Good morning everyone, I've recently upgraded my two GTX570's to a pair of Gigabyte 7970s but i've had pretty dissapointing results. The reason for the upgrade is because i've got a 120hz monitor and want to have it running at highest frame rates possible. Whenever crossfire is enabled my gpu usage on each card only hits around 55% and my frame rate is all over the place and not consistent on some games, the worst being battlefield 3. My build is: WINDOWS 7 PRO 64 Asus P6T Corsair HX850w PSU I7920 @ 4.0GHZ cooled with ultra 120 extreme. 6GB DDR3 1600 GIGABYTE 7970 GHZ CROSSFIRE Running at 1920x1080 120HZ When crossfire is disabled my gpu usage goes up to 99% and every game runs a LOT smoother. The frames are higher and more consistent. I've tried: Driver cleaner on both ATI and Nvidia (using driver sweeper on ATI would give me BSOD's and force windows to use system restore?) Tried all the latest drivers and caps. re-installing both cards, triple checking they're installed correctly and power cables are attached properly. Resetting CMOS. Formatting my hard drive. I know it isn't an issue with temps as i've got a very cool case and temps don't go over 70c on either card at 100% usage, they usually sit around 60c. I was thinking that perhaps my i7 920 could be bottlenecking but searching on google seems to suggest otherwise. If it is indeed the CPU then I'd upgrade to a 3570K if it would resolve the issue. I also thought it may just be an issue with ATI and their drivers as I've seen a lot of people complaining about them and issues with crossfire? I'd guess the next step is to test each card individually which I'll do this evening but I have a feeling this isn't the issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Strange, I'm getting great scaling in BF3 so it really shouldnt be a problem. Have you reinstalled windows since switching from the 570's?
Shouldn't be a bottleneck. I've got 3 x 7970 on a system of similar vintage to yours, clocked a bit higher and with 2 more cores mind, but very few games make use of 6 cores anyway. Have you tried beta drivers? Is the crossfire connector on?
a) the cpu is bottlenecking b) the game is not optimized to multi-gpu c) turn v-sync off -Which games did you use, with which settings and resolution?
Thanks for replying. I've formatted since switching to the new cards. I'm on the latest beta drivers with the latest cap. the crossfire connector is installed correctly, I've tried two connectors. I play bf3, witcher 2 ect at max on 1920x1080 This guy has an identical issue with no solution found. His cards are gigabyte ones too. http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=371743 perhaps they're buggy cards?
Try each card separartely first, see if there's anything wrong with them. I assume you have checked CCC to ensure that CF is enabled in the first place. I have three HD7970, a Sapp/PowerColor/Club card, and they work well together. I did not check usage during game, but if I can manage BF3 at Ultra setting + 4xMSAA @6036x1200 with quite playable framerate, CF has to be working. On Cat 12.11 Beta11 + 12.11 CAP2.
Sweep in safemode. Driversweep in safe mode is the best choice if something is wrong with the driver. Try to sweep it in safe mode,restart, then install the new catalyst 12.11 BETA11 driver, restart, then install 12.11CAP2 and restart.
Update of how its going: First rig was: 1920x1080 120hz i7 920 @ 4.0ghz cooled with 120 extreme ultra asus p6t gb DDR 3 7970 OC in crossfire windows 7 850W silverstone PSU I tried reinstalling drivers, formatting , all of those things ect but nothing worked. I decided it may be my CPU so I built an entirely new rig which is i5 3570k @ 4ghz Asrock extreme 4 mobo 16gb DDR3 2133mhz 7970 OC in crossfire silverstone 850W PSU exactly the same issue happens with this rig. Disable UPLS ect, nothing works. Because my GPU's were voltage locked (gigabyte) I sold both online and grabbed a pair of sapphire 7950's OC'd to 1175/1400 MHZ The issue is still there for battlefield 3 with only around 60% gpu usage. All of the cards have worked fine on their own at 99% but crossfire seems to cause issues. Because I"ve tried two different sets of cards on two completly different rigs it leads me to believe its either just poorly optimized for ati cards in bf3 or a software issue. I score 14,000 3d marks and everything else runs fine so I think it's optimization or crappy drivers.
I mentioned in post 2 that i7 920 was enough for xfire 7970. you didnt really waste your money on the upgrade, but it didnt solve your problem. the 3570k is capable of higher clock than 4ghz easily. when you get your problem squared away, I suggest clocking your cpu higher. does the problem just happen in bf3?
I'd planned an upgrade anyway, not just for this. Um so far I believe its mainly bf3... there might be some others. Does a 3dmark11 score of 14,000 sound about right? Max I could clock my cpu is 4.4ghz
Turns out it's battlefield 3 and pretty much everyone experiences it. http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2249262 Apparently no current hardware can max this game smoothly for 120hz.
