7950 Crossfire not showing any performance gain over single 7950 in games! please help!

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Pavel Pokidaylo

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Hi. I just got another 7950 for Crossfire and I'm hardly seeing any kind of performance gain from it. The only game I saw nearly double the fps in was Tomb Raider. FarCry 3, Metro LL, Hitman, Crysis 3. All these games didn't get any type of performance boost at all.

Adding a second card should have nearly doubled my performance in atleast some of these games.

Here is a link to my 3dmark11 results. http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/7051563

The Graphics score seems good but the physics score and combined score look terrible. With just one 7950 activated I got a graphics score of 8000. With 2 cards it was over 14000. I'm assuming that's good? But what does the low physics/combined score mean for me? Is my CPU too slow?

My rig- Alienware Aurora
MS-7591 Motherboard x58 chipset
i7 920@ 2.67ghz but I'm pretty sure it came factory overclocked to 3500. That's what CPU-Z is showing me.
8gig Gskill 1600 xmp RAM. I know xmp don't work with my old CPU and it's better to have triple channel with it, I have Dual-channel.
PSU- 87W Dell multi-GPU approved.

I was monitoring the GPU usage during the games and they were both reaching 100% so I don't understand what's happening.

When I had the one card in I was getting ok FPS I guess. I mean most games I would have to tinker with settings and dial down 1 or 2 to stay around 60fps. Even then I would dip a lot lower sometimes.
But I still felt that something was holding the card back. Now adding a second card gave me practically no boost in fps at all in any game besides Tomb Raider.

My 3dmark11 Graphics score nearly doubled from adding the second 7950. But my Physics/combined score low. What does this mean? Please help.
 
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Pavel Pokidaylo

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Hi. I do know the physics test is for the CPU. I'm on the 3dmark website right now and it looks like my CPU is about where an i7 920 should be. But is it too slow? The combined score is very lower as well which makes me think the CPU is slowing me down.

I am running 13.8 beta. I downloaded the driver the day it was released although I didn't have a second 7950 for crossfire at the time.
I'm playing on 1080p resolution.
I know that my FPS didn't increase in Metro LL, Crysis 3, Hitman-Absolution. I saw maybe a 5-10fps boost in FarCry3 but nothing big. Tomb Raider looked like it nearly doubled in performance though.

Metro LL- Garden level- on one 7950 I was getting 21 fps with max settings on and 4XSSAA. I added the second card, turned on crossfire, went to the same place and got the same exact fps.
Crysis 3- Same story as Metro LL
Hitman-Absolution... same thing
FarCry 3- I may have seen a small boost but I doubt it.
Tomb Raider- one 7950- max settings and 4XSSAA I was around 25 FPS. With Crossfire I was nearly at 60fps. This is the only game that seemed to get the full or close to full benefit of the crossfire setup.

I believe my driver install should be clean. I've only had AMD GPUs in this computer. It came with a 5770 which I later replaced with a 6770 I got for free. Finally the 7950 replaced the 6770 about 2 months ago. I was told to just pop it in and CCC would do everything that was needed including get rid of old driver. I downloaded latest drivers from AMD a number of times. Doesn't it remove old drivers when you get a new one? I'm not sure anyway and don't know how to check to see if there are any old drivers hanging about.
 
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Pavel Pokidaylo

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Ok I will try that. I have 2 more questions.
1, I'm using only one Crossfire Bridge. Is that ok? I tried putting in the second one the shroud of the bottom card prevents it. pretty dumb.
2, Do you think a new CPU like an i5 4670k would make a big difference?
 
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Pavel Pokidaylo

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Hey after I deleted all the AMD/ATI stuff like the guide said and restarted the computer it wasn't in safe mode or w.e like I remember it would be after uninstalling video drivers. Desktop was still at the same resolution it seems. I went to device manager and display adapter and clicked on my card and clicked properties to see if there is a driver and there is. Does it install some kind of driver automatically?
 
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Pavel Pokidaylo

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Tomb Raider is the only game that it seems to be working for. The GPU usage is at 100% for both and it stays at 100% for much longer than in the other games. I can play the game with max settings and 4XSSAA at 45fps and if I turn shadows from Ultra to Normal its close to 60fps. With one card these settings would have me at 25fps.

