Alright whats the deal AMD...

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Godmachine

[H]F Junkie
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I recently helped my friend put together a new computer and he choose to grab 2 5870s (XFX) on the cheap used , the rest of his system is a i7 920 overclocked to 3.9ghz , 6 gigs of DDR3 and a Gigabyte mobo. Also he runs a 1920x1200 resolution.

Anyway I put it together , get the mobo installed , then the os and its all setup good. Now he downloads steam and begins to start installing his games that he can't live without (BFBC2 , TF2, CoD:MW2) and I get a phone call with him telling me his frame rates are awful.

So I go over , make sure crossfirex is enabled and it is then I check which driver he has and its catalyst and its 10.9. I do some research and notice that there are is a small download direct from AMD that provides the latest crossfire application profiles. I install this and his frame rates are still quite bad for his beefy PC ... at this point we are both a bit confused so I download the previous driver and install it (did a fresh driver sweep just to make sure nothing funky would happen). Again his performance still sucked ass , so I went and downloaded different catalyst drivers until I got 10.5 then after we launched BFBC2 (which is the probably the worst offender of this) we finally noticed a HUGE and I mean HUGE difference. Running 1920x1200 with 4xAA it was solid with max settings and v-sync turned off. I also alt-tab'd during a game and I notice his GPU usage meters on the Catalyst overdrive page are not maxed. One is about 45 percent and the other is 50 ... only about half of the rendering power is being used?

Then he tries his other games and some performance as they should with his setup and some don't. He ends up trying different drivers for each game and they all work better with certain drivers??? WTF AMD? Did you forget how to make quality drivers? Why does every game (in this isolated circumstance at least) play better with different drivers? Sometimes the difference is just beyond belief.

Is something wrong with AMD lately ? Did some of the driver team get laid off? I have a similar setup but with 2x GTX 480s and they smoke his setup and consistently stay within performance range for each driver. While I know they are faster his setup should at least be able to compete well enough and certainly perform better.

Has anyone else noticed this recently?
 
Godmachine said:
Then he tries his other games and some performance as they should with his setup and some don't. He ends up trying different drivers for each game and they all work better with certain drivers??? WTF AMD? Did you forget how to make quality drivers? Why does every game (in this isolated circumstance at least) play better with different drivers? Sometimes the difference is just beyond belief.

Is something wrong with AMD lately ? Did some of the driver team get laid off? I have a similar setup but with 2x GTX 480s and they smoke his setup and consistently stay within performance range for each driver. While I know they are faster his setup should at least be able to compete well enough and certainly perform better.

Has anyone else noticed this recently?
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Nope! And I just got off setting up two 5830's :D.

PSU?
 
Not from personal experience with a crossfire rig (although I am an AMD/ATI user). It does seem like Nvidia trumps AMD on consistent game support and driver performance across the board. Too bad ati makes excellent hardware that is power efficient, cool running, small, complex, and powerful and then offers very little to no quality software support at all. Kinda defeats the purpose of making great hardware when you don't back it up with a quality driver suite.

Nvidia on the other hand makes a hot, loud, power hungry beast, that cant make it out of testing for a year, but is able to provide excellent support through software for that monster. 260 series drivers have only made things better. Sure one can argue that Nvidia slipped and released a few drivers that broke fan profiles and overheated cards, but they're definitely a more consistent, higher quality, productive software team compared to the CCC squad.

Catalystmaker just lets his dog shit on the keyboard and whatever keys the falling poop hits, he hits return and saves it as code for the Catalyst driver package. Looks like Fluffy has been sick with worms & diarrea for the last few months.
 
Godmachine said:
Is something wrong with AMD lately ? Did some of the driver team get laid off? Has anyone else noticed this recently?
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Quite a few threads around about this.

I think the AMD driver dept and Chase Bank IT dept fire/re-hire the same guys in a cycle, just for shits and giggles...

jaredpace said:
Nvidia on the other hand makes a hot, loud, power hungry beast, that cant make it out of testing for a year, but is able to provide excellent support through software for that monster.
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Quality takes time...
 
