Questions about 3way crossfire

sabbaths_hero

Distinguished
Oct 15, 2011
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Based on the toms hardware micro shutter article http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-geforce-stutter-crossfire,2995.html I decided to upgrade my two 6870's to a three way crossfire setup.

All is running well for the most part, but i seem to get only 50% GPU use from each card. I am wondering if this is typical with tri fire systems, or if there is something wrong.

The only time i can get 100% use is from bench marking tools.

Any insight would be appreciated.


System:
intel i7 2600k
gigabyte X UD4 B3
power color 6870 x2
xfx 6870
silent pro gold 1200W

P.S. Games that I have tryed so far: crysis 2 DX11 textures pack, metro2033.

 
AFAIK scaling still a concern for 3 way CF or SLI. i think it is already good enough if you can squeeze 2.3-2.5 times performance with 3 card. that's why many people still stick to 2 way CF or SLI. the third card never able to give 3 times performance in games. not to mention with the third card you're going to need hefty PSU and very fast cpu to keep up with with the gpu. i still remember in guru3d test where 3 GTX580 have lower performance compared to 2 GTX580 due to the cpu unable to keep up. in hard ocp test they need to OC 2600k up to 4.5ghz-4.8ghz to eliminate the bottleneck effect for 3 GTX580