4870x2 + BF3

mangaroo · *Last edited by mangaroo; 11-05-2011 at 02:47.*

Two issues that have been going round which I have failed to solve (latest drivers and CAP4). Solutions / personal experience / ideas much appreciated!

#1 - Non-native resolution will not scale up*, GPU scaling enabled in CCC

#2 - Frequent, non-continuous and severe mouse lag/non-responsive**. It lasts for about 3-5 seconds and happens every 2 minutes or so (varying slightly). The game doesn't follow with a delay but also ignores it during the time and it's nothing like the v-synch mouse delay.

I sent two feedback reports with the issues to AMD. I'm using 11.10 and CAP4.

*ATIGPUScalingFix-Win7 did not work, nor did changing the fullscreen.screen setting to 1 in the BF3 profile. Only had this issue with BF3.
**Not the mouse (tried with 2 others, nor the USB port - tried PCI USB...) and seems common with 4870x2 users

In case you were wondering, 30-70fps constantly fluctuating, likes to stick at 40 and 65. Everything, all of it, any choice = LOW (minimum in fact). Stuttering as well (separate to the mouse stuff above). Resolution 1920 otherwise blackboxed on my screen. Something tells me it should run it better..

Edit: As others have mentioned (and thanks for your contributions, been a bit distracted with sonic) - disabling amd catalyst with this card improves performances, even the mouse delay so currently no benefit which means potential reapings!

sivis · 11-02-2011, 04:44 | posts: 29

It MUST run much more faster. I've got nearly the same issue, after uninstalling CAP3 it got better but still i am getting unresponsivness from time to time along with random FPS drops.

mangaroo · 11-02-2011, 05:10 | posts: 290 | Location: England

Agreed, i disabled catalyst AI and i get better performance, same fps! The mouse problem is a lot better...but a waste of half a card on bf3 atm, think they'll do the repairs?

sivis · 11-02-2011, 05:19 | posts: 29

I think they will do, probably DICE will fix their ****, or AMD will put out another CAP. All we can do now - pray. Game right now has HUGE memory misplacement, taking about 4-6 gb of virtual memory on HDD and not taking enough from RAM, though it's free.

onemoar · 11-02-2011, 05:35 | posts: 215

Quote:

Originally Posted by sivis

I think they will do, probably DICE will fix their ****, or AMD will put out another CAP. All we can do now - pray. Game right now has HUGE memory misplacement, taking about 4-6 gb of virtual memory on HDD and not taking enough from RAM, though it's free.

YOU sir don't have a ****ing clue what you are talking about and should stfu
ALSO a 4870x2 is fking old and its NOT dx11 compliant

airbud7 · *Last edited by airbud7; 11-05-2011 at 02:50.*

Quote:

Originally Posted by onemoar

YOU sir don't have a ****ing clue what you are talking about and should stfu
ALSO a 4870x2 is fking old and its NOT dx11 compliant

You do know that a 4870x2 is a whole lot faster than your 5750...Dont you???HD 4870 X2 is 213% quicker than the Radeon HD 5750 1GB
...>http://www.hwcompare.com/4489/radeon...n-hd-5750-1gb/

Metz · 11-05-2011, 02:50 | posts: 229 | Location: USA

Quote:

Originally Posted by onemoar

YOU sir don't have a ****ing clue what you are talking about and should stfu
ALSO a 4870x2 is fking old and its NOT dx11 compliant

I think he solved OP's problem. Its obviously because the card is not DX11.

mangaroo · 11-02-2011, 06:10 | posts: 290 | Location: England

^^ Dx11 has nothing to do with it, thanks anyway. Bought this 2 years ago for about $500 like many others and I am sure AMD will get to it

In the mean time probably helps if users with the issue report it here to the catalyst team.

king-dubs · 11-02-2011, 06:23 | posts: 2,350 | Location: 127.0.0.1

AMD never implemented GPU Scaling in DX10/11 games. It only works in DX9 games.

This means, Crysis 1/2, BF3, BFBC2 (in DX10/11 mode) will not scale as you select in CCC if resolution is non-native.

This is something that AMD must address.

