Crossfire 5870 Performance Problems

[ViciousXUSMC]

Just got my 5870 CF going today and so far not so good. I am pretty sure every game I have tried has worse performance than a single card does, so I hope there is some obvious flaw that somebody can point me at that I can fix.

Specs
Asus P8P67 Deluxe
Intel 2600K @4.5ghz
16GB RAM
PC P&C 750W PSU

GPU-Z shows both cards @ 8x PCI-E 2.0 speed so no x4 or x2 slot issues.
GPU-Z shows temps to be fine for both cards during benchmark/use
750W PSU Should be enough to power them fine

I have the CF bridge on.

CF works as say in Hard Reset I get almost double the MAX FPS with CF enabled but I also get HALF the minimum FPS and lag/stuttering that is not present with a single card.
Skyrim is much worse, and BF3 I can tell is worse.

I am not so sure its "microstudder" it seems much more prominent and worse than what people are traditionally calling microstudder, this is game braking lag/pause/break in gameplay.

Drivers are the 12.1 preview drivers.


Right now my only ideas are I need to try older drivers just incase the 12.1 are messed up.
That 8x Lanes are not fast enough enough though they should be.
That the 1GB Cards have issues w/ Eyefinity more than a single card does.
Bad CF Bridge

So I will have to test older drivers or something later on but anybody have any ideas/hints?

[Gilly]

Just got my 5870 CF going today and so far not so good. I am pretty sure every game I have tried has worse performance than a single card does, so I hope there is some obvious flaw that somebody can point me at that I can fix.

Specs
Asus P8P67 Deluxe
Intel 2600K @4.5ghz
16GB RAM
PC P&C 750W PSU

GPU-Z shows both cards @ 8x PCI-E 2.0 speed so no x4 or x2 slot issues.
GPU-Z shows temps to be fine for both cards during benchmark/use
750W PSU Should be enough to power them fine

I have the CF bridge on.

CF works as say in Hard Reset I get almost double the MAX FPS with CF enabled but I also get HALF the minimum FPS and lag/stuttering that is not present with a single card.
Skyrim is much worse, and BF3 I can tell is worse.

I am not so sure its "microstudder" it seems much more prominent and worse than what people are traditionally calling microstudder, this is game braking lag/pause/break in gameplay.

Drivers are the 12.1 preview drivers.


Right now my only ideas are I need to try older drivers just incase the 12.1 are messed up.
That 8x Lanes are not fast enough enough though they should be.
That the 1GB Cards have issues w/ Eyefinity more than a single card does.
Bad CF Bridge

So I will have to test older drivers or something later on but anybody have any ideas/hints?

Running exact same settings apart from the new card?

This sounds like drivers to me, with the minimum rate being lower.

[ViciousXUSMC]

Found some interesting stuff: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=355720

Using that tool posted in that thread I can see with the OSD options that crossfire is on during gaming and both cards are being equally utilized.

Still have not found any fix for the lag/studder though. Seems its easy to upset the beast like in BF3 just going into the menu and trying to change video options causes the game to go into a crawl until I change back to the settings that were present when I launched the game.

12.1 seems to be doing fine for other people though.

[Bifurk8]

Hey Vicious,

I've been running 2x 5870s in Crossfire on Eyefinity at 6048x1080 for a little over a year now. Our systems are somewhat similar. Here are my specs:

Asus P6T LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Motherboard
Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.6 GHz @ 3.8 GHz
6 GB RAM
1000W PSU

I'm running Windows 7 64 bit.

I had incredibly poor performance on both Battlefield and Skyrim originally. Battlefield specifically gave me the same problem you are having with any changes made to Video Settings slowing my system to a crawl, under the old 11.10 drivers but haven't had any issues with the 11.11c and 12.1 previews. What version of the Catalyst Application Profiles are you using? 11.11 CAP 3 is what I'm on.

What settings are you using in both Battlefield 3 and Skyrim? I haven't done a comparison of Crossfire VS 1 card. But, having used Crossfire exclusively, here are the settings I've found to keep a steady framerate (I haven't measured in FRAPS or anything, I just crank up and adjust down til I'm happy with fidelity VS performance)

Skyrim:

Antialiasing: Off
Anisotropic Filtering: 8x
Texture Quality: High
Radial Blur Quality: Medium
Shadow Detail: High
Decal Quality: High
FXAA: Off
Water: Reflect Land, Reflect Objects, Reflect Trees
Object Fade: 7
Light Fade: 25
Actor Fade: 6
Item Fade: 4
Grass Fade: 5
Specularity Fade: 10
Distant Object Detail: High
Object Detail Fade: Off

Battlefield 3:

Texture Quality: Medium
Shadow Quality: Medium
Effects Quality: Medium
Mesh Quality: Medium
Terrain Quality: Medium
Terrain Decoration: Medium
Antialising Deferred: Off
Antialising Post: Off
Motion Blur: Off
Anisotropic Filter: 16x
Ambient Occlusion: SSAO

<*Edit> Ran FRAPS and found I'm getting a min FPS = 32, max FPS = 74 and average FPS = 45 on Sharqi Peninsula in 32 player multiplayer on Battlefield 3. In the Lost Knife Cave in Skyrim I'm getting min FPS = 31, max FPS = 1105, and average FPS = 73.