But why is it only Tomb Raider that's seeing this benefit from Crossfire? =/
 
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Pavel Pokidaylo

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Ah so it should always be above 90%. It shouldn't flucuate like it does for me. It even fluctuates like this with one card.

I played Tomb Raider for a little bit with max settings and both cards were at 100% usage and I was getting near 60fps even with 4XSSAA.
I had to turn down the shadows from Ultra to normal because with shadows at Ultra I was at 40fps. So I gained 20fps from lowering the shadows but didn't notice any difference in visual quality really.

Anyway... a good deal of the games I've been playing don't have the GPU usage at 100% and I play the most graphically intensive games.
Someone told me that it's normal for the usage to fluctuate like that. But I don't think that is correct. I mean it may fluctuate if I'm already at my monitors refresh rate and the GPU doesn't need to work any harder but I don't really play too many games like that.

Honestly the only game I've been able to play with max settings and never see the FPS dip from 60 was Dead Space 3.
Witcher 2- Although I had good fps for most of the game, a lot of times it would dip into the 40s and even 30s. This happened most when there was a lot of AI on the screen.

I play Star Wars old republic MMO and I get horrible FPS in this game during combat. Going from a 6770 to a 7950 made no difference at all in this game.

I also feel like I am seriously being bottlenecked by this CPU but so many people on here say that the i7 920 is still good.

 
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Pavel Pokidaylo

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And what about my 3dmark11 score? Doesn't that show the problem? I mean I got 14000 on the graphics test but only 5000 on the Physics test.
Does this mean that my GPU would be severely limited by my CPU? I need to try and put these 2 cards into another computer with a new CPU and play the same games and see the results.
 
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Pavel Pokidaylo

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Ok then that means I have a massive bottleneck. Lots of people on here say that the i7 920 is still a good CPU and shouldn't bottleneck at all especially with an overclock. Obviously it isn't. My i7 920 is at 3500mhz according to CPU-z. And I see well below 90% usage in many games. Two 7950s are supposed to give Titan-class performance.

I've been told that this CPU works best with triple-channel memory. I have Dual-Channel. Do you think that's really effecting my performance?

Also I have never reinstalled windows on this computer since I got it. Think doing this would help at all?
 
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larkspur

larkspur

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Yesterday's thread - http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1777060/question.html#xtor=EPR-8807

Hi Pavel - Referencing yesterday's thread, I still think your physics score is abnormally low. Yesterday, I personally ran 3dMark11 on a i7-920 clocked at 3.5ghz and got a score of 7676. Browsing through other 3dMark11 scores shows stock-clocked i7-920 rigs getting over 6000. Honestly, I'm not sure what's up with your rig. I wouldn't think that running dual-channel ram would make that much difference.

I've played SW:TOR with an i7-920 and single 6970 perfectly well. There should be no reason that game shouldn't play better when you upgraded a 6770 to a 7950. The i7-920 especially at 3.5ghz wouldn't be that much of a bottleneck. Something isn't right.

In yesterday's thread you asked about what physics score a new cpu would get. Tom's benched the i7-4770k (stock clocked) and got a physics score of 9377: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-4770k-haswell-review,3521-12.html

The physics score is completely separate from the graphics score. They don't necessarily need to be close to each other. The scores are useful to compare to similar systems to make sure your system is performing where it is expected. Like I said - I think your physics score is abnormally low for a i7-920 @3.5ghz since I got a 7676 with the same chip. Also, your issue with SW:TOR sounds very strange. I would check your OC and memory settings in the BIOS, check for viruses and all that, and maybe reinstall windows. You can also run a more comprehensive group of benchmarks like SisSoft Sandra to try and track down your issue. Anyway, good luck!
 
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Pavel Pokidaylo

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Hey thanks for the reply again man. I honestly don't know if the CPU is overclocked to 3.5. I never overclocked it but maybe they did it at Alienware.
CPU-Z shows 3500mhz for core clock. I guess this means that it is oveclocked. Here I have the info from CPU-z about my CPU.

