R9 295X2 Terrible Crossfire Performance - Please Help!

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon' started by BlackPanthaa, Jul 4, 2015.

  1. BlackPanthaa

    BlackPanthaa Guest

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    GPU:
    R9 295X2
    So first off I wish to thank you for opening my post. This has driven me to the edge on some occasions and I'm literally about to lose my mind. I have spent many hours over many days trying to figure this out and have gotten nowhere.

    My R9 295X2 is not providing any performance gain when crossfire is enabled OR disabled. Some people are suggesting driver issues and such, some have mentioned this is a CPU bottleneck, but I am unsure of this as it happens in a LOT of games, but some work fine. Battlefield 4 scales perfectly, couldn’t mention The Crew as it has a 60fps lock anyway. Fire Strike scores seem about right to me here: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/5291653

    The most confusing part is that my CPU is NOT maxed out in these games. Otherwise I would agree with the bottleneck claims. Check out this image and you can see there is still a little more headroom. The games seem to be balancing the load between the cards (on the odd occasion going slightly over, but then flying back down) so when one card is 60%, the other goes to 40%. One goes to 99%, the other goes to 1%.

    BattleField 4 seems fine -
    120FPS ultra on crossfire @ ultra 1440p 2x aa
    70fps ultra no crossfire @ ultra 1440p 2x aa

    Issues are found in –
    Borderlands 2 - (80-110 FPS with random performance drops)
    GTA V - (49-50fps walking, 10fps driving (cars ‘leapdfrog’ or ‘rubber band’ insane stutter)
    Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon
    (and will confirm more when I can)

    If you would like a long story -

    A couple of months back I went all out and bought myself an R9 295X2 to replace my R9 270X (big upgrade... or so I thought) and since day one I had issues.

    Granted, originally I only had an 850W PSU powering my very juice hungry rig (FX-9590, R9 295X2) so when I booted up GTA V and got practically identical frames on 1080 all the way up to 4k I assumed it needed more juice (which was the plan very shortly after I got more monays)

    So not too much long later, I had installed my 1000w PSU and ran into major PC problems with Windows 8.1. Unrelated, but my PC grinded to a halt, my job requiring this machine… wasn’t great. This is where I risked the install of Windows 10 preview, which ended up working out for me! (yay)

    Moving on, I had a few issues in Windows 10 due to driver compatibility blah blah so I didn’t game very often (slowly switching from consoles) but after trying some games… still not getting £500 worth of GPU performance.

    I tried the drivers Windows 10 gave me, beta drivers and now updated drivers W10P has given us. Still the same.

    Any help at all would be massively appreciated. Thanks for your time, it really means a lot!

    I have tried many things (except overclocking CPU, I have no idea how to go about that. Though I did try AMD overdrive once and after using the auto clock.. thing it locked up my PC at 4900, had some issues with freezing at 4800 so I'm on stock 4700 with 5000 turbo.)

    My only idea at the moment is to wait for DX12 and see if games perform much better for me and if not... go all out and change my CPU & Motherboard to(/take) an i7-5820k). rip wallet.
     
  2. bemaniac

    bemaniac Master Guru

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    GPU:
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    Yeah that's how it's meant to be. Sold mine it was ****e. 10 fps driving in gtaV isn't right though. I had 50fps in 4k on that.
     
  3. BlackPanthaa

    BlackPanthaa Guest

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    Did a couple more tests.

    Tested Tomb Raider and on ultra 1440p benchmark I get average 70fps with CFX, 35fps with windowed 1440p (crossfire off)
    Tested The Crew on ultra 1440p in a grassy area, just blipping under 60fps, (58-59.9 fps) then with crossfire disabled (window), around 35fps.

    GPU usage on The Crew was 99% with CFX off, 76% on both with CFX.
     
  4. vase

    vase Guest

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    when u have CFX enabled whats the CPU usage then?
     

  5. BlackPanthaa

    BlackPanthaa Guest

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    GPU:
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    On GTA, the cores usually hover around the 60% - 80% mark. In other games, much lower. Borderlands 2 for example is like 40-50% yet I still can't get it to correctly use crossfire.
     