MrWizard6600 said:
Nope! And I just got off setting up two 5830's :D.

PSU?
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Hes running a Corsair 1k watt PSU so I don't think its the problem. I think its poor driver support I mean ATI is still completing its merger with AMD and thats bound to effect certain departments including driver support. I guess I've always had great experiences with ATI products and I'm wondering if I advised my friend wrong which is not something I'm use to doing.
 
Crossfire scaling is very inconsistent and erratic compared to SLI scaling on current cards.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Crossfire scaling is very inconsistent and erratic compared to SLI scaling on current cards.
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Seem so but drivers seem to be completely the issue here as when it works.. it works right. Some of the drivers are perfect for certain games and really show what can be done when its done correctly.

Just seems the driver team needs a hard kick in the ass to get there collective shit together.
 
Godmachine said:
Just seems the driver team needs a hard kick in the ass to get there collective shit together.
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How much you want to bet that they are pounding away at 6xxx drivers to the detriment of their current customers?
 
Tolyngee said:
How much you want to bet that they are pounding away at 6xxx drivers to the detriment of their current customers?
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Probably the real truth. Sad if so , plenty of customers still need to be treated properly with regular working drivers that fit the bill across the board.


- rep AMD :(
 
Zachstar said:
You set it up wrong. Few have this issue.
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Nope I didn't. Both Crossfire bridges are connected correctly , no crashes , no weird flickering and nothing else is wrong.

AMD is the one who "set it up" wrong in this case.
 
Godmachine said:
Nope I didn't. Both Crossfire bridges are connected correctly , no crashes , no weird flickering and nothing else is wrong.

AMD is the one who "set it up" wrong in this case.
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go take a look at the reviews [H] has done with the cards in crossfire comparing the old drivers to the 10.9a and tell me who is wrong in this case? because its not AMD.. theres something setup wrong.. and if i remember correctly having both bridges installed can cause issues..
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
go take a look at the reviews [H] has done with the cards in crossfire comparing the old drivers to the 10.9a and tell me who is wrong in this case? because its not AMD.. theres something setup wrong.. and if i remember correctly having both bridges installed can cause issues..
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Right , that re-evaluation review covers 2 games... I'm talking about a range of games that are effected. Gigabyte ships a crossfire bridge connector that covers all the connection bridges (up to 3x crossfire/sli) and it doesn't cross connect. If I use one bridge it does not function. Both Gigabytes manual and XFXs show it connecting by 2 bridges. Exhibit A :



Exactly how is it "my" fault then?
 
Godmachine said:
Nope I didn't. Both Crossfire bridges are connected correctly , no crashes , no weird flickering and nothing else is wrong.

AMD is the one who "set it up" wrong in this case.
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Wrong.. Blaming AMD because you diddnt do things right wont help you. Multiple places have shown that Crossfire performance is fine and that this driver mess is seriously blown out of wack.

If you don't want to accept that you have not done everything you can to resolve this and just choose to libel AMD instead take it elseware. This is a forum for people who are serious about hardware.
 
I and MANY MANY others have zero issues with AMD drivers. So I am sure they are plenty serious about Software.
 
Just wait till your cards are no longer the current range and making them work well is no longer the driver teams primary responsibility.
 
sbuckler said:
Just wait till your cards are no longer the current range and making them work well is no longer the driver teams primary responsibility.
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4870x2 drivers are still whack...

(That's CrossfireX without the bridge, FWIW...)
 
I think people know what a X2 or 5970 means.

And if supposedly they abandon range and responsibility my ole 4770 (40nm Test card) Ought to be horrifically bad with the drivers. Coughing and wheezing with every step. Yet no issues.. Hmmmmm
 
Zachstar said:
I think people know what a X2 or 5970 means.

