Crossfire and Fallout New Vegas = Fail :(

[Rustyy117]

Hello!

So When I first got FNV I had one HD5850 and it played the game well, usually above 60FPS, then I brought a second HD5850, started playing FNV with Crossfire enabled and thought to myself *wow, what a load of s*&t, crossfire is scaling at 0%. Well done AMD/ATI* because my FPS were almost the same, maybe slightly better.

I thought I'd check the GPU's usage with MSI Afterburner whilst playing FNV. here it is:

Not even 50% usage

I then checked GPU-Z and whilst playing FNV the core and mem clocks are only 500/900, when they should be 950/1200

This doesn't happen with any other game. I'm using 10.10D drivers

Anyone else having this issue?

 

[bystander]

Do you play the game with V-sync on? If you do, it limits your FPS to what your monitor can display, which on most LCD's, that's 60.

It's also possible the game is CPU bottlenecked, preventing more FPS.

The GPU-Z results almost makes me think it's not in Crossfire. Does it say it's enabled at the bottom? If you checked it while playing, you probably were at the desktop, which does not support CF/SLI.

 

[Rustyy117]

V-sync is enabled, though I have a 120Hz monitor, so the cap is 120FPS. Wouldn't have thought a Core I7 920 @ 4Ghz would bottleneck, although the game does only seem to use one core effectively ( other 3 Cores are at about 0-20% usage, Core one is at about 60% and Hyperthreading doesn't get used at all)

GPU-Z shows Crossfire Enabled (2 GPU's)

 

[bystander]

V-sync is enabled, though I have a 120Hz monitor, so the cap is 120FPS. Wouldn't have thought a Core I7 920 @ 4Ghz would bottleneck, although the game does only seem to use one core effectively ( other 3 Cores are at about 0-20% usage, Core one is at about 60% and Hyperthreading doesn't get used at all)

GPU-Z shows Crossfire Enabled (2 GPU's)

You will also want to enable tripple buffering with v-sync enabled. If you don't, you will often be limited to a FPS that can be divided evenly into 120 if they can't display 120 FPS, which would be 60.

With tripple buffering, when it finishes rendering one frame, it will start on the next, even if the monitor hasn't displayed the first image. It uses a another frame buffer to do this (it will use 3).

If you don't have tripple-buffering, the monitor will put the GPU on hold until it displays the image. If it can't do this as fast as the monitors refresh, it keeps getting put on hold for another refresh. If this is consistant, that results in half the monitors refreshes are not getting an update. Resulting in 60 FPS.

 

[COLGeek]

What resolution are you playing at? Also, are you running the latest patch for FNV?

 

[notty22]

Just looked they put up new profiles as of 11/4, did you try them ?
http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/crossfirex-app-profiles.aspx

 

[bystander]

Try turning off v-sync to make sure that isn't it. There could be other problems, or the game itself to blame.

 

[Rustyy117]

@ Bystander Triple buffering wasn't enabled, I then enabled it and tried FNV again but it didn't make any difference. Clocks still at 500/900 : /

 

[bystander]

It wasn't enabled, I then enabled it and tried FNV again but it didn't make any difference. Clocks still at 500/900 : /

How are you checking the clocks? Are you checking while in the game on a 2nd monitor, or doing so by alt-tabbing or putting it in a window? If you have it in a window, that will not use CF and if alt-tabbed, it goes into low power mode.

 

[Rustyy117]

How are you checking the clocks? Are you checking while in the game on a 2nd monitor, or doing so by alt-tabbing or putting it in a window? If you have it in a window, that will not use CF and if alt-tabbed, it goes into low power mode.

Checking by Alt+Tabbing, I can tell by the graphs on GPU-Z, If you hover your mouse over the graph next to GPU Core Clock it tells you the speed, So although the cards go down to 157/300 when I alt+Tab I can tell that it was at 500/900 whilst playing FNV. I did the exact same thing in BFBC2 and the clocks were 950/1200 so I know this method works.

I'll try without V-sync.

@Notty, thanks for the profile link, I've installed it and will try FNV to see if it helped.

@COLGeek, I'm gaming at 1920x1080 120Hz

 

[bystander]

Checking by Alt+Tabbing, I can tell by the graphs on GPU-Z, If you hover your mouse over the graph next to GPU Core Clock it tells you the speed, So although the cards go down to 157/300 when I alt+Tab I can tell that it was at 500/900 whilst playing FNV. I did the exact same thing in BFBC2 and the clocks were 950/1200 so I know this method works.

I once had something like this happen when I tried to create a custom profile. Even after I reverted it back to default setting, it just would not reset the clocks to default.

I eventually wiped the drivers clean, perform a driver sweep and it still didn't fix it, until I put in an nvidia card, installed the drivers, then removed and installed the ATI card and drivers.

 

[Rustyy117]

I once had something like this happen when I tried to create a custom profile. Even after I reverted it back to default setting, it just would not reset the clocks to default.

I eventually wiped the drivers clean, perform a driver sweep and it still didn't fix it, until I put in an nvidia card, installed the drivers, then removed and installed the ATI card and drivers.

