaches.. which is what seems to happen to a lot of people..

so for now I am saying on a single gpu... going to swap my 1gb for a 2gb though.. and wait for some more drivers to come out before going CF.. I get decent performance with one card.. but I can't turn AA on and I have to disable DX10 shadows in LOTRO which sucks.. I was really hoping for some CF action so I could re-enable IQ features I have to turn off for performance sake.. but not if it's just going to cause headaches..

PS: Nvidia is about to come out with their drivers for their multi-monitor solution.. I am VERY curious to see how well theirs will work now that ATI seems to still have a lot of issues with CF and EF.

[tepescovir]

i'm waiting till i see how well or bad surround gaming is on nvidia. as it stands, i have 2 5970's with a 980x i7 and can score about 45000 on 3d vantage, but if i want to play games, then i have to disable cat ai which means i am only using 1 of my 4 gpu's just to get vsync to work, or i can leave crossfire enabled and get 150fps of stuttering.

[matrices]

I wish one of the gaming or tech websites would spare some time to investigate the root cause of this issue. At the very least, interview ATI engineers, and maybe Nvidia engineers, and figure out what is behind the stuttering in the first place.

Speculation centered on PCI-E bandwidth. But we know that has only a limited effect when we compare 8x to 16x on single-display configurations using either single or multi-GPU setups. Not only that - we also know that it has had that same limited effect for three generations of video cards.

So how can it be the case that bandwidth is the problem just because more monitors are in play? People have reported this EF+CF problem not just on x8/x8 (P55) chipset but x16/x16 (X58) chipset.

So something else has to be going on here.

[Ulysses 31]

i'm waiting till i see how well or bad surround gaming is on nvidia. as it stands, i have 2 5970's with a 980x i7 and can score about 45000 on 3d vantage, but if i want to play games, then i have to disable cat ai which means i am only using 1 of my 4 gpu's just to get vsync to work, or i can leave crossfire enabled and get 150fps of stuttering.

At the moment the only way to make good use of tri/quadfire with Eyefinity is playing OpenGL games or playing in DX9 mode. DX10 and 11 give stuttering even when fps is high. At least this is the case with the 8.74 betas I'm using atm with my 2 5970 TOXIC cards.

AMD does need to fix this and v-sync capping at wrong fps when using CF+EF while they're at it.

[Hydralisk_X]

Only one game stutters like crazy with my setup (in sig, 1GB versions): Crysis Warhead. Every other game is stutter free @ 5760x1080.

[tepescovir]

[quote]i'm waiting till i see how well or bad surround gaming is on nvidia. as it stands, i have 2 5970's with a 980x i7 and can score about 45000 on 3d vantage, but if i want to play games, then i have to disable cat ai which means i am only using 1 of my 4 gpu's just to get vsync to work, or i can leave crossfire enabled and get 150fps of stuttering.

At the moment the only way to make good use of tri/quadfire with Eyefinity is playing OpenGL games or playing in DX9 mode. DX10 and 11 give stuttering even when fps is high. At least this is the case with the 8.74 betas I'm using atm with my 2 5970 TOXIC cards.

AMD does need to fix this and v-sync capping at wrong fps when using CF+EF while they're at it.

i've been back and forth to ato about vsync capping at 120 instead of 60, and i know planty others thatg have also been in touch with ati and we all got the same answer, Ati says that no body else has reported this issus and therefore dont acknowledge as a bug to be fixed

[r3v3nant]

well, Nvidia's beta driver is out and the word is that their solution rocks... very polished, only works in a multi-gpu env, no need for a DP adapter.. I think I am going with Nvidia from here... I have enjoyed eyefinity a lot but I am to the point where I really do want more gpu power and loosing vsync among other things isn't something I am willing to live with to get it.. so going to probably pick up some 470s soon..

[tepescovir]

hopefully picking up 2 480's this weekend.

[phill1978]

very interesting.

i bought a saphire 5850 because at £240 it was great vfm especially seemn as i can get good clock speeds. but yes, i wondered if ati would sovle this problem by the time i go crossfire, now this may be 6 months away but in my experience if ati havent solved something by the first few months then they never will


i will eventually sell 5850 and but 2x NVIDIA cards if stuttering is removed

[tepescovir]

havent tried tf2 yet, but all my problems have disapeared since i swapped my 2 5970's for 2 480gtx's.
silky smooth, all settings maxed out where i could only run on low with ati(usally cus i have to disable crossfire or cat ai to work).
dont think i have had a single crash since installing the 480's.

So so much better. I'll load up tf2 tommorow and see, but i can play css perfectly.

[phill1978]

this is the problem with ATi.. they get the jump on NV sales rise and then shortly later NV destroy Ati simple because the software isnt engineered properly and robustly.

i mean why make a 2 billion transistor state of the art card costs billions $ R&D launching with eyefinity as the main feature and not test 2xCards with eyefinity.


its like 100 people at the top are clever, 100 people at the bottom are clever and yet there are 5 guys in the middle doing the software and testing with fuck all clue whatsover.

shame, as i really like the card (things do crash but i cant blame ati for that as i havent gone nv yet and compared) the display port issue is salt in the wound but for the most part its never around to worry and its very specific to setup i belive.
but imagine if you bought eyefinity for business traffic management / medical and the screen kept blinking at certain points!!

2 x next gen NV cards for me, or 1 x next gen nv card if extra DVI`s are placed on a single card unless ati fix these issues

[Barnzz]

Well someone has advised me as to the main issue with TF2, that being an option in the mulitplayer menu that came with a recent update that allows you to view the cart from anywhere on the map, I've turned this off and gone from 14-15FPS to 160FPS average(this Xfire bug has been reported to Valve), but the problem is the stuttering is still there and too annoying to play with, so I still have to disable Xfire.

