Low fps with HD 7770 Crossfire'd

[bankston4]

Hi, I keep having problems with low fps when playing games. I am trying to play dead space 1 , Batman arkham asylum, GTA IV, and I have trouble getting my FPS avg above 20 with these games. I just got a brand new computer from Cyberpower- the specs should be in my sig. I have seen Higher FPs's posted with these 7770 cards and I am wondering why mine are so low.

I am only getting about 15-20 Fps running Dead Space on High settings at 1920 x 1080. I am running MSI afterburner to check GPU temps and frame rates. This game seems to only use ! of my cards: GPU1 is running at 99%, GPU2 only spikes every now and then to around 5-10%. GTA IV runs both cards equally and gets about 30 FPS avg on High settings at 1920x1080. My GPU temps top out at about 71C at full load.

I have tried lowering the resolutions, and lowering the graphics settings but I still get low FPS's.
I have tried oc'ing the cards to 1100mhz clock and 1200 mhz ram, and I have my AMD FX 4300 quad-core CPU oc'ed to 4.2 ghz with the voltage auto-controlled in BIOS. I do not use AMD Vision engine control for oc'ing the CPU, I tried this once and it caused crashing and instability, and I prefer to use MSI Afterburner to oc my GPUs, and only use AMD Vision engine control to enable and disable Crossfire. I use Core Temp to monitor my CPU temps which never get above 30c. My CCC drivers are 12.8 because the 13.1 drivers caused horrible instability and crashing in my rig-constant startup repairs and freezing.

Do I need to disable Crossfire for these games? Do I need to change the affinity assigned to each of the games? Anything else I should be doing?

This is my firsat post, aso if my rig doesn't show up in my sig its:
Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 mobo
AMD FX4300 quad-core oc'ed through BIOS to 4.2Ghz
2x 4GB Kingston Hyper-X DDR3 ram (8GB total)
Corsair Hydro series H60 liquid cooling
2x AMD RADEON HD 7770 Ghz Crossfired
Corsair CMPSU-600 600 W PSU
Toshiba 1TB HDD

 

[Novuake]

Some games just don't work with Xfire. So affectively in the games that don't are not Xfire capable, you are just running one HD7770, which is just not that great for gaming at 1920*1080.

A rule of thumb is just to get one powerfull card instead of 2 weaker in Xfire /SLI.

 

[bankston4]

Thanks Novuake, I am beginning to think I shoukld have gone with one high dollar card instead of two moderate ones, but I have to come up with the money for a better card sometime later down the line- eh, you live and you learn. If I drop my resolutions down to 1600x1050 and disable crossfire in Dead Space I get my FPS up to around 80 which is fine for me. I'll just have to play around with my graphics settings and core affinities for various games to find what works in each situation.

 

[Novuake]

Thats pretty much the way of it...

Sorry for the bad news.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

low end cards in crossfire is always a bad idea. actually crossfire at all is a bad idea except for the really high end cards. unfortunately AMD still allows its low end cards to be crossfired which IMO they shouldnt because it simply doesnt work well.

 

[Novuake]

low end cards in crossfire is always a bad idea. actually crossfire at all is a bad idea except for the really high end cards. unfortunately AMD still allows its low end cards to be crossfired which IMO they shouldnt because it simply doesnt work well.

It really depends on what you are doing. For a nice Eyefinity setup for light gaming and functionality it makes sense. But 2 cards just for one screen to get as much FPS as possible. It just does not make sense as you say. Unless you ahve 2 x HD79xx for example.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

It really depends on what you are doing. For a nice Eyefinity setup for light gaming and functionality it makes sense. But 2 cards just for one screen to get as much FPS as possible. It just does not make sense as you say. Unless you ahve 2 x HD79xx for example.

2 low end cards are even worse for eyefiity. crossfire gives highe average fps, but you get more drops in fps and stuttering.

 

[Novuake]

2 low end cards are even worse for eyefiity. crossfire gives highe average fps, but you get more drops in fps and stuttering.

For GAMING Eyefinity yes. But for no-gaming triple or more monitor setups it makes sense.

 

[drummer_justin]

Another thing to note based on the specs above would be the power supply wattage. I notice the system is only running a 600 watt PSU. Running an over clocked AMD FX CPU with 2 HD7770s I would recommend getting up towards the 750-800 watt range to leave yourself some TDP headroom and to ensure you get the best performance.

 

[Novuake]

Another thing to note based on the specs above would be the power supply wattage. I notice the system is only running a 600 watt PSU. Running an over clocked AMD FX CPU with 2 HD7770s I would recommend getting up towards the 750-800 watt range to leave yourself some TDP headroom and to ensure you get the best performance.

Are you kidding me??? They take less than 90 W each! He would have to OC his CPU into the ground to even reach 600w.

Heck I run 2x HD7950s @1180MHz and a I5 3570K @ 4.7GHz without any issues on a 650W PSU.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/msi_radeon_hd_7770_power_edition_review,6.html

 

[bankston4]

Thanks for all the advice guys-that will help me figure out which games to crossfire and which ones not to, I figured out that gta 4 does not like crossfire Its stutters every now and then. and the lighting flickers when you go from inside to outside for a few seconds, but if I disable crossfire for that game it runs alright and I don't suffer any massive fps hits it may run about 5 fps lower than crossfire but I have a lot smoother gameplay and less artifacts appearing. Thanks again, I guess i'll have to save up for a 7900 series card.