[ViciousXUSMC]

I'll try to change the cap profile and see if that helps.

ill try 11.12 cap1

those settings you listed i usually could run on just one card pretty good, (example BF3 all medium was pretty playable with one card) I was hoping the 2nd card to get me into high or atleast higher frame rates.

[Haldi]

you have GPU-Z right? So you can see VRAM usage. IF its over 1000mb you might have to less, but there are some games which manage to run with full vram an no lags....

Oh, and can you do me a favour and do some benchmarks with Fraps (like explained here ) I need more Data :)

[ViciousXUSMC]

I think BF3 is better now with the cap update.

Skyrim about the same, I think maybe the 4GB LLA.exe may tell it not to use the proper profile so if I use that radeon tool I think its better as I force it.

Once all textures load lag goes away, I did have 2x AA set I just turned that off that may help a ton. But yeah where my current save is its outside at night with lots around and I load into the game @ 2 or 3fps with a npc attacking me because I accidentally stole a book.

If I keep running for about 30 seconds my fps goes up to mid 20's once everything has loaded in.

I'll keep working with it.

[ViciousXUSMC]

Ok wow update: with no AA Skyrim instead of 2-3fps is 30fps and goes up to 40/50ish way better and way playable.

What bothers me though is testing with crossfire on/off nets me the same frame rate regardless so its not like I see a boost with CF. Unless the game is using CF even when I have it off, but I recall the game being just as playable with one card before I had the 2nd.

Going to test the Hard Reset bench and report back that one had some hard numbers and clear differences with CF on/off.

[Haldi]

i think i read something (in changelog) about CF working only for HD6000 atm, in Skyrim, and then again i read something about CF deactivated cuz of problems....

Use Rivatuner / MSI Afterburner, activate OSD and watch if both GPU's have over 90% GPU load!

[Abram]

How does the new card run on its' own? Have you tried another bridge? How does the single

[ViciousXUSMC]

Used GPUZ to verify both cards had load.

Sure enough with CF off just one card had load, with CF on both cards had load.

But FPS seems identical with both cards.

I uninstalled that radeon tool thinking it may be causing me some issues as I thought I had that issue with hard reset tagged to being that tools fault (double max fps but half min) but after taking it out that problem came back after I turned off the pc reseated the card and moved the bridge to the other open spot on the cards.

I'll keep at it as I get some time to mess with it.

Not sure what the heck is the issue. Both cards are being loaded though I know this for sure. It was a brand new bridge I would try another but do not have one.

Card should work fine on its own, its a reference card Ibrin had for review.

[Bifurk8]

I've seen improved performance in Battlefield as AMD has updated their drivers and CAP profiles versus the Crossfire performance at the time of the BF3 release, which was terrible. I can crank the graphics much higher in BF3, if I'm playing single player or smaller multiplayer maps. But, on a large 64 player server, I can't keep the framerate stable enough at the higher settings.

I haven't noticed any improvements in framerate at all in Skyrim under Crossfire, even with the latest drivers and CAP. Per @catalystcreator on Twitter, 11.11c was supposed to add Crossfire support to Skyrim for the 5x Radeons. It hasn't made a bit of difference as far as I can tell and he later tweeted that "the title can be CPU bound in certain cases, so that's why CF scaling is not always apparent." I don't know why I'd be CPU limited with a core i7 920 @ 3.8 GHz, though.

[ViciousXUSMC]

12.1 Cap out there too I think, that should be the latest & greatest.

[Autarch]

That the 1GB Cards have issues w/ Eyefinity more than a single card does.

So I will have to test older drivers or something later on but anybody have any ideas/hints?

What resolution are you gaming at? I didn't see this in your posts though I may have missed it. I think based on you mentioning getting 2-3 FPS with Anti-Aliasing enabled, and that you have 1 GB cards, it is likely a limitation of your video card memory at high resolutions.

Getting 2-3 frames per second seems to be a common symptom of running out of vram. AA can cause this to happen.

My suggestion is to turn OFF anti-aliasing, and then compare 1 card versus the crossfire setup.

I too use crossfire 5870s, and have had similar issues in games at high resolutions when anti-aliasing is enabled.

[ViciousXUSMC]

5940x1200 is my bezel corrected resolution that I play at.

[Bifurk8]

Yeah, antialiasing can bring my system to its knees even on older games like GRID running 6048x1080 bezel-corrected on 2x 5870 1 GB cards in Crossfire. On the first execution at default settings, lots of games have antialiasing enabled and will only run at only a few frames per second until I turn it down or disable it. In such low FPS cases, it can be rough to even navigate to the proper display setting menus to turn it off!