BF3 and other games low fps with 7770 crossfire

Dijas · Jul 7, 2013

Hey guys, I just added another 7770 ghz edition to my computer. These are the specs:

2x HiS HD 7770 ghz edition
Asus m5a97 motherboard
500w psu
AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4ghz black edition
8gb of ram.

My problem is, I'm not seeing any performance boost with crossfire. beforehand I could run the game on medium and get like 40fps at 1680x1050, but now that I have crossfire, I get aroudn 60 when looking at a wall or a cieling, and when I actually play it averages around 30, regardless of what graphics settings I have.

I ran it on ultra, and on extreme low, and they both had the same exact performance.

Anyone know whats up here?

clutchc · Jul 7, 2013

It's your 2nd PCIe X16 slot. It is only X4 electrically. It is dragging down the performance of the 2nd card and causing the 1st card to wait for it. It is suggested to never go below X8, X8 for dual cards in SLI or CF.

Also, you may experience micro-stutter with 2 x HD 7770s. It is a phenomenon due to poor frame time of low/mid range cards in CF.

Dijas · Jul 7, 2013

Is there anything to be done about the slot? I thought it didnt matter as long as they were both in 16x slots

swifty_morgan · Jul 7, 2013

small memory bus. inadequate vram. low end cards. need something more substantial.

Dijas · Jul 7, 2013

I have what I have, and I'm pretty sure that I should be seeing a performance increase here.

clutchc · Jul 7, 2013

Dijas :

Unfortunately, you're wrong. This is a very common problem with X16, X4 boards. I had 2 x HD 6850s in a X16, X4 board and experienced the same thing. Most games would not show an increase in frame rate and some showed a decrease. The more demanding the game, the more the decrease.

Sell the 2 cards and use the money for a single faster card.

iam2thecrowe · Jul 7, 2013

clutchc :

+1, ive also been there and done that with crossfire, but with 6850's and 2 x 8x pcie3 slots, and its still crap. Sell them and get a good single card. if you want a dual card setup go nvidia until AMD fix their drivers.

Dijas · Jul 8, 2013

Thing is, I need this computer for more than playing games, and I cant afford to have it be non-functional for 2 weeks while I wait to ship cards out and buy new ones, and on top of that, I cant sell these for anywhere close enough to even get a 7850.

can you please link me to any type of benchmark/source showing the decrease in performance exclusively due to the slots?

Also I really am not having much of a problem with any other game.

clutchc · Jul 8, 2013

If you need the PC for other tasks than gaming, the 2nd card won't matter. It is only in intense 3D gaming that the 2nd card tries to keep up with the bandwidth of the first. Some games are CPU intensive. Those won't demonstrate the issue as much as games that are GPU intensive.

Fishwithadeagle · Jul 8, 2013

What I would suggest is listening to the other people here. They know what they are talking about. I am actually surprised that you didn't see a performance decrease because I though that crossfire had the cards alternately render frames. Second word of wisdom, never crossfire low end cards. They may be able to, but you will not usually see a good performance increase.

Quaddro · Jul 8, 2013

yeah..
agree about 16x and 4x slot..
also your phenom actually hold the true performance of crossfire/sli setting..
it doesnt have not enough horse power to feed data to your cards..

clutchc · Jul 8, 2013

I don't know if I agree with a Phenom II X4 965BE not being able to keep up with 2 x HD 7770s. It's a 2nd tier card in the AMD camp, for goodness sakes:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-5.html

I've built numerous 965 rigs, and most have all had faster cards than the HD 7770. Never an issue there.

Quaddro · Jul 8, 2013

Well..
muti cards and single cards is a different issue..
second card always need more processor power to arrange, split frame and joining them in to monitor..
and amd gpu is an CPU bound graphics cards..
well, even the highest tier of amd have a same problem, so the same thing will happen to the 965 processor as 2nd tier card from amd.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crossfire-sli-scaling-bottleneck,3471.html

what i said was, it's true the 16x 4x combination is a bad idea to make multi card setting..that's why he is not seeing any performance boost with crossfire...plus, actually OP have not good enough processor to do it.

Dijas · Jul 8, 2013

I read in other places that having a 4x slot will decrease performance but not to a level thats very noticable. Also I've said it for the 3rd time right now, but this is only happening in a few games. Crysis 2, Crysis 3, and almost everything else I play, I'm seeing almost double framerates and no issues.

EDIT: I ran unigine heaven with and without crossfire and this was the result:
http://puu.sh/3ypIK.png

clutchc · Jul 9, 2013

Dijas :

That's the point I was trying to make; it only happens in some games. My HF 6850s (X16, X4) would produce small increases in frame rate is some games and slightly slower frame rates in others. Some showed no frame rate increase that I could detect. And in almost all cases there was noticeable micro-stutter. But in all honesty, When I had those two cards in my X8, X8 rig there was micro stutter too.

Dijas · Jul 9, 2013

But what it sounds like your saying is, crossfire yeilds little to no performance boost, which is clearly not true based on the benchmarks I ran

clutchc · Jul 9, 2013

Dijas :

I can only relate to you what I have read, what others have said, and what I have personally experienced. Your mileage may vary...

Dijas · Jul 9, 2013

After playing BF3 for a while, I realised my GPU's were only at around 55% active each. I figured it might be a CPU bottleneck so I overclocked my CPU to 3.7 stable, and now my FPS is upwards of 85 in BF3.

Quaddro · Jul 9, 2013

Dijas :

Yup..overclock is the easiest way to add more muscle to your processor..
Phenom 965BE usually can run at 4Ghz with ease with extra cooling and slightly voltage addition..With a a little luck, this puppy even can run at 4.2/4.3.
and you'll see a noticeable increase of your frames rate..

Intel God · Jul 9, 2013

CPU bottleneck is your issue. Clock the processor up as high as you can

BF3 and other games low fps with 7770 crossfire

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