And for the 4870X2: you need to run Medium settings, because High/Ultra pushes VRAM usage beyond 1 GB, which will cause major stuttering regardless of FPS.

Crossfire scaling may be bad as of right now, but the best thing you can try is the latest leaked drivers and perhaps CAP 4.

lenne · 11-02-2011, 07:23 | posts: 343 | Location: Germany

Hey mang, i had an 4870x2 running bf before, follow these steps.

Clean Amd driver installation, cap3 was broken and it seems cap 4 didnt install correctly.

Close all Monitoring software in the background.

Keep an eye on vram, on the 4870x2 ull have to set most options to high and disable msaa !

(Medium settings is BS, with some ultra and some high settings ull stay below 1 gb vram )

It ran beautifully on the 4870x2 though

binormalkilla · 11-04-2011, 20:49 | posts: 394 | Location: Arkansas

I'm having the same problem with my 4870x2 despite trying all of the variations of the latest drivers and CAPs. Right now I'm running 11.10 and CAP4. Performance is a joke on this card....even if I turn everything down FPS still lingers in the 25-60 range.

I think (as someone said) at this point we just wait and hope that AMD/ATI gets their **** together.

The load balancing of the GPUs alternate (seemingly randomly) between GPUs, where one bears the entire load and the other is essentially idle, then they reverse. Here is a graph of data collected using Rivatuner while playing multiplayer. You can see the load switch toward the very end of the graph.

Dual Core · 11-04-2011, 22:35 | posts: 436 | Location: Treacle Town

Theres issues with drivers, and the game does need patching for sure but is there ever been a game thats works great from day one for everybody? the answer is NO!
Mine runs better if i disable crossfire and the 4780 series is more than enough to run the game.
BF3 is restricted by the cpu you have not really the video card.

binormalkilla · 11-04-2011, 23:00 | posts: 394 | Location: Arkansas

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dual Core

Theres issues with drivers, and the game does need patching for sure but is there ever been a game thats works great from day one for everybody? the answer is NO!
Mine runs better if i disable crossfire and the 4780 series is more than enough to run the game.
BF3 is restricted by the cpu you have not really the video card.

That is completely incorrect. Benchmarks have shown that the game is heavily GPU bound.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...e,3063-13.html

If I disable Catalyst AI I get the same performance, maybe slightly better. I don't even gain performance by decreasing the settings either....really frustrating. The only setting that seems to affect performance is enabling MSAA.

Sasquatch_04 · 11-05-2011, 00:42 | posts: 90 | Location: Trinidad & Tobago

My 4870s in crossfire experience the exact same problem described above.

if i boot up b3 without alt-tabbing (Crossfire off) i get absolutely no stutter, just lower fps.
as soon as i alt-tab and activate crossfire i get better fps but the stuttering is massive!
In the ending of the second mission in campaign mode especially, the game will literally pause for about 2-3 secs.
tried it with crossfire off....no stutter!

it is NOT a vram limitation, it's a crossfire bug with these cards.
i have tried all methods of uninstall/cleaning, old caps/no caps etc... nothing alleviates it completely.
tried it from LOW to ULTRA...same stutter, same issues..

same problem with witcher 2 when it was released. i had to wait about 2 months for a good driver release to fix the stutter.
It will be fixed...eventually...whenever that may be....

AMD still has not fixed the flickering terrain on wet tracks in DiRT 3 with these 4800 crossfire setups.

the 4870x2/crossfire may be "old" but its a very good performer and outdoes a single 5870 in most benchmarks.
but when it comes to driver specific issues with these cards i think that it's pretty much neglected by AMD.

Dual Core · 11-05-2011, 15:27 | posts: 436 | Location: Treacle Town

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sasquatch_04

My 4870s in crossfire experience the exact same problem described above.

if i boot up b3 without alt-tabbing (Crossfire off) i get absolutely no stutter, just lower fps.
as soon as i alt-tab and activate crossfire i get better fps but the stuttering is massive!
In the ending of the second mission in campaign mode especially, the game will literally pause for about 2-3 secs.
tried it with crossfire off....no stutter!

it is NOT a vram limitation, it's a crossfire bug with these cards.
i have tried all methods of uninstall/cleaning, old caps/no caps etc... nothing alleviates it completely.
tried it from LOW to ULTRA...same stutter, same issues..

same problem with witcher 2 when it was released. i had to wait about 2 months for a good driver release to fix the stutter.
It will be fixed...eventually...whenever that may be....

