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Bottleneck with FX-8320 and 270X (crossfire)?

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  • Bottleneck
  • Crossfire
  • Components
Last response: in Components
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May 23, 2014 7:07:52 PM

I have a system with one R9 270X already and have $200 and am thinking about getting another. I have an AMD FX-8320 overclocked to 4.2 GHz (Cooled with H60) and an ASUS M5A99X EVO R2.0. I have one MSI Gaming R9 270X and am wondering if the dual X8 versus single X16 slots will bottleneck me in BF4, as well as the CPU at 4.2GHz. Also, what is the difference between X8 and X16 and will the Crossfire Bridge reach the other card when it is in the other slot? Thank you very much!

More about : bottleneck 8320 270x crossfire

May 23, 2014 7:15:54 PM

8320 should be fine with 2 x 270X. Especially if overclocked. You should be able to go to 4.8GHz if you have to.
All cards can run easily on x8 slots. You can get different length crossfire bridges
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May 23, 2014 7:17:38 PM

Dual 270X cards will not be bottlenecked by your processor. And the x8 slot @ 2.0 has more bandwidth than the cards can saturate. You're good.

The CF bridge that comes with the cards should fit the standard spacing of your board's PCIe X16 slots.
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May 24, 2014 5:50:05 AM

clutchc said:
Dual 270X cards will not be bottlenecked by your processor. And the x8 slot @ 2.0 has more bandwidth than the cards can saturate. You're good.

The CF bridge that comes with the cards should fit the standard spacing of your board's PCIe X16 slots.


Alright, thanks! Where can I find a Crossfire adapter for that size?
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May 24, 2014 5:52:25 AM

eBay
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May 24, 2014 8:49:49 AM

Andrew Buck said:
clutchc said:
Dual 270X cards will not be bottlenecked by your processor. And the x8 slot @ 2.0 has more bandwidth than the cards can saturate. You're good.

The CF bridge that comes with the cards should fit the standard spacing of your board's PCIe X16 slots.


Alright, thanks! Where can I find a Crossfire adapter for that size?


If you buy a new card, it will come with one. Didn't your first card come with one?
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_n_0?rh=n%3A172282%2Cn...
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May 24, 2014 9:21:33 AM

clutchc said:
Andrew Buck said:
clutchc said:
Dual 270X cards will not be bottlenecked by your processor. And the x8 slot @ 2.0 has more bandwidth than the cards can saturate. You're good.

The CF bridge that comes with the cards should fit the standard spacing of your board's PCIe X16 slots.


Alright, thanks! Where can I find a Crossfire adapter for that size?


If you buy a new card, it will come with one. Didn't your first card come with one?
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_n_0?rh=n%3A172282%2Cn...


My first did not, might my second one?
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May 24, 2014 11:13:52 AM

Maybe they quit doing that. Used to be AMD always gave the bridge with the card, and Nvidia gave theirs with the SLI motherboard. I just bought a R9-280 for another machine. Checking the box, I see there's one in it. So I would think an R9-270X would have one too.
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May 24, 2014 12:45:27 PM

clutchc said:
Maybe they quit doing that. Used to be AMD always gave the bridge with the card, and Nvidia gave theirs with the SLI motherboard. I just bought a R9-280 for another machine. Checking the box, I see there's one in it. So I would think an R9-270X would have one too.


Ah - I have looked stuff up - for some reason, MSI does not give the Crossfire Bridges. I see that the Fry's right around the corner does not have a bridge, but the one forty-five minutes away has it. I am not sure if it is worth it. Also, what brand would you recommend? I could get another brand that has a bridge included.
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May 24, 2014 1:51:18 PM

If you can match the card you have, that will be best. If not, I really have never had a bad gfx card yet, so all I can say is find one as close to the one you have now. Same size speed memory. I have an Asus Direct CU II OC 290X in this machine, and a Sapphire Dual-X 280 in another machine.

The bridge isn't necessary to run CF, but the performance will suffer at peak demand w/o one. W/o the bridge, all the data between cards has to flow via the PCIe interface.
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May 25, 2014 5:05:30 PM

clutchc said:
If you can match the card you have, that will be best. If not, I really have never had a bad gfx card yet, so all I can say is find one as close to the one you have now. Same size speed memory. I have an Asus Direct CU II OC 290X in this machine, and a Sapphire Dual-X 280 in another machine.

The bridge isn't necessary to run CF, but the performance will suffer at peak demand w/o one. W/o the bridge, all the data between cards has to flow via the PCIe interface.


I am indeed getting bottlenecked. My GPU1 and GPU2 usages on BF4 maps (not China Rising maps) are around 30-35% usage at all times. Any suggestions? My socket temp gets to 65 C while playing BF4 @ 4.2 GHz @ 1.344 V. I do not know why it is getting this high.
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May 25, 2014 5:08:44 PM

And what's your cpu %usage at the same time? (Task Manager) If it's 100% then yes it's bottlenecking.
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May 25, 2014 5:26:39 PM

i7Baby said:
And what's your cpu %usage at the same time? (Task Manager) If it's 100% then yes it's bottlenecking.




Something I noticed - cores being parked. I have tried multiple core unparking programs, such as ParkControl and CoreParkingManager, but the cores are still being parked.

ALSO - GPU2 usage at 50% - for some reason when I went windowed it did that.
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May 25, 2014 6:10:14 PM

Unless AMD made changes to Crossfire recently, CF shuts off in window mode. It used to only work in full screen.

I can't believe that the FX-8320 is bottle necking the pair of 270x cards. Let's see what your CPU usage is next to the GPU(s) usage.

