Is my 890gx chipset hurting my 6870 crossfire setup?

Well I'm on my spring break from college and all I want to do is play some games and for the money I spent, well I'd like them to scream like they should...

Been trying to figure out why I am getting this slight micro-stutter that is consistent with several games and drivers that I have tried... A dude at frys electronics that seemed to be running the show told me that when im running high AA and AF settings (4x, 16x) @1200p the chipset controller itself (on the 890gx) is not fast enough to provide perfectly smooth game play, he claims... I was a bit skeptical but I am willing to do anything to get my system running silky smooth like it should be with a p2 955 @ 4.0 ghz, 4 gigs ddr3 1600 and 6870 crossfire on a msi micro atx 890gx mobo... (proper psu is being used) (XXX XFX 650W 52 a on a 12v rail)

The stuttering seems to occur when lots of textures are being loaded and most of the time the gameplay is great but the sporadic stuttering is driving me nuts, I thought I would mention also that the cards stay under 70c with an aggressive fan profile in MSI afterburner.... oh and btw I am using vsync (via in game settings) and triple buffering in CCC and all my settings in CCC are on performance, I have done a fresh reformat and install of win 7 but the minute but annoying problem still persists...overall its not that bad just annoying and if a 890FX chipset which provides 16X16X crossfire will save me then im willing to buy a new board and sell my current one... if you think this is an upgrade that will actually make a different please recommend a 890fx or 790fx board, this is all just kind of confusing bc I thought the 6870s were held back very little by an 8x slot, but from what this dude told me its not really the 16x lane but just the chipset controller that is not quite good enough to push 6870s in crossfire with 4xaa and 16xaf...


bottom line... is there any truth to all this or is this micro-stuttering inevitable with a crossfire setup (although ive heard of people with 890fx boards that do not have this same problem, or maybe they are just not as anal as me but please help me fix this, I will buy a new board and sell my current one if I have to...

This is really frustrating, please someone with a 890FX please set me straight, I even bought an SSD just to host the page file to see if that would help and it did not... arg :(
 

goodguy713

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Oct 23, 2009
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i think your problem is that you have an 890gx board which has intergrated video. although it is dedicated at best your looking at running hybrid sli the the only reason to really buy a 890gx is for the increased data througoutput of usb 3 and sata 3 -e sata oh and the aformentioned intergrated video the fact that you have 2 6870's in crossfire on a gx board you would need to disable the onboard video and set the bio's to run from the pci slot instead if that is possible other wise you should either just use one card and do hybrid crossfire.. or get your self an 890fx board.but at this point in the game if you can wait 2 - 3 more months bulldozer mobo's will be comming out and you might be able to pick up a new 990fx board or should i say "Vision Board" am3+ or what ever.. they decide to run with lol.
 
thanks for the input...

I have since got a 890FX board and tried everything all over again with no improvements, the bottom line is that crossfire (at least for the 6870) does not work as advertised, the microstutter caused by minimum fps is pathetic I was getting much higher minimums with just one card...

after dealing with that frustrating mess, I decided to pick up a gtx 570, overclock it to 580 levels and am very happy with it.. it is just so much less of a hassle, and the minimum fps's that drove me nuts with crossfire are no longer a problem, Im sick of AMD *** drivers (for crossfire) and so they left a sour taste in my mouth....

Down the road I will likely go with a SB or bulldozer setup (once we see how it stacks up against intel) but for now my P2 955 @ 4.0ghz is plenty for a single gtx 570, however if I decide to do sli (which does not seem to suffer from the poor minimum fps that the 6870s in crossfire does) then I will likely need a stronger cpu to have a "lag free" experience...

Sadly enough I do not think I will be going back to AMD (for GPUs) for a while, we will see how future generations fair.... I do however feel that there is a reason you pay a premium price for an Nvidia gpu