Hi All, was hoping for some input on the massive performance issues im currently having with Battlefield 3 and Quadfire. My hardware - i7920 @ 4Ghz Asus Rampage II Extreme Dual ATI 5970's 12GB DDR3 Ram 128GB OCZ Revo Drive The problem - UPDATED Have lower then expected FPS in game when on full Ultra settings, however the main issue is the random spikes in FPS that i get. Based on the perf graph ingame it seems to be the CPU that spikes when i notice the judder. Here is what has helped the issue so far - Disabled post processing - Less spikes Used ingame command to cap FPS @ 65 - Less spikes Tried HT on and off, both seem to make little difference to spikes. FPS does seem better with it on though. GPU Load is still very minimal with the FPS cap inplace, 30-50% load. CPU @ 80% load with HT off, 60% load with HT on. With FPS cap off GPU load will go up to about 60-80% and CPU stays about the same, from this i can only guess that CPU is not the problem. Drivers/Caps Tried - 11.10 Driver /w 11.9 Cap 4 11.11 Driver /w 11.9 Cap 4 11.11 Driver /w 11.11 Cap 1 11.11 Driver /w 11.11 Cap 2 11.11a Driver /w 11.11 Cap 2 Is anyone else using Quadfire? If so what drivers and caps are working for you? Hopefully i can avoid fully formatting my system! Cheers
I ll get straight to the point. You are cpu bottlenecked at that resolution, there is no argument about it. Quadfire is overkill for 1080p yeah even at Guru3D. Your CPU cant feed 4 gpus fast enough. Even at 2560x1600 one 5970 is gonna give you nice fps. Trust me I tried it. What you can do now is just play with one 5970 for a smooth experience.
Thanks for the reply, however i do not believe it is CPU related. Well Quadfire might well be overkill for 1080P it should still provide better FPS then a single 5970. Scaling in Bad Company 2 worked well after ATI eventually sorted their drivers out, that is why i expect it will be the same here. Not to mention my CPU has very little stress in Battlefield 3 since it is very GPU heavy. From the forums i have looked at others with my setup have had all GPU's loading up correctly so i don't see why mine wont. One of the forum posts was here on Guru3D. http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=4165440#post4165440 If anyone else has this setup please could you let me know what driver and cap your using
I have a trifire using 11.10 prev 3 no caps, all 3 gpus @ 99% 11.11 whql with or without caps has stutters or major fps drops
Your link doesnt mention resolution unless I missed it. If we are talking about MP, then it is pretty CPU intensive. I was using 11.9 wqhl and cap4 since they give me the best results. Good luck.
Stay away from quad-fire imho. Not the first time decrease in performance is noted in quad-fire performance. I'd sell a 5970 and get a 5850/70 for the sweet spot in multi gpu gaming.
I agree i had 5970 +5850 quadfire aso cpu bottlenecked... now i have 5970+5850 and 460 gtx for ppu and i7 920 d0 12gb ram ddr3 playng most on eyefinity 5760x1080 and it works fine
I'm using a Tri set up. 8.93 and the latest caps. BF3 at 1920x1200 using up to 90% across all 3 gpus. With this particular driver all is running really smooth to boot. Oh.. that may even be with vsynch on.
set-up on the side and a single 5970 is not enough for my settings at 2560x1600 It uses upto 6800MB Vram /4 GPUs =1700 Vram. Quadfire Sapphire Toxics 900/1200 4GB default. Upto 90% load on all GPUs Vsync, no Vsync = even more load. Hex CPU up to 85% load 4015Mhz-CPU 3015Mhz-NB 3015Mhz-HT Link. 11.11 Cap 11.2 Pic showing 81% load. I have never had to use a cleaner to get an install to work, I have been using 2560x1600 since 2006, 1900xt CF 3870 CF, 3870 Tri, 3870 Quad, 5970 Quadfire. I have used the cleaner twice just in case the first was a fluke on Fresh Os installs to see if it could cause problems for testing as many people use it and both times it broke installation of specific sets of ATI drivers, some would install and some would not, i tested about 8 sets, so it becomes a vicious circle once you use the cleaner. But before the cleaner was used all sets would install with just using the uninstall program, sometimes installing over the top can have issues for some, so just uninstall first. Some of things left behind are current CCC configs so that you don't have to go trough CCC again, some people clearly don't know that and assume that everything left must be junk.
Thanks for the replies - I have made some progress, still not working as i would hope but it is definitely better. Previously i have been manually maximizing battlefield as soon as i see it appear in the taskbar. It seems that in doing this it has some how screwed crossfire over from working correctly. If i let battlefield maximize itself automatically i get quite an increase in performance. I get about 60-80% load across all GPU's when in game, and also maintain 60+ FPS. Also the above GPU loads were with Vsync off, if i turn it on i then drop down to about 30-40% GPU load but do maintain 60FPS most of the time. Still don't think it's quite where it should be, i would expect 80%-99% GPU load if things were working correctly. (vsync off) Any more suggestions are welcome!
I got kinda the same problem with with catalyst 11.10 WHQL in some situations. 11.11 and 11.11a are working pretty bad too. Best drivers for CrossFireX are 11.10 prev 3 with no cap installed, most of the time i'm running with the 6990 only enabled due to no improvements enabling the other 2 cards. You should use an ingame tool to check if the CPU is the bottleneck. Once ingame open the console (the key on the left of "1") and write: Code: Render.PerfOverlayVisible 1 This will show a graph in the bottom right corner showing the CPU fps and GPU fps. Keep in mind it's a inverted graph.
Your resolution is to low to get 80%-99% with that CPU, 60-80% is fine. Load is not the end all and be all, just like not every program, app or game will put 100% load on your Multi core CPU the same goes for the multi GPU. I had in the past messed about with Radeonpro and was getting 27% across all GPUs and holding a smooth 60fps, i then changed profiles and got 70-80% load across all GPUs and was only getting a jerky 30fps.
I have also been using only one of my 5970's as it provided better performance, however since letting BF3 maximize itself in its own time i seem to have got quite a performance increase, do you manually click it from the taskbar? I will give the performance graph ago tonight, just to clarify what im looking for....I assume that in an ideal world CPU and GPU should be about equal for FPS and what ever one is lower will show me which is the bottleneck? I also tried 11.10 pv3 with no caps which is the only other driver that has given me half decent performance/gpu load. I will also get BF3 patched and 11.11a downloaded tonight and give it ago! Lastly are you guys using HT and if so has it given you a performance boost?
I don't really agree with all this, I had 5970's in quadfire BF3 with an i5-750, 1080p and had full on utilization 99% on all 4 cores. Good frame rates, but had stuttering at ultra due to low vram - so ultimately I got rid of the 5970's.
He does have a different CPU, but it is of a slightly lower spec then mine so if anything mine should perform slightly better. I have tried with HT on and off.
Ok here's where im at now after the patch - - Using 11.11a + 11.11 Cap 2 - Checked Perf Graph in game and the cpu was spiking quite a bit causing a judder. - Disabled Post Processing - Less spikes - Used ingame command to cap FPS @ 65 - Less spikes - Tried HT on and off, seem to be the same either way. However FPS does seem better with HT on. Still getting some spikes in FPS causing it to drop below 65 FPS when playing, any ideas what else i can try? I'm thinking of trying the 11.10 pv3 with the above settings since a lot of people seem to report that as stutter free. EDIT: Also noticed that most people reporting stuttering only seem to have it with Ultra Textures enabled, will drop mine down to High later and see if it makes a difference. http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=279&threadid=156765
