WoW,doesn't support crossfired GPU's?

[allkindsoftime]

Hello all,

I was just wondering if anyone knew if World of warcraft:the lich king supports crossfire'd GPU's.

Because, according to these benchmarks it shows a single hd 6870 outperforming crossfired 6870s, however I'm not sure if this benchmark was solely for the original WoW or the most updated expansion, and perhaps blizzard has added this support, just wanted to ask if anyone knew.

Benchmark in Point: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_6870_CrossFire/18.html

 

[g00fysmiley]

WoW does nto support crossfire or sli... a single 6870 shoudl run max fps in ultra at most resolutions, there really isn't a need for them to support it as its mostly cpu limited as it is

 

[Avro Arrow]

Even more than that, fps on an online game is far more dependent on internet speed than computer hardware.

 

[g00fysmiley]

its not so much fps, more lag. you can move smooth and free at 60 fps, but if your internet connection is slow the game won't register your moves and other players will seem to be like a strobe effect .. you'll still be rendering them in the same spot doign the same thing for several seconds... btu it'll still be over 60 fps of them doign the same thing

 

[bystander]

WoW most certainly does support CF and SLI.

However, a lot of people play WoW in a window, which doesn't support CF/SLI for any game in a window. Play fullscreen and it will use CF/SLI.

The game is also CPU bottlenecked, so you need a fast CPU to be able to utilize CF/SLI. A high resolution probably plays an effect here as well. CPU bottlenecks are more noticable in a low resolution, where the GPU isn't stressed.

With an i7 system, at 3.4Ghz, playing at 1920x1200 resolution, I get about ~33 FPS in Dalaran at it's worst. Enabling CF immediately increases the FPS to ~45 in the same place and time.

 

[bystander]

WoW may have a bug with a recent patch that could have explained those results.

 

[g00fysmiley]

gonna need a soarce on that one bystander, wow does not officially support sli or crossfire thats per dev (blue) posts and they at least as of last set of posts on the matter tha ti could find are nto looking to add support for them.

at best you can force the use through nvidia's control panel to enable sli and boot wow but whiel this will usually net a gain it is nowhere near as good as true sli or crossfire

it shoudl also be noted in some cases forcing sli will even net a loss in fps

 

[bystander]

Here is the first benchmark I found in a search:
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,689378/WoW-Wrath-of-the-Lich-King-Benchmarks-with-Ati-and-Nvidia-graphics-cards/Practice/?page=2

Notice the 4870x2 is out performing the single 4870?

Here is another: http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/5850_092909204359/20203.png

 

[bystander]

gonna need a soarce on that one bystander, wow does not officially support sli or crossfire thats per dev (blue) posts and they at least as of last set of posts on the matter tha ti could find are nto looking to add support for them.

at best you can force the use through nvidia's control panel to enable sli and boot wow but whiel this will usually net a gain it is nowhere near as good as true sli or crossfire

it shoudl also be noted in some cases forcing sli will even net a loss in fps

There was no forcing required. You just have to play in fullscreen mode.

Like I said, it's either a recent bug that stopped it from working, or the new DX11 path stopped working with SLI/CF? Seems like an odd thing to do, but it's possible.

The blue posts on WoW are often wrong. It's possible they do have a no official support policy just so they don't have to deal with questions, even though it's worked for years.

 

[g00fysmiley]

yes it works, its just not supports, some gpu's do it better than others all your cherry picked benchmarks show is that some card can be orced to work and increase framerates.

I'm refuting where you said "WoW most certainly does support CF and SLI"

i'm asking for a dev or blue post where WoW is officially supporting sli, currently the game will do it in alternate frame rendering but it has to be forced and is usually not scaling as well as it is intended. if wow did officiallty suppoort it you would see even better performance in sli or xfire across the baord instead of onyl some cards sometimes showing true 80+% scaling

instead some cards can do this, btu others get 130-150%

or as in the bench shwon above by the origional poster it actually hurt the fps due to not properly render exchanging in forced crossfire

*copy pasted wrong quote >_<"

I'm not sayign you're scomletely wrong or that it doesn't sometimes or even often improve performance just that its not a guaruntee as its not officially supported and the devs, even the tech oens aren't optimizing the game for it on the game engine side

 

[bystander]

Well, I can tell you I played WoW with crossfired 5870's. I did no forcing. Actually, is there a way to force 5870's to crossfire in games? I have never seen such a tool.

I have seen this for Nvidia with nHancer and Nvidia inspector, but as far as I'm aware, there is no such tool for ATI. It just flat worked for me. I don't know what to say.

I have also played WoW for a number of years and I do know dev's are wrong a lot. It may not official be supported, but crossfired 5870's certainly work. I do not do any sort of cherry picking. I picked the first two benchmarks that had any sort of crossfire shown. Search for more if you like.

 

[bystander]

It's quite possible that ATI did some special work in their crossfire profiles to make it work. Perhaps the new 68xx cards haven't had their profiles added yet.

 

[g00fysmiley]

no its fine. i was more searching for if wow was now supporting it. i was actually hoping i was wrong.

you are right in that it works. the forced xfire you probably have set the defaults in ctalyst control when you set up for xfire in the first place. i believe its as a default setting for both sli or xfire.

but sometimes it works against the game or not so well. wow tends to like either but not to the 180% tune aparently after a little research even though wow is an nvidia the way its meant to be played ati's x fire is outpacing sli on wow, which is intresting I'll have to take that into consideration as i had been steering wow players to nvidia not it'll have an astrick of unless you plan to use dual gpu's in which case ati