2X5970 Crossfire Disappointing?

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon' started by Lunchboxx, Jan 10, 2011.

  1. Lunchboxx

    Lunchboxx Guest

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    GPU:
    2 X Sapphire 5970 2GB
    HW Specs:
    CoolerMaster HAF-X
    CoolerMaster Silent Pro Gold 1200W
    ASUS Formula IV Crosshair
    AMD 1090T Phenom II X6
    4x4GB G.Skill Ripjaw DDR3 1333 (7x7x7x21)
    2X Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 2GB
    WD 600GB V.Raptor SATA III (main)
    WD 1TB Cav. Blk. SATA III (storage)

    SW Specs:
    Windows 7 Home Prem. 64 bit
    CCC v10.11
    Directx 11

    I've newly returned to ATI after a long love affair with nVidia. I recently had a chance to replace my ageing 939 pin AMD SLI system. What I was looking to get coupled with the available funds I went with the system you see above. It’s taken me a few weeks to get the majority of the bugs and kinks worked out of the system. Bios flash for X6 processor support, webroot interfering with soundblaster install, bla bla bla.

    My issue is this: I have a limited number of games in which to push my system with. I mainly play Everquest 2, CoD:MW2, and Neverwinter nights 2. The system flies thru MW2 and NWN2, but crawls in spots for EQ2.

    I have also downloaded 3DMark11, and tried both CCC v.10.11 and 10.12 – scores stay pretty much the same. The only head scratcher is that my scores are actually LOWER with the second card installed and Xfire enabled.

    See:

    http://3dmark.com/3dm11/396288;jses...m11/396288?key=bUkRMNqa5ceMEP5V6Z9SHW47nF0Zv7

    http://3dmark.com/3dm11/396559;jses...m11/396559?key=405sHVZT3c3sVCXZmYhK7at4tb9WpX

    Am I doing something wrong? Did I miss a step or a necessary component? I’m sort of lost. My SLI system was plug and play, drivers were a breeze, and with the 2nd card there was always a NOTICEABLE difference.

    Help?
     
  2. methanol88

    methanol88 Master Guru

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    GPU:
    asus 5850+sapphire 5970
    hm, have you enabled crossfireX in CCC? Have you tried each card individually? Have you disabled catalyst AI or something in CCC? Also by checking the guru3d review:
    http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-5970-review-test/12 you can see that MW2 has almost minimal gain in quad. EQ2 i can't help you with. Also have you checked MSI afterburner to see gpu usage? Also i m not sure what the problem there is.
     
  3. keromyaou

    keromyaou Member Guru

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  4. Lunchboxx

    Lunchboxx Guest

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    GPU:
    2 X Sapphire 5970 2GB
    Yes, I have enabled crossfire
    Yes, tried each card individually - scores were higher when ran individually
    Yes, A.I. is enabled and set to Advanced

    Downloaded Afterburner and after the benchmark turned out:

    Maxes:

    GPU1: 49%
    GPU2: 49%
    GPU3: 66%
    GPU4: 99%

    Simultaineously:

    GPU1: 61%
    GPU2: 31%
    GPU3: 31%
    GPU4: 31%

    Afterburner is great - at least I have some indication that the cores and crossfire are actually working (unsure if working correctly or not)
    Also, thank-you for the 10.05a tip.
    Will possibly have to find a different benchmark for a better compairison.
     

  5. Sever

    Sever Ancient Guru

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    GPU:
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    if youre running the P test, then its logical that your score has dropped.

    P test is low resolution and CPU dependent. our x6 cpus arent exactly the fastest CPUs and its bottlenecking your setup (heck, its bottlenecking my single gtx580 at 4ghz and bottlenecked my old 5850x2 setup a little). more gpus = more data needing to be fed from the cpu.

    run the X test and check the scaling there. scaling should be much better.

    overclock your CPU as well. with a decent cheap aftermarket cooler, you can hit 4ghz easily on these.
     
  6. Lane

    Lane Guest

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    Forget 3Dmark 11, actually it's buggy with 3 and 4 GPU ( well it's allready hard to make work correctly SLI for most peoples, let's be happy to get CFX running allready. ) ..

    try vantage for see if you have an increase or not. anyway with quadfire you will need OC a lot your CPU.
     
  7. Lunchboxx

    Lunchboxx Guest

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    With my new Afterburner tool (thank you Methanol88) I have been playing around a bit to see if Crossfire is actually working with different benchmarks and during games. It seems like sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. I realize that all four cores are not working all the time, and during downtimes the cards downclock themselves to reduce power consumption. Is there an option or a setup I need to complete for specific games? Most notably Everquest 2 is only running on one of the four cores.

    I have downloaded and installed the ATI application profiles. Not sure where to go from there.

    Also is there a way to set up so that all 4 cores are always active? I know it will increase power consumption.
     
  8. methanol88

    methanol88 Master Guru

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    hm, try using a 3d profile in afterburner, its in settings->profile->set 3d profile. Put in the main window your desired clocks (lets say 725/1000/auto fan) click save profile (up to 5 profiles there) and set it on the 3d profile. It will launch an application (a monitor) that anticipates when you enter 3d mode and applies the corresponding profile. If it doesn't work then either the game does not make use of all 4 gpu's (happens sometimes, like gta 4 does not support over 2 gpus) so there is nothing you can do about it if that game does not support quad/tri/dual-fire. Try it out and let us know!
     