Another thing, BF4 is still problematic in multiplayer. If I had a dollar for every poster with a problem getting smooth gameplay online with that game... I'd be a rich man.
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May 25, 2014 6:46:07 PM

clutchc said:
Unless AMD made changes to Crossfire recently, CF shuts off in window mode. It used to only work in full screen.

I can't believe that the FX-8320 is bottle necking the pair of 270x cards. Let's see what your CPU usage is next to the GPU(s) usage.

Another thing, BF4 is still problematic in multiplayer. If I had a dollar for every poster with a problem getting smooth gameplay online with that game... I'd be a rich man.


I tested with Mantle. In the beginning, I do admit, I got higher framerates and the GPU/CPU graphs in BF4 were smooth with GPU being higher. Quickly, it started to get jagged and then I had huge CPU values jump to 500, later 3000, correlated to massive frame drops. I used 2570 MB/2048 MB VRAM (I assume that it is probably out of 4096 MB because of Crossfire) and got drops as it increased. DX11 is steady and jagged with CPU/GPU close, GPU being higher. I still don't understand why on Shanghai, Flood Zone, Hainan Resort, and just about every other BF4 map besides Operation Locker and China Rising maps have sub-60 fps.
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May 25, 2014 6:46:16 PM

Link doesn't work anyway.
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May 25, 2014 6:46:59 PM

i7Baby said:
Link doesn't work anyway.


What link?
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May 25, 2014 6:50:04 PM

mediafire
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May 25, 2014 6:53:31 PM

Worked for me. I downloaded the .rar file just fine. Ran a virus/malware scan and it opened right up.
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May 25, 2014 7:49:32 PM

clutchc said:
Here is a discussion on Core Parking with 8 core amd and intel cpus in BF4: http://pcrepairaugustaga.com/bf4-parked-multi-core-cpu-...
I don't have an 8 core and I don't play tag with guns, so I have no personal experience with the game.


Thanks for fixing my core parking issue, but one remains:

My CPU is high and I am still getting fps in the 35-50 range.
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May 25, 2014 8:08:03 PM

High temp? What? fan rpm? Vcore?
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May 25, 2014 8:41:15 PM

i7Baby said:
High temp? What? fan rpm? Vcore?


High usage / low GPU usage
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May 25, 2014 8:46:57 PM

What %usage is your cpu at (per Task Manager)?
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May 25, 2014 9:26:56 PM

Alright, thanks!
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May 26, 2014 7:32:54 AM

i7Baby said:
What %usage is your cpu at (per Task Manager)?


I have played for a while on China Rising and noticed CPU usage around 70-80%.
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May 26, 2014 9:23:00 AM

If your CPU usage isn't maxed out, it isn't bottle necking. It has a lot of work to do to keep track of 64 players on a busy server. Plus, BF4 is apparently a problematic game from all the problems I read about it on this forum. Everyone seems to be having trouble with smooth game play.
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May 26, 2014 9:31:08 AM

clutchc said:
If your CPU usage isn't maxed out, it isn't bottle necking. It has a lot of work to do to keep track of 64 players on a busy server. Plus, BF4 is apparently a problematic game from all the problems I read about it on this forum. Everyone seems to be having trouble with smooth game play.


Why is my GPU usage not getting maxed out when somebody with, for example, an i5-4670K, are getting better results? Is there anything in my BIOS or any settings that I can change to increase FPS? My CPU socket temp @ 4.2 GHz and 1.344V is already at 65 C when gaming on my M5A99X EVO R2.0 (which doesn't seem normal, still wondering about that issue) and cannot really pull off a better overclock without some socket cooling unless there is something I am missing. People with the same setup as I have seem to be getting lower CPU socket temps. Will overclocking help my usage on my GPUs?
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May 26, 2014 10:06:56 AM

5 minutes after Prime95:
10 minutes after Prime95:
15 minutes after Prime95:
20 minutes after Prime95:
Some throttling experienced probably due to socket temps:

All at 4.2 GHz with a 3-week old M5A99X EVO R2.0
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May 26, 2014 3:18:00 PM

Prime tests the CPU, not GPU. That shows your cpu is working OK.
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May 26, 2014 4:41:07 PM

i7Baby said:
Prime tests the CPU, not GPU. That shows your cpu is working OK.


Yes, but this is limiting my ability to overclock and alleviate the strange bottleneck that is obviously present.
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May 26, 2014 4:55:55 PM

I haven't yet seen any 'obvious bottleneck'. I don't think there will be one with the 8320.

If you are that worried, then step up to an i5 4670k on an Asus Z97-A mobo.
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May 26, 2014 5:57:09 PM

Andrew Buck said:
i7Baby said:
Prime tests the CPU, not GPU. That shows your cpu is working OK.


Yes, but this is limiting my ability to overclock and alleviate the strange bottleneck that is obviously present.


From the pics you've presented, there is no "obvious bottleneck". There may be some other issues, but it isn't CPU bottleneck that I can see. What CPU usage would you expect to see if there were no bottleneck?
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May 26, 2014 6:00:04 PM

clutchc said:
Andrew Buck said:
i7Baby said:
Prime tests the CPU, not GPU. That shows your cpu is working OK.


Yes, but this is limiting my ability to overclock and alleviate the strange bottleneck that is obviously present.


From the pics you've presented, there is no "obvious bottleneck". There may be some other issues, but it isn't CPU bottleneck that I can see. What CPU usage would you expect to see if there were no bottleneck?


I would expect to see closer to 60-70% usage on a CPU like the 4770k and closer to 100% GPU usage. This is with my same setup and a pretty much identical card: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6BIzLlHeSk
I am also redownloading and reinstalling the game as I am typing this, and I will get back to you after that is done.
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May 26, 2014 6:24:31 PM

Also check the game forums to see if there's any help or ideas there.
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