Wow, thats ridiculous.... It would be a PITA for me to do anything like that as it would involve draining my loop...

Maybe this has something to do with me flashing both my cards with BIOS's I edited with RBE

I tried without V-sync and it made no difference. I also tried the profiles which didn't seem to do anything either.

 

[mohsentux]

you have to wait for new crossfire application profiles.

 

[Rustyy117]

you have to wait for new crossfire application profiles.

Really? In the 10.10D Hotfix release notes it said something like "improved crossfire performance in Fallout New Vegas" So surely CF is supported if you have the 10.10D hotfix?
EDIT:
AMD Catalyst 10.10d Hotfix Features:

Fixed cases where Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA) was not being correctly applied to games (very intermittently)
OpenGL 4.1 beta support
Support for the new Morphological Anti-Aliasing feature
Dead Rising 2 – Crossfire profile (Resolves negative scaling)
Crossfire Performance Improvement for:
Metro 2033
F1 2011 - (Direct X9 version)
Fallout New Vegas
Performance optimizations for systems with an AMD Radeon™ HD 6870 and AMD Radeon HD 6850 series of graphics products installed
Aliens versus Predator performance enhancements
Star Craft 2 performance enhancements
OpenGL performance enhancements – gains can be seen in Prey, Quake Wars: Enemy Territories, and Heaven v2
Support for additional Stereo 3D-capable displays:
Viewsonic V3D241wm-LED
3D Projectors

 

[Kari]

Have you tried different in-game graphics settings? Just see if it makes any difference at all. Like set everything on low and if you are still stuck at 60fps then theres something funny going on...

 

[Rustyy117]

Ok thats intereting, put it on low detail (looks like crap mode) and my FPS is almost the same, maybe 10% better at most. GPU usage was REALLY low at about 25% per GPU, clocks still at 500/900....

Does this imply a botleneck somewhere?

 

[eyefinity]

Fallout 3 had a hard fps cap around 80 fps, don't be suprised if NV is the same.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

what the hell does it really matter if your getting over 60fps??? this does not = fail. YOU=FAIL because you fail to enjoy the game and only enjoy looking at FPS and GPU useage readings...

 

[Rustyy117]

@eyefinity The frame rate can go over 80FPS, the limit for me is 120FPS because of my monitors refresh rate.

@iam2thecrowe, I think your missing the point of why I created this thread, I'm trying to find out why the GPU's usage is below 50%, and I'm trying to find out why both cards are running at 500/900 and not 950/1200...

Did I say I don't enjoy the game? No... I happen to think the game is one of the best I've played.

Maybe you fail to see my point.

 

[eyefinity]

I wouldn't worry too much about it tbh.

Change your ingame graphics to small textures and that might increase the load a bit. I'm playing it at total max on my 6850 and it spends most of it's time at 90%+ with quite a few drops to 50% or so. Ah hell I dunno, I'd blame the game first though.

There are a few bits where the clocks drop to 300/1200 as well, I wouldn't put too much stock in gpu-z.

 

[notty22]

With two gpu's, there are some games like that for me, I go in to the NV control panel ,game profile and crank the AA/AF way up, AA transparent.
Also make sure the texture filtering setting is on High quality not high performance.
There is some hullabaloo about ATI lowering this setting on 10.10 drivers as compared to 10.9 on the web. I won't get in to that here

 

[eyefinity]

Yep I think this is one of those cases where you need to manually make the cards work.

I am running it total max settings on my 6850 (at 850 core 1200 mem). It's practically flawless and fps capped at 60. I can make the fps drop to around 40 if I pan around very fast, but apart from that it's a solid 60.

 

[Rustyy117]

Ok well I'll have alittle play around with some CCC/FNV settings tomorrow after work and let you guys know how I got on. Kinda seems like a bottleneck issue to me.

 

[COLGeek]

@eyefinity The frame rate can go over 80FPS, the limit for me is 120FPS because of my monitors refresh rate.

@iam2thecrowe, I think your missing the point of why I created this thread, I'm trying to find out why the GPU's usage is below 50%, and I'm trying to find out why both cards are running at 500/900 and not 950/1200...

Did I say I don't enjoy the game? No... I happen to think the game is one of the best I've played.

Maybe you fail to see my point.

What does a FPS limit of 120 have to do with a 120hz refresh rate? Unless I am missing something, the answer is nothing. Please clarify. Also from earlier in the thread, you really aren't stressing your GPUs at 1920x1080 with 2 screaming 5850s.

Last, why did you flash the BIOS and from what source did you get it?

 

[bystander]

What does a FPS limit of 120 have to do with a 120hz refresh rate? Unless I am missing something, the answer is nothing. Please clarify. Also from earlier in the thread, you really aren't stressing your GPUs at 1920x1080 with 2 screaming 5850s.

Last, why did you flash the BIOS and from what source did you get it?

If you have V-sync on, you are going to be limted to the refresh rate of your monitor, which in his case, is 120.