AMD really need to fix this A.S.A.P before NVIDIA take over the show again. It would be nice if AMD at least gave cusotmers a list of known compatible hardware because this is a joke at the moment, they need to start by making their own working active adapter and selling it for a decent price and then getting to the botom of the rest of the bugs or I'm afraid NVIDIA will be back on top in no time, as running 3 screen resolution requires 2 cards to turn in game graphics settings up anyway, so NVIDIA providing sorround gaming only on multiple cards isnt going to deter customers, not to mention you save money by going NVIDIA due to the fact you dont need to spend xtra $'s on an expensive active adapter.

[phill1978]

Well someone has advised me as to the main issue with TF2, that being an option in the mulitplayer menu that came with a recent update that allows you to view the cart from anywhere on the map, I've turned this off and gone from 14-15FPS to 160FPS average(this Xfire bug has been reported to Valve), but the problem is the stuttering is still there and too annoying to play with, so I still have to disable Xfire.

AMD really need to fix this A.S.A.P before NVIDIA take over the show again. It would be nice if AMD at least gave cusotmers a list of known compatible hardware because this is a joke at the moment, they need to start by making their own working active adapter and selling it for a decent price and then getting to the botom of the rest of the bugs or I'm afraid NVIDIA will be back on top in no time, as running 3 screen resolution requires 2 cards to turn in game graphics settings up anyway, so NVIDIA providing sorround gaming only on multiple cards isnt going to deter customers, not to mention you save money by going NVIDIA due to the fact you dont need to spend xtra $'s on an expensive active adapter.

agree sums it up.

NV launched a card that wasnt as good as they had hoped by far and it was still faster than ATi. when they sort out proper 32 or 28nm build with huge ROP and 4-6k shader count, 2gb ddr5+ next gen it will be catch up time for Ati again unless they go on the web, read the emails and listen to the reviews that are staring them in the face telling them to sort out their software.

as a consumer i dont care now, if NV move to be better in the next few months then my following card will be NV

[ZafaZ]

I am not looking to do a whole rant here, just to point out my observations.

I have a 980x, Rampage III, 12 gigs of dominator ram, and two Sapphire Toxic 5870 2gb cards, running on three Dell U2410s. I am running 10.5 drivers on my Vista 64 OS and 10.6 Drivers on my Windows 7-64bit OS and I am getting the same stuttering. Additionally, I have disabled the PCI expess link power management (which helped with Just Cause 2).

It seems that the best possible eyefinity experience is had with only one card versus two in crossfire.

Even when I am hitting over 60fps with games like crysis, Just Cause 2 and Dirt 2, things just don't seem "fluid." However, when I only run one card I get much smoother performance. In fact, even when I am only hitting 30 fps with one card, it seems so much smoother than when I am hitting 60 fps with two cards.

I am just finding that the whole multi card thing is a bit overrated and I have SLId 8800 ultras, 280 GTXs and crossfired 5870s & 5970s. I mean what is the point of having 60fps, if it seems like its only 20fps? For the record, the stuttering seems to be much more pronounced on Eyefinity setups versus single screens.

Does anybody concur or deny these findings? If you are running two HD5000s in crossfire and eyefinity and do not have any stuttering what are your secrets?

I have exactly this problem on my setup. I haven't played any games in triple wide for ages as I find the constant stuttering annoying and makes aiming in fps difficult.

Even in games where my fps are high (eg serious sam HD min 90's avg mid 100's) the stuttering is present, when I switch to single screen mode all is perfect. I even notice it in source games like hl2 although it's not as noticable on that. Res is 3x1920x1200, even if I select 3x1680x1050 stuttering is still present.

I'm running dual 5850's i7-860 @ 3.8ghz, always been running latest cat drivers. I'm thinking of just getting rid of the 2 side monitors as they only get used now when i'm on the windows desktop.

Funny thing is that I used to run a 4870x2 with a Matrox triple head2go and it seemed much more fluid with that setup even though my fps were lower than my current.

[Ulysses 31]

I found out something interesting:

I'm using the 10.7a drivers and getting massive stuttering in Crysis Warhead at my max res(7680x1440/8144x1440 Bezel Compensated). I messed a bit with details settings and found that turning shaders on mainstream fixed all the stuttering. So I geuss with Crysis Warhead it's a VRAM issue when using very high resolutions. V-sync is working like it should with these drivers, cap at 60 fps, no screen tearing, no stuttering. Interstingly though is that DX10 performs much better than DX9 now. I tried playing at 5088x900 and now I could use all max details on everything, 4xAA, the game ran along smooooooth.

I tested Far Cry 2 DX10, no stuttering, V-sync working fine. Was getting some slight pauses here and there when I used 4x AA.

Battlefield 2 SP ran fine too in DX11 and 4xAA, V-sync.

In all these games GPU usage was spread about evenly along all 4 GPUs.

It seems 10.7a do fix things for Quadfire users and most likely for "normal" Crossfire users as well. =)

Only thing I don't like about 10.7 is that they crash S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games in DX10 and 11. Same with 10.6, 10.5 and previous don't but they bring stuttering whenever you play a game in DX10 + CFX+ EF.

[rebelstar]

I found out something interesting:

"and found that turning shaders on mainstream fixed all the stutterin"

Where can I do that in catalyst? Thanks

[LordJuanlo]

The most recent Catalyst 10.7a driver is here. However 10.8 will be released this week (around thursday I guess) and they should bring further enhancements and fixes (and I hope they won't break anything!)

[MoRTiCuS]

so has 10.8 fixed this?

[rebelstar]

No bezel fix in 10.8. Damn, now I'm even not sure if they will fix it for the 6XXX series.