Skyrim AMD CrossFireX Performance and IQ Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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Skyrim AMD CrossFireX Performance and IQ Review - AMD has provided a new Catalyst 11.11b Performance driver that supports CrossFireX in Skyrim for Radeon HD 6000 series owners. We will evaluate CrossFireX performance, scaling, and see how it compares to the competition. We will also look at FXAA and Transparency AA image quality comparisons.
 
Nice article and info.

For some reason on my rig Crossfire is working using 11.11b but not showing much if any performance increases. (30-50% usage on both GPUs)
 
Was the performance testing done with the tweaks to the ini file you guys did a few days ago or was it using the stock values in the ini files?
 
Nice article.
I especially like the texture and IQ comparisons.:)

I don't play this game, but the theme has been consistant throughout the Fall, AMD has been really slow at getting out drivers and Crossfire support for nearly every game released while nvidia has seemingly beeen right on top of things.:eek:
 
Good information there.

AMD drivers are really having a hard time, too hard I think. While I can sympathize with the driver team probably going to work in a much more empty building lately, they are still lagging badly. And I'm beginning to think it's more than optimizing drivers that is needed, it's their whole driver platform that looks like it needs to be rebuilt instead of constantly patching.

While I still REALLY like AMD for the mobile GPU's (Switchable A8 Crossfire with 6750M is Really, Really sweet!!!), I may have to go to nvidia for the next gen on desktop cards. I've just been having too many problems over the last year.
 
I'm getting good scaling with my 6870s now that the new driver is installed (kept getting BSOD while removing the old driver).

Shame they couldn't get support out more quickly, I wonder if nVidia developers had early access to aid in their driver development. If not, then ATI really dropped the ball.
 
I'm happy to see that CFX scales well in this game. At least when AMD gets things working, they work pretty well.

Nonetheless, despite the value proposition, I must say I regret my 6950 purchase. AMD dropping the ball on so many games recently really makes me question the longevity of this card. When games start coming out that actually tax PC hardware, it's going to be a sad state of affairs.
 
badpool said:
I'm happy to see that CFX scales well in this game. At least when AMD gets things working, they work pretty well.

Nonetheless, despite the value proposition, I must say I regret my 6950 purchase. AMD dropping the ball on so many games recently really makes me question the longevity of this card. When games start coming out that actually tax PC hardware, it's going to be a sad state of affairs.
Click to expand...


We should see a "7800" series of card in January, think CES timeframe, launch soon after into retail. NVIDIA's next-gen, do not expect to see it any earlier than late March, and that is still VERY iffy.
 
I always found it a little odd to compare these two cards with the price differences. I realize they are both for the same general market however. It almost seems like comparing 2X 6950 to a 580 would be on par, at least for price/performance sake.

Also it would seem I am screwed with graphics cards, haha. I can't seem to get away from Nvidia cards failing(8800GT, GTX 260,280,295) all either started artifacting or failed entirely and with AMD's driver issues(although I have never had one of them fail, even my x1600 PRO). We need a third company in the mix!
 
CFX 5870's here. AMD has dropped the ball on both The Witcher 2 and Skyrim. If this continues I will be looking at nvidia for my next upgrade. Which won't be for another 2 years but thats how pissed off I'm as a customer that I'm almost going to swear off AMD soon. I'm not all fanboy raging here, just a customer that has had his fill of bullshit. I'll take higher power usuage if that means stable multi-gpu focused drivers.
 
That was brutal. Not necessarily undeserved, but brutal.

badpool said:
Nonetheless, despite the value proposition, I must say I regret my 6950 purchase.
Click to expand...

I don't regret my 6950 purchase, it was $240. Many 6950's unlocked to 6970's. When was the last time nVidia gave us shader unlocks to get 10-15% performance boost?

Metrocall said:
I always found it a little odd to compare these two cards with the price differences. I realize they are both for the same general market however. It almost seems like comparing 2X 6950 to a 580 would be on par, at least for price/performance sake.

Also it would seem I am screwed with graphics cards, haha. I can't seem to get away from Nvidia cards failing(8800GT, GTX 260,280,295) all either started artifacting or failed entirely and with AMD's driver issues(although I have never had one of them fail, even my x1600 PRO). We need a third company in the mix!
Click to expand...

QFT.
I'd really like to see the GTX 570's included in the testing vs. the 6970, because they are the same price. I don't think it's fair to harp on the 6970's so much vs. the GTX 580, because there is a $150 price difference for each card (CFX/SLI difference of $300).
That's a 50% increase in cost. I expect the peformance to be much better with SLI 580's. Of course, I don't want to spend $900 on it.

Deviationer said:
CFX 5870's here.
Click to expand...
I could see the writing on the wall when I got rid of my single 5850 in the spring. used value was high due to bitcoins and CFX scaling was much better with the 6000 series. CFX 5000 customers got screwed for sure.
 
B1tter_End said:
Was the performance testing done with the tweaks to the ini file you guys did a few days ago or was it using the stock values in the ini files?
Click to expand...

All stock Skyrim values, only thing I did was iPresentInterval=0 to turn off VSYNC on AMD GPUs.
 