And if supposedly they abandon range and responsibility my ole 4770 (40nm Test card) Ought to be horrifically bad with the drivers. Coughing and wheezing with every step. Yet no issues.. Hmmmmm
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my point is the 4870x2 has crossfirex performance issues, and you cannot blame any incorrectly-installed bridge for the issue.

You're side-stepping the issue, a typical tactic when you can't address the issue itself and it must be ignored.

Ignoring an issue does not make it magically go away, though...
 
If the 4870X2 had such horrible issues people would be getting rid of them in droves. They don't and I see the card in use in many peoples rigs.

Just people trying to keep the ole "Drivers suck" Bs alive for Nvidia's sake. Hope you get a free GTX 460 out of it atleast.
 
Known Issues Under the Windows 7 Operating System
- Secondary (Slave) GPU and Memory Clock values might fail to increase when D3D samples/games are running in full screen mode,

Dunno if that helps you but at least it is out there.
 
vietkangta said:
Did you purposely remove the power cables to the card in the picture?
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I could be wrong but I don't think those are his cards in the pic. His are XFX per his first post and the ones in the pic are Asus, lol.

Sorry I just had to clear that up. I can't help you OP, I don't own those cards.
 
ive had horrible problems going past 10.5a on my 2 4870x2 cfx. anything past 10.5a bc2 just crashes 2 mins into a game.
 
Yeah, with my 4870x2 i get a BSOD loop after installing any driver past 10.4a.
 
See, this is why there is any anti-ATI around here, the drivers stink pure and simple for multi-gpu. Terry can come here and say what he wants, but xFire is inconsistent and flat out sucks compared to the competition. Single card is another story, but we're not talking singles as being the problem here anyway.
 
I have no problems with the 10.9 drivers. My system is very similar to his. I also play with higher settings than he does (typically 8X AA in most games except SC2 because you can hardly tell there).

Download the 10.9a drivers, the 10.9 profiles, install, reboot, try again.

Did you fresh install all of the games he is playing when you built this new system? Try wiping the config ini files if not.
 
jaredpace said:
Catalystmaker just lets his dog shit on the keyboard and whatever keys the falling poop hits, he hits return and saves it as code for the Catalyst driver package. Looks like Fluffy has been sick with worms & diarrea for the last few months.
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That was one of the funniest posts I've seen in a very long time. I LOLd :D
 
Tolyngee said:
4870x2 drivers are still whack...
Click to expand...

Tolyngee said:
my point is the 4870x2 has crossfirex performance issues, and you cannot blame any incorrectly-installed bridge for the issue.
Click to expand...

audirs said:
ive had horrible problems going past 10.5a on my 2 4870x2 cfx. anything past 10.5a bc2 just crashes 2 mins into a game.
Click to expand...

zyklon said:
Yeah, with my 4870x2 i get a BSOD loop after installing any driver past 10.4a.
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There were issues past 10.5a with the 4870x2 where changes they made to try and improve crossfire on newer cards ended up breaking the 4870x2. The issues were first fixed in the 10.8b hotfix and the fix was carried over to the 10.9a hotfix. Fix wasn't included in the normal 10.9 because it instead contains the original adjustment that caused the problem (but can potentially increase performance with newer cards).

Two things here. One, the 10.9a hotfix is only pertinent to the 4870x2 and the 4850x2 yet tons of misinformation being thrown around makes it sound like this was released as a hotfix for tons of games and all cards. It wasn't. The hotfix came out about 30 seconds after the regular driver and that was because it was simply carrying over a very specific fix from the 10.8b drivers. Keeping in mind that it was an optimization for the newer cards in crossfire that was removed in order to allow 4870x2 and 4850x2 cards to function normally with this hotfix, it's not really surprising that people who are improperly using this hotfix on the wrong cards are having crossfire issues now.

If you have a 4870x2 or 4850x2, do a clean install of 10.8b or 10.9a. If you don't have a 4870x2 or 4850x2 then use the regular 10.9 drivers.
 
