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Crossfire+general video card help.

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  • Graphics Cards
  • Graphics
Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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February 28, 2011 7:19:06 PM

Hello. first off, i'll start with my system:

CPU: q9550 OC@3.4Ghz
Ram: 4GB G-Skill
Motherboard: GA-EP45-UD3P
PSU: Corsair xt750
Video cards:
XFX HD5850 DK
EAH5850 TOP Direct CU
Windows 7 Ultimate x64

I recently added a second 5850 to compliment the one I already had. I installed it (took all the necessary steps. Delete old drivers, driver sweep in safe mode, install second card and whatnot. Using ATI drivers 11.2) Everyone worked out fine, Crossfire was recognized and successfully enabled.

However, when I went to test out some games, I noticed that most games were giving me either no performance boost, or worse performance. I did a little experimenting using fraps and came up with these numbers. I tested both cards by themselves, and also both cards in crossfire.

The Asus 5850 is a Factory overclock with 765Mhz clock speed and 1125 mem clock.
The XFX 5850 is stock at 725Mhz and 1000 Memory.
All settings were set to MAX. Resolution was 1680x1050. No AA enabled. V sync was off.



Asus EAH5850 TOP Direct CU

Bad Company 2 :
Min, Max, Avg FPS
54, 105, 78.317
Crysis Warhead
20, 41, 29.100
Dirt 2
62, 83, 71.717
Fallout: New Vegas
45, 63, 58.650
Grand Theft Auto IV
16, 63, 45.183
Portal
0, 269, 205.333
Hot Pursuit
22, 60, 45.217


EAH5850 TOP Direct CU + XFX HD5850
in Crossfire:

Bad Company 2
71, 116, 88.000
Crysis Warhead
19, 42, 28.450
Dirt 2
53, 87, 65.483
New Vegas
31, 63, 55.550
GTAIV
7, 65, 36.733
Portal
202, 272, 252.450
Hot Pursuit
20, 48, 33.067


XFX 5850:

Bad Company 2
38, 75, 62.883
Crysis Warhead
16, 38, 29.300
Dirt 2
55, 72, 61.833
Fallout: New Vegas
47, 63, 58.700
GTAIV Gay Tony
33, 67, 43.567
Portal
98, 266, 156.700
NFS: Hot Pursuit
42, 61, 52.100

As you can see, Crossfire either did very little performance wise, or was a detriment to FPS. Only in 2 cases did Crossfire provide a noticeable performance boost (Bad Company 2 and Portal.) Even stranger, is that the XFX 5850, which is older and has a lower clock and memory clock speed, outperformed the Asus 5850 in some cases.

Also, in GTAIV, Assassins Creed II, and Splinter Cell conviction and Fallout, there was a very noticeable stutter when moving the camera, where the FPS would shoot to very low levels. In GTAIv it would stop doing it if I kept moving the camera around in the same spot, which leads me to think it is a problem with the video card streaming in parts of the game world. This was only noticeable on the Asus 5850 and in crossfire mode, and did not happen on the XFX at all.

So my question is: Why is crossfire mostly detrimental? Is the scaling that bad in most games? I would've expected to see a boost in more games than I did. The second question, do you think there is something wrong with my new Asus video card that is affecting its ability to perform properly?

Thanks for your help,
Daniel


More about : crossfire general video card

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a c 236 U Graphics card
February 28, 2011 7:25:17 PM

some games support CF, some don't. its always been that way. one of the reasons I don't care for for CF/SLI
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February 28, 2011 7:34:21 PM

ct1615 said:
some games support CF, some don't. its always been that way. one of the reasons I don't care for for CF/SLI


I understand that. But I've seen benchmarks in which Crossfire nearly doubled the performance of certain games. some of those games I tried myself and noticed no boost. It makes sense that it doesn't do something for every game, but I tried maybe 20 games and only 2 or 3 seemed to like crossfire.

Doesn't it seem like something is wrong? Is it just lame crossfire drivers that don't play nice with my system?
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March 6, 2011 11:09:05 PM

Best answer selected by danbernardi.
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