CPU-Z version 1.66.0.x64

Processors
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Number of processors 1
Number of threads 8

APICs
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Processor 0
-- Core 0
-- Thread 0 0
-- Thread 1 1
-- Core 1
-- Thread 0 2
-- Thread 1 3
-- Core 2
-- Thread 0 4
-- Thread 1 5
-- Core 3
-- Thread 0 6
-- Thread 1 7

Timers
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Perf timer 3.137 MHz
Sys timer 1.000 KHz


Processors Information
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Processor 1 ID = 0
Number of cores 4 (max 8)
Number of threads 8 (max 16)
Name Intel Core i7
Codename Nehalem
Specification Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz
Package
CPUID 6.A.5
Extended CPUID 6.1A
Core Stepping D0
Technology 45 nm
Core Speed 3212.0 MHz
Stock frequency 2666 MHz
Instructions sets MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, EM64T, VT-x
L1 Data cache 4 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L1 Instruction cache 4 x 32 KBytes, 4-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L2 cache 4 x 256 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L3 cache 8 MBytes, 16-way set associative, 64-byte line size
FID/VID Control yes


Turbo Mode not supported
 
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Pavel Pokidaylo

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A few more things. About my low physics score I was sifting through some posts and found one of my old ones with a link to a 3dmark11 result I had and the physic score was 6k. Probably ran that test in July or June so not that long ago.

SWTOR- I get really low fps when I'm in combat and there are a lot of people around and casting spells and such. namely warzones and 16man Ops.
We can be standing around not doing anything and ill be at or near 60 fps but as soon as combat starts my fps drops to like 15-20, sometimes even lower. Changing the graphics settings makes next to no difference. I'll get the same low fps with all settings on low as on max.

I don't understand why Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite are the only games that I saw any real performance boost.
I think I should have seen way higher fps in my other games. Crysis 3, FarCry3, Witcher 2, Hitman, Metro LL and more.
I'm also not seeing the GPU usage at 90% constantly. In fact in a number of games it will be a lot lower than 90% for a long time. This was prevelant in Witcher 2.

Most people on here firmly believe that the i7 920 should not bottleneck a card at all. Some say getting a new CPU will give you much better performance. I'm willing to buy a new CPU but only if I will actually finally get the FPS I've been looking for. I'll need a new motherboard also and probably a new case since this Alienware case isn't that great for Crossfire. I'd shell out for all that stuff if it meant I'll be at or near 60fps with max settings and atleast some form of good AA in all games. I want to be at 60 fps constantly and I'd settle for ocassional dips int othe 50s but I hate anything below that.

maybe I do need to reinstall windows. I've never done it on this computer. I would have done it already if not for the fact that I'd have to re-download all these damned games :)

Not sure what memory settings you mean in the bios but I will check it out.

And thanks for all the help guys. I really appreciate it.
 
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larkspur

larkspur

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CPU-z should be correct. How are your temps? CoreTemp, RealTemp, SpeedFan, HWMonitor (all free) will report CPU temps. You want to see the maximum core temps when the cpu is under load. Run the torture test in prime95 (free downloadable program) while monitoring temps to get a maximum core temp. Also can you screenshot the 'cpu' tab and the 'memory' tab in CPU-z while under load and post it?
 
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Pavel Pokidaylo

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Hmm in the mainboard tab in CPU-z under Graphic Interface it says Version- PCI-Express , Link width-X16 , max.supported x16

Does it mean that it's PCIe 1.0 because it does not say 2.0 there?

I looked up my motherboard online and it showed that it had 2X 2.0 ports.
 
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larkspur

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No, it's perfectly normal. You have two PCIe 2.0 x16 slots each running a full 16 PCIe2.0 lanes. GPU-z is a very handy program for GPU monitoring and info. To me, your problem doesn't appear to be with the GPUs, it seems to be with the CPU/RAM. Let's make sure your cpu temps are reasonable under load.
 
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Pavel Pokidaylo

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Ok just ran the prime95 test. The max temps are as follows 71/69/71/69. I believe the highest I've seen it was 74 during gaming. My CPU is liquid cooled but the GPU I have is a sapphire one with 2 fans so I think it expends hot air into the case.
 
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