J Macker said:
CFX 5000 customers got screwed for sure.
Click to expand...

Indeed, I'm still feeling ATi's 12 inches bending me over the barrel. :mad:

Really wanting to ditch my 5870 CF config now and go team green. I wonder how much I can get if I eBay my cards?
 
I read that Skyrim isn't Large Address Aware (LAA). Wouldn't this make the 2GB memory of the Radeons less of a factor? There is a user patch that converts the Skyrim executable to LAA, but the latest Skyrim patch broke this. I wonder if running the LAA version would show some performance gains for the Radeons.
 
And people wondered why I switched from my trusty 5870's in crossfire back to Nvidia 580's in SLI last year...

2 Words: DRIVER SUPPORT!!!!! Shitty support AGAIN for a major game that Nvidia had on day one...

I am not trolling here just stating a fact that Kyle proves correct again...My last straw was shitty support for BF:BC2....

Good luck AMD/ATI!!!! Amazing video cards, but driver support turns them into a steaming pile of...
 
jsrivo said:
I read that Skyrim isn't Large Address Aware (LAA). Wouldn't this make the 2GB memory of the Radeons less of a factor? There is a user patch that converts the Skyrim executable to LAA, but the latest Skyrim patch broke this. I wonder if running the LAA version would show some performance gains for the Radeons.
Click to expand...

LAA patch also disables CrossFireX, or breaks it, from what I hear (i haven't tested it personally). You need a default Skyrim EXE install for CFX to function properly with this new driver, 11.11b, which is what we tested, a stock Skyrim install. Also, that is for system RAM, not video card RAM anyway.
 
Any chance we might see a comparison with some lesser cards? I'd really like to know how a 570 stacks up against 69xx.

I've also noticed some extreme slowdowns with a 560 Ti I borrowed from a friend... it's generally much smoother overall than my 5850, but in certain spots like the general store in Riverwood, the framerate absolutely plunges (worse than my 5850, in fact) and the game becomes extremely laggy. I've seen it do this in a couple of random spots in dungeons, too. Makes the prospect of "upgrading" to an nvidia card seem like a bit of a gamble.
 
Brent_Justice said:
LAA patch also disables CrossFireX, or breaks it, from what I hear (i haven't tested it personally). You probably need a default Skyrim EXE install for CFX to function properly with this new driver, 11.11b. Also, that is for system RAM, not video card RAM anyway.
Click to expand...

Wow. LAA patch works fine with my GTX 580 SLI.

I am absolutely amazed that AMD / ATI still can't get their act together when it comes to drivers. The really sad thing is that this has been a problem for nearly a decade now.
 
This is another screenshot that shows the same thing. The rock texture is exactly the same between No AA and FXAA. However, on the ground it can clearly be seen that FXAA is reducing specular aliasing, taking away the "sharpness" that aliasing brings to an image. The FXAA shot is not reducing texture quality, it is reducing specular aliasing, thus smoothing pixels.
Click to expand...

Sure looks like it's reducing quality to me on the ground textures and parts of the rock that aren't poly lines. Small bits of stone and rock become blurred into "stuff" on the ground, detail of the rock's small crevices lessened. It's small but noticeable. The textures are not the same, they are different. The original texture has lost data, it is a reduction of quality. I don't know how you're not seeing this, but it's there and it's obvious.

LAA patch also disables CrossFireX, or breaks it. You need a default Skyrim EXE install for CFX to function with this new driver, 11.11b. Also, that is for system RAM, not video card RAM.
Click to expand...

AFAIK, It regards ALL memory, not just system ram.
 
And now to apply the tweaks from your previous article and kill the 6970 crossfirex boost!

iShadowmap = 8096 would force u to lower the image rez probly or drop a few AA lvls
 
Having a strange problem after installing the 11.11b.. the drivers won't let me 'enable amd crossfirex' Strange.. Also should the information tab > software read out that I have 11.11b or will it just read out 11.11?
 
Brent_Justice said:
LAA patch also disables CrossFireX, or breaks it, from what I hear (i haven't tested it personally). You need a default Skyrim EXE install for CFX to function properly with this new driver, 11.11b, which is what we tested, a stock Skyrim install. Also, that is for system RAM, not video card RAM anyway.
Click to expand...

LAA/crossfire are a mess at the moment. The current LAA patch changes the process name to tesv.exe.4gb; this breaks AMD's crossfire support in 11.11b because it's looking for tesv.exe to turn it on. Tried using Radeon Pro to setup a custom profile for testv.exe.4gb to map it back to tesv.exe to re-enable crossfire and this fails with Steam DRM errors. (You can have a custom crossfire profile or run the LAA patch but not both at the same time.)

Forcing AFR on in Radeon Pro on a custom profile for tesv.exe.4gb gives at least some (maybe all?) of the performance benefits of the 11.11b driver but causes flickering in the quests/config/save/load UI.
 
From what i ve read on the internets. Leaked Cat 12.1 alpha will have custom profiles in the drivers
i think that should solve most of Amd's Cfx woes.
 
So I am really curious to know if Nvidia was given access to Skyrim before AMD was?