  6. OneB1t

    OneB1t Guest

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    GPU:
    R9 290X@R9 390X 1050/1325
    cpu keeping this cards back ;)
    even one R9 290X is bottlenecked by such CPU in lower resolution
     
  7. jaju123

    jaju123 Guest

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    GPU:
    2x AMD R9 290 Crossfire
    Switch to intel. These games cant use the amd cpus properly.
     
  8. sammarbella

    sammarbella Guest

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    GPU:
    290X Lightning CFX (H2O)
    In GTA V the problem is DX11 bottleneck if your CPU or GPU are not maxed.

    Disable all you in advanced in game graphics and try again.

    My 290X CFX (basically a 295X2) is getting 99% GPU usage almost always and around +100 FPS at 1080p.

    In other games your CPU is not helping, use something like... an efficient Intel CPU like an i7.

    And in general the AMD drivers improved in W10, use this same modded drivers in W7/8.1.
     
    Last edited: Jul 4, 2015
  9. BlackPanthaa

    BlackPanthaa Guest

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    Yeah this is with advanced settings off. I understand it would be worse than an i7, but I didn't know it could be this bad!

    I think as I said in OP, my option now is to see if DX12 games do better and if it's not enough... time for me to fork out for an Intel i7-5820K and new motherboard! (annoying as a few months back I upgraded my case, cooler, motherboard all for the FX-9590 XD)
     
  10. sammarbella

    sammarbella Guest

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    GPU:
    290X Lightning CFX (H2O)
    The "main" problem (of all) with AMD CPUs in regard to PC gaming is MT, in ST it still have some chance against Intel but in MT....GAME OVER!

    I bet you spent a lot of money in GPU and little in CPU, this make your PC unbalanced for PC gaming.
     

  11. BlackPanthaa

    BlackPanthaa Guest

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    Yeah my CPU cost like £160 in a sale or something? It's just a little odd really. AMDs highest end CPU not able to manage their highest end GPU. Really odd. Fingers crossed for DX12... doubt it though. :p

    I came across this... probably going for this CPU then if I need to. XD http://www.3dmark.com/compare/sd/3168389/sd/2419583
     
  12. OneB1t

    OneB1t Guest

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    GPU:
    R9 290X@R9 390X 1050/1325
    this results is not valid :) i got much more with just 290X
     
  13. BlackPanthaa

    BlackPanthaa Guest

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    It's my result with CFX on (on the left)
    Definitely have some issues. It's my CPU.
     
  14. OneB1t

    OneB1t Guest

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    GPU:
    R9 290X@R9 390X 1050/1325
    in this test cpu is limiting your crossfire (DX11 singlethread on fx is bad :D)
     
    Last edited: Jul 4, 2015
  15. ---TK---

    ---TK--- Guest

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    It's your FX cpu. Another 295x2 owner here had that card and an FX cpu. He bought a 980 and is happy. There are better cards out now than the 980 though. Titan x 980ti fury x. Those gpus would run better than xfire on amd. Alternately you can switch to Intel and keep your 295x2.
     

  16. OneB1t

    OneB1t Guest

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    GPU:
    R9 290X@R9 390X 1050/1325
    http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/3262322 my result with 1x R9 290X :) but under mantle or dx12 / high resolution your PC will be fine :)
    (this result is old now i got much better graphic score abour 42-43k because of drivers and 390X but for compare)
     
    Last edited: Jul 4, 2015
  17. BlackPanthaa

    BlackPanthaa Guest

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    Fantastic thank you very much for that! :D
     
  18. oGow89

    oGow89 Guest

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    GPU:
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    I say switch everything, gpu and cpu wise to maximize performance returns. As the fx cpu will also bottleneck the high end nvidia cards ;)
     
  19. ---TK---

    ---TK--- Guest

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    Single card will be much better than dual with an fx. I would clock that as far as it could go though.
     
  20. oGow89

    oGow89 Guest

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    I think even with a single 980 and oc to 5ghz on that cpu, he will still not get the most out of his gpu.
     

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