AMD still has not fixed the flickering terrain on wet tracks in DiRT 3 with these 4800 crossfire setups.

the 4870x2/crossfire may be "old" but its a very good performer and outdoes a single 5870 in most benchmarks.
but when it comes to driver specific issues with these cards i think that it's pretty much neglected by AMD.

Agree

slckb0y · **Memory**: 6GB Dom.GT 7-8-7-20(2000)

and then i'll start a flamewar when i'll dare to say AMD could be more responsive or give better support to multi GPU huh

bokah · 11-05-2011, 06:05 | posts: 2,309

u cant disable supersampling aa for 4870, that was reason for fps dips in mw1, bet u get that in bf3 too

lenne · 11-05-2011, 10:55 | posts: 343 | Location: Germany

Guys did u read my post at all ? i had a 4870x2 running, it was running perfectly...

mangaroo · *Last edited by mangaroo; 11-06-2011 at 05:54.*

Quote:

Originally Posted by lenne

Guys did u read my post at all ? i had a 4870x2 running, it was running perfectly...

hey lenne, i did read it and will try another clean install, maybe use some 3rdparty software this time but atm i can't set many options to medium let alone high! I don't have the monitoring software on when playing usually anyway as well. I never had CAP3 which was causing a lot of the problems for crossfire users and went straight to CAP4, but will try a fresh install. Otherwise it could be a resolution difference? i'm running on 1920 (otherwise doesn't stretch to fullscreen on my monitor)

Glad i'm not the only one with the mouse freeze issue, hopefully we can see a fix soon

grimeleven · 11-07-2011, 14:51 | posts: 67 | Location: Canada

Strange fix but doing an ALT+TAB fixed the game for me.

I ran MSI Afterburner with GPU1 GPU2 Activity display and the game was running on 1 core, now after an ALT tab it runs fine with both running 100%.

Running 11.9 w/CAP4 on High/Ultra settings

saif · 11-05-2011, 16:23 | posts: 616 | Location: Argentina - Buenos Aires

I don't have crossfire configuration, but I also have the Keyboard/Mouse unresponsive for 5 seconds from time to time. My guy keeps walking forward, it is annoying, happens once each 15 minutes

Eastcoasthandle · 11-05-2011, 20:16 | posts: 1,511

I recall the mosfets really needed cooling on those cards. I suggest that you crank up the fan to about 55% for about 2 minutes before you start gaming. Keep it at 55% then game with it to see how things turns out for the fps fluctuations.

binormalkilla · 11-05-2011, 22:06 | posts: 394 | Location: Arkansas

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eastcoasthandle

I recall the mosfets really needed cooling on those cards. I suggest that you crank up the fan to about 55% for about 2 minutes before you start gaming. Keep it at 55% then game with it to see how things turns out for the fps fluctuations.

Mine is watercooled with a full coverage block. This problem is much too widespread to be due to overheating. The GPU's aren't being evenly loaded with Crossfire 'enabled', as opposed to throttling (which might indicate overheating).

Eastcoasthandle · 11-05-2011, 22:50 | posts: 1,511

Full cover blocks don't actively cool components like mosfets it passively cools them. It actively cools the GPU.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ck-mini-review

Come on, you should know this. When you had your stock HSF the fan would actively cool those areas of the video card. You removed that when you went for a full cover block.

binormalkilla · 11-06-2011, 00:07 | posts: 394 | Location: Arkansas

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eastcoasthandle

Full cover blocks don't actively cool components like mosfets it passively cools them. It actively cools the GPU.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ck-mini-review

Come on, you should know this. When you had your stock HSF the fan would actively cool those areas of the video card. You removed that when you went for a full cover block.

I'm the one that made that mini-review...and yes the mosfets are covered by thermal tape, which is then stuck to the heatsink. They are cooled by the block.

Again, this isn't an overheating problem.