Adding second graphics card did not increase FPS

Vampiressbaba

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Apr 13, 2015
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4,510
I am NOT a PC gamer, and i am not very pc tech-savy. I did however put together a PC on my own. I built it for my daughter. Everything went great for about a year. She just started playing Dragon Age Inquisition and was getting about 30 FPS on ultra. I added a second graphics card and the fps did not change. Crossfire is enabled and the cards seems to be working, but i am not sure. Here are my computer specs:
ASRock Z77 Pro3 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0
MSI R7950-3GD5/OC BE Radeon HD 7950, x 2
Intel Core i5-3350P Ivy Bridge Quad-Core 3.1GHz (3.3GHz Turbo)
CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3
Thermaltake SMART Series SP-750PCBUS 750W
Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache

I also have another question. On some of the games she plays, it shows she is getting 60+ FPS, but she says it dosen't look like it. She says there is a big difference between 30 and 60, but her 60 looks like 30. Me personally, I cannot tell the difference. must be my old eyes. LOL

Thanks in advance for your help.
 
The second PCIe slot is only x4 speed when used in Crossfire, which doesn't make it ideal for that setup and is the most likely reason why you aren't seeing any improvement. Dragon Age Inquisition does appear to scale quite well for Crossfire, assuming that you have the latest drivers installed, so do that first if you haven't already.

Which games is she having the frame rate issue with? There's certainly a difference between 30fps and 60fps.
 

Vampiressbaba

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Apr 13, 2015
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Thanks for the quick response. I deleted and reinstalled all the latest drivers.

Not sure about the all games, I will have to ask her. I am pretty sure one of them is Minecraft. She is using frapps and it shows 60fps, but she says it only looks like 30fps.
 

RobCrezz

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Download and install MSI afterburner, check the GPU utilisation of both GPUS and CPU when gaming.

Are you using the stock CPU cooler? Sometimes having two cards can create so much heat in your case that the CPU can throttle performance.

Have you installed the latest drivers? AMD are always improveing crossfire performance on games with newer drivers.
 

Vampiressbaba

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Apr 13, 2015
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4,510
Yes i have installed the latest drivers. I also have MSI afterburner installed. I haven't played with it much, but when I minimize DA and look at afterburner, the primary GPU is at full, but secondary is only at half. I have stock CPU cooler, but have two extra fans in tower. The primary GPU runs about 70 degrees. I haven't tried to monitor CPU with afterburner.
 

RobCrezz

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If you look in Afterburners settings you can set the monitoring to show on the OSD, so you can see it while your in the game.