4850's in Crossfire no Performance Gain

AdioKIP

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The thread topic pretty much says it all. I just ran a crysis benchmark first with crossfire enabled, then with crossfire disabled, each benchmark was within 1 fps of each other (Around 24fps). I've been fooling around with my settings since I got the cards two weeks ago and I just dont feel I'm getting the performance out of them that I should. I know it was previously due to my fault, I didnt have the bios settings correct so the cards weren't running in 16x pcie 2 mode. I corrected that problem and boosted the power to each of the slots (I set it for 175 watt limit). GPUZ Shows both cards, when I enable crossfire GPUZ recognizes it and says its active. I've run 3dmark Vantage but I seem to get alot of artifacts and other errors while its running so I dont think I can trust the numbers provided. My specs are below, nothing is overclocked any advice is welcome. I have done the fan override for the ATI cards. I keep the fans at 30% normally 40% if doing alot of mult-tasking (I run 3 screens), and 60% when crossfire gaming. I think my bios settings are now optimal for crossfire but if anyone might know the exact PCI express settings for my motherboard that would be great.

On a side note, it may just be crysis. Everything else i have run has run wonderfully. But Crysis is the only recent game I have, other than that its Quake 4, Doom 3, X3: Reunion. Haven't been into PC gaming in awhile since Xbox 360 and PS3 had somewhat caught up to what PC gaming was doing for awhile (Call of Duty 4 on the 360 or PS3 is great but all I can think about is how much like the original counter strike this is...and i was playing that in 01). I'd say computers have definitely lept ahead again so I'm slowly switching back to PC gaming (Now that I think about it I accidently damaged my old computer within a month of them announcing Starcraft 2....and that led to me building my current setup)....Only problem is all the good games I seem to have already played on Xbox so have no reason to buy on PC (Bioshock, Devil May Cry 4, Lost Planet, Call of Duty 4, Oblivion, The Orange Box, Gears of War).


Asus M3A32 Deluxe WiFi (Wifi disabled, board has been GREAT)
Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (Idle low - mid 40's, max 57 (amd overdrive stability test 1 hr))
Vista Ultimate 64 Bit
2x 2 Gigs DDR2 800mhz
2x Visiontek Radeon 4850's (Crossfire when gaming, run 3 monitors when not)
1x 750 gig Seagate HDD
1x 1 Tb Western Digital Green HDD
1x 500 gig Esata HDD
3x Sata DVD Burners
Thermaltake toughpower 750watt Crossfire Certified PSU
Thermaltake Armour+ MX Case (Upgraded front and rear fans)
1x LG 22 Inch LCD
2x Samsung 17 Inch LCD's
 

surfbum

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crysis does not scale well with crossfire which is most likely why you are not seeing any difference in fps.
if you are not convinced, check the tests done here and on anandtech with the 4850 and 4870. you'll see that there is hardly any fps gains with crossfire in crysis. hopefully ati gets a driver out that fixes this, but as of now, that is the way it is.
 

AdioKIP

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Both lanes are on (Bios 2 and 11). CCC recognizes both cards fine, I have my 2 17 inchers plugged into one and my 22 inch plugged into the other. All 3 work fine. I can disable the 2 17 inches and enable crossfire with no problems.
 

AdioKIP

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I have a feeling that its just crysis, although even with one card I should be able to get a better average than 24fps...
 

Sus-penders

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Do you have any monitoring programmes installed, such as RivaTuner? It'd be useful to see what the load is on both GPUs when games are running.
 

AdioKIP

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Right now the only monitoring software I'm running is CCC. Does RivaTuner work with the new 48xx series and can it run in the background and log statistics such as avg gpu load and highest temp?
 

roadrunner197069

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1. probably Crysis.

2. It would be wise to have a bigger PSU with evreything you got goin.

3. If your comparing to other numbers on the net you have to relaize the big numbers are intel overclocked duals and quads..

4. I suspect your CPU is a bottleneck for 2 4850s.
 

AdioKIP

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1.) At this point I beleive you are correct.

2.) Power Supply is fine. Had a 700 watt no name and just upgraded to this one. For my needs its more than adequate. Even with things running at full load the PSU is certified for over 80% so it has more than enough for my setup but I wouldn't try adding to much more...

3.) Never have cared to much about numbers, just figured that since I had the finances to put together a nice rig this time around I would start to do some comparisons and get the most out of it.

4.) Processor may be a slight bottle neck but not by much. Running 2 cores at 3.0ghz each isn't bad although I specifically got this motherboard to one day go quad core since I'm a multi-tasker. So far the quads haven't hit a range that is making me want to upgrade. Realistically under multi-tasking conditions I wanted to see what it would take to max out both cores and hold them there, I had to start a virus scan, cut on media center and watch sports center, use a photo program to compile/build a photo database, rip 3 dvd's and chat on yahoo while surfing the web and doing a few other tasks. Even then things still ran great.
 

AdioKIP

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I got bored so I went out and got Command and Conquer 3. I knew since it was a year and a half old the cards wouldn't have any trouble running it but didnt know it would run this well. Didnt even have to shut down my other two monitors. Have media player running on one playing music, on the other is the CCC and asus probe so I can monitor temps, also the windows side bar. Command and Conquer runs great at 1680x1050 all high or very high with AA at 2x on my center monitor while i still have everything running on the other two. Hope I can get into the game long enough to hold my interest until something better comes out....
 

aznguy0028

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yea i agree with what everyone said.

CF doesn't work with every game. some game you won't even see an increase in FPS. anan and toms have done benches on them.

when CF does work though, it scales like a BEAST.
 

Sus-penders

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Well, normally it can. I don't know if it can do monitoring in 4850's yet though...

Anyway, if you can find out if both GPUs are being stressed, it would be pretty solid evidence that crossfire was working.