  9. phill1978

    phill1978 Master Guru

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    GPU:
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    i cant imagine anything would need or support 4 GPU`s @ once! im not saying its stupid, well iam but anyways id love to do it but it doesn't ever seem to work.

    has anyone running 3 or 4 gpu really got any benefit over two? even if one game did support it and it scaled well you most likely will max out its settings and even max out forced 24x supersample with just two gfx cards @ 60fps
     
  10. keromyaou

    keromyaou Member Guru

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    I run hd5970+hd5870 (+hd5870). Triple crossfire works very well. It has significant improvement over dual crossfire. I am getting a real benefit in the games which require a lot of gpu power, such as metro 2033, crysis, and crysis warhead. I can play almost maximum settings (not the maximum because even with this gpu power, I cannot run those games smoothly at the maximum). Once you play those games at the higher visual settings, you can't go back to the lower settings. The games look very good at the maximum settings. I bought the second hd5870 at eBay cheaply just for fun, knowing that quadfire doesn't work well. But who knows? It is a fun to see if AMD finally do something about quad fire in the future.
     

  11. methanol88

    methanol88 Master Guru

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    Agreed. Trifire is awesome! Crysis runs easily maxed out like this
     
  12. Lunchboxx

    Lunchboxx Guest

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    Sadly it seems EQ2 does not seem to supoport crossfire, which is odd because it does support SLI. So far using afterburner, I have only seen one of the 4 cores active - every once in a while I see a bump from the other 3, but that's about it. Framerates take a pretty big hit in some spots and it's inconsistent - sometimes I'm barely crawling at 8fps or sometimes I'm running balls out at 48fps.

    Also, in the FFXIV benchmark, only one core was running the whole time. Benchmark seem to turn out fine though. I didn't record the score at the time though.

    While playing CoD:MW2 only 2 of the cores were active, but will all the eye candy turned as high as I could set it there wasn't even a hitch. Absolutely gorgeous.

    Among my other tests I have turned out:

    Single card with v10.12:

    http://3dmark.com/3dm11/403368?show_ads=true&page=/3dm11/403368?key=JZ3quS0vnpCT6FFeZe6XffRvWdYLJC


    Dual card with v10.12:

    http://3dmark.com/3dm11/403920;jses...m11/403920?key=yFPUr2FN484W5zb8Dj87EYCbVjhhtU

    http://3dmark.com/3dmv/2851697?key=A8EarJ6FqHcJVQDZAKzKHJtmZUrbBF

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    **Sorry about the screenshots, but I was unable to upload the last 2 to the net.
     
  13. methanol88

    methanol88 Master Guru

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    woah. 24k P with vantage?i m getting 35-36k on stock with 5970+5850. Something is really wrong there.
     
  14. Lane

    Lane Guest

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    yep something's really wrong there, i have 9k+ on 3Dmark11 and too around 33K under vantage ( 2x5870@1050+ and CPU@4.4ghz+ )

    At your place i will not search hundred years what happend, reinstall windows, fresh install.

    Install 10.11 or 10.12 > download last CAP ( profile ) on Rage 3D, fresh DX11 and go.
     
  15. chilly willy

    chilly willy Guest

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    sell em both and get 1-3 6950s or 6970s. quadfire or quad sli is rarely ever worth it for the cost investment 3 way not only scales better but uses less power and costs less money. also if all u have is a stock 1090t then the cpu bottleneck alone isnt worth going over 2 way crossfire/sli anyway. now if u had a 980x at 4.5ghz or something like that then maybe quads would be useful. but to be honest i never saw multi card option to be worth it anyway you can max everything with most new major single card releases anyway.
     

  16. edi_2

    edi_2 Guest

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    GPU:
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    get 10.5 drivers and there you go..

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  17. johnathonm

    johnathonm Member Guru

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    Still seems the 10.5a is the only one that actually "works".

    I am running a 5970 + a 5870 and it's the only driver which seems to actually use "all" the cards both in games and in synthetic benchmarks.
     
  18. Lunchboxx

    Lunchboxx Guest

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    As much as I hate to admit defeat, I have decided to RMA the cards and go with either a 5870 x 2 or a 6970 x2 set up. It seems my AMD 1090T just isnt up to par with the i7 980x. It is possible the difference in the board set ups is to blame, or the 890FX chipset itself. Either way I have toiled and tried just about anything and everything I have seen suggested. I did learn a lot though and am taking quite a bit of new knowledge away from the experience. I don't blame AMD, ASUS, or Sapphire - it was simply my lack of research, and limited crossfire knowledge. Next time I will take a bit of additional time to read and research more before trying to over-build and shoot myself in the foot.

    I plan on reading up quite a bit more before deciding whether to go with an 5870 crossfire or a 6970 crossfire solution. This way even if EQ2 (the main game I play) only recognizes one card, it will still be a card that can run it with ease. And after all that I think I'll stick with just 2 cards for now. :smile:

    Thank-you all so much for the time and effort you have put in in trying to help me resolve this issue. You all have gone above and beyond any help I ever expected to get. Sincerely, thank-you.



    :pray2pc:


    **EDIT** Sorry I meant 6970 not 6870 - corrected it.
     
    Last edited: Jan 13, 2011
  19. chilly willy

    chilly willy Guest

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    dont feel bad anythign more than 2 way is not worth it in my opinion. if you are gettign new cards i can recomend getting a single 6950 and flash ti to a 6970 or just get a 6970. dont go multi-card unless you need it. a single powerful card will be much easier to fiddle with as well and comes with less headaches. my 6870 maxes everything i play right now(guild wars, killing floor, crysis, resident evil 5, mount and blade warband, gta4, supcom 2, kane and lynch 2, just cause 2 and left 4 dead games) at 1920x1200( i dont use aa at that res unless the gpu can power through anyway). and i max those with my 710 you should be more than fine with a 1090t and a 6950/6970.
     

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