Or if they were both given access at the same time and Nvidia just has more people working/faster at writing drivers then AMD is now.

Or if the game company intentionally delayed AMD's access to the game.
 
Just installed the driver and im not seeing any gains in Crossfire, 2 6970 cards all all 3 in tri-fire with 11.11bs and Newest cap at 1920X1200 im only getting 30 to 45 FPS with this driver? Ive tried to fresh installs and same performance? Really not happy :mad:
 
Great article. I still reckon that, for whatever reason, FXAA is reducing apparent texture quality. The below was taken in whiterun at max texture quality with 4xmsaa and 2xssaa and FXAA set to on and then off: If you look at the wall to the right of the stairs, to me it looks flatter and more blurred with FXAA applied.

whiterun.png
 
Marcdaddy said:
Just installed the driver and im not seeing any gains in Crossfire, 2 6970 cards all all 3 in tri-fire with 11.11bs and Newest cap at 1920X1200 im only getting 30 to 45 FPS with this driver? Ive tried to fresh installs and same performance? Really not happy :mad:
Click to expand...

Try running two cards instead of three?

I installed both the 11.11a and 11.11b to see if Rage ran any better or different.
In both sets I got crashes running Tri-fire, but the game ran just fine using only my 6990, and the scaling was pretty good.

I dunno.....maybe it's just my system, but give it a shot just for kicks.:D
 
Elsie said:
Great article. I still reckon that, for whatever reason, FXAA is reducing apparent texture quality. The below was taken in whiterun at max texture quality with 4xmsaa and 2xssaa and FXAA set to on and then off: If you look at the wall to the right of the stairs, to me it looks flatter and more blurred with FXAA applied.

whiterun.png
Click to expand...

Again, what you are seeing is a reduction in specular aliasing. Aliasing, inherently makes things look "sharper" reduce this aliasing, and smooth it, and one might think the texture is "blurry", but its just that the aliasing is gone, and that "sharpness" that aliasing introduces is gone. The texture is the same quality, all that FXAA has done is remove the specular aliasing.
 
Dekar12 said:
So I am really curious to know if Nvidia was given access to Skyrim before AMD was?

Or if they were both given access at the same time and Nvidia just has more people working/faster at writing drivers then AMD is now.

Or if the game company intentionally delayed AMD's access to the game.
Click to expand...

AMD has been behind the entire Fall season......with every release......not just this game.

They cannot possibly be cheated on all releases.
Even with Deus Ex.....a title with their logo, it took a few days after release to straighten out Crossfire issues.

AMD is either out-manned or out-gunned.:eek:
 
I have a question. Do you have a high res file of that Skyrim image on the front page. With the [H] logo in the background? Would make an awesome desktop background.
 
Ripperjack said:
Indeed, I'm still feeling ATi's 12 inches bending me over the barrel. :mad:

Really wanting to ditch my 5870 CF config now and go team green. I wonder how much I can get if I eBay my cards?
Click to expand...

you missed your chance to fleabay them by about 2-3 months.. the popularity and bottom end fell out of bitcoin a while back so the exaggerated resell pricing has also disappeared.


magoo said:
AMD has been behind the entire Fall season......with every release......not just this game.

They cannot possibly be cheated on all releases.
Even with Deus Ex.....a title with their logo, it took a few days after release to straighten out Crossfire issues.

AMD is either out-manned or out-gunned.:eek:
Click to expand...

AMD is definitely undermanned. i remember a while back there was something about the driver teams between Nvidia and AMD, AMD has something like 30-40 game testers and 10-20 people on the actual driver team and nvidia has some where around 100-150 game testers and 50+ that actually work on the drivers. i was hoping the success of the 6000 series would drive AMD to hire more people onto their driver team but i guess not.
 
RRrrrr --- I installed the patch and now I have keyboard lag. Single AMD card here.
 
I think it'll be awesome if Intel decides to make a dedicated GPU to handle intensive 3D work. Having only AMD/Nvidia can be lonely. :(
 
All I can say is I've been playing on the rig in my sig on my 24" WS monitor with high settings and I've been having a blast. It may not always be above 60 fps but it's always plenty smooth.

I guess the saying about more money = more problems is true. If I had 3 24" monitors and multi GPUs I might not be as satisfied as I am now.
 
As someone who still rocking two 5770s, I recommend not installing 11.11b. Visual quality went to hell, there is tearing all over the place and for some reason the world now has ambient lighting that illuminates the world even when there is no light source. I think Oblivion is what spurred me to update my graphics cards last time... maybe Skyrim will force me to do so again.
 
EchtoGammut said:
As someone who still rocking two 5770s, I recommend not installing 11.11b. Visual quality went to hell, there is tearing all over the place and for some reason the world now has ambient lighting that illuminates the world even when there is no light source. I think Oblivion is what spurred me to update my graphics cards last time... maybe Skyrim will force me to do so again.
Click to expand...

CFX5850 here... With 11.11b, my Skyrim and BF3 are bugged as heck. Had to roll back to 11.11WHQL so that my BF3 could actually work without tearing... while I silently weep over my Skyrim's lack lustre performance.
 
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