It's pretty hard to install video card incorrectly. Snap the cards in place, connect the idiot-proof birdge, install the driver.

If a driver sweep doesn't correct the issue, try using NVIDIA's drivers... with NVIDIA hardware. Sell the cards for just over $300/ea and buy two GTX 460s and OC them or buy one GTX 480 now and budget for a second GTX 480.
 
My brother has two 5770's running in crossfire and he doesn't have any problems with the drivers.. The only recent driver that caused poor performance was the 10.8 driver (which also made my fps go down with my 4890).

Anyways, I prefer a single card solution over Crossfire or SLI.
 
GotNoRice said:
There were issues past 10.5a with the 4870x2 where changes they made to try and improve crossfire on newer cards ended up breaking the 4870x2. The issues were first fixed in the 10.8b hotfix and the fix was carried over to the 10.9a hotfix. Fix wasn't included in the normal 10.9 because it instead contains the original adjustment that caused the problem (but can potentially increase performance with newer cards).

Two things here. One, the 10.9a hotfix is only pertinent to the 4870x2 and the 4850x2 yet tons of misinformation being thrown around makes it sound like this was released as a hotfix for tons of games and all cards. It wasn't. The hotfix came out about 30 seconds after the regular driver and that was because it was simply carrying over a very specific fix from the 10.8b drivers. Keeping in mind that it was an optimization for the newer cards in crossfire that was removed in order to allow 4870x2 and 4850x2 cards to function normally with this hotfix, it's not really surprising that people who are improperly using this hotfix on the wrong cards are having crossfire issues now.

If you have a 4870x2 or 4850x2, do a clean install of 10.8b or 10.9a. If you don't have a 4870x2 or 4850x2 then use the regular 10.9 drivers.
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yea i know what you are saying bud. unfortunately ive tried 10.9a and still got the same crash after 2 mins of game play. i can honestly say i have not tried 10.8b, however i have tried 10.8a with no luck. im personally happy staying with 10.5a. i dont see any issues in this version, my quad fire scales excellent, and games run smooth. i can run bc2 @ 2560x1440 with 4xAA and 16xAF with a constant frame rate of about 60+(depending on the map, it can drop to 40 here and there for a few brief moments). would be nice to run latest and greatest, but i mean if it aint broke, dont fix it :)

and i agree, just because a hotfix/patch is out doesnt mean you should install it. only do so if it fixes anything you are experiencing.
 
03grandam said:
-2
I could be wrong but I don't think those are his cards in the pic. His are XFX per his first post and the ones in the pic are Asus, lol.

Sorry I just had to clear that up. I can't help you OP, I don't own those cards.
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Seriously , thank god someone figured that out lol. Its just a stock pic of how the cards are suppose to be connected according to the manuals. I merely posted them as a direct example to the constantly pointless "Do you have more than one bridge connected question?"

I've been building PCs for the last 20 years of my life ever since I was a little fella. I know what I'm doing. To the fool that posted that this is a serious "hardware" forum ... please grow up. I've been here 7.5 years I don't think I'm a casual forum user by any means and this is a general computing forum as well as a hardware forum. If you don't have anything constructive to add to the topic at hand just write it in your diary Susan.

I'm not really sure what the problem is , maybe it is that clock issue when a 3D app is launched maybe not. Regardless its something I've tried work out on my own the past few days and I've run out of ideas. The hardware is fine and in working order , the software is properly installed and up to date. There really isn't much else to blame on "user error" when everything is in working order.

I'm gonna advise him to sell the cards and go with a GTX 460 setup if this problem can't be fixed. He would rather have cards that are working to there full potential than ones that only work fully under certain conditions.
 
Well i know that by this time you are both tired but you could run 2 monitors, on one you could put a game full screen and in other you could have a utility to check the speed... but all in all i agree with you.

For whatever reason there is, the cards don't want to play together nicely on most/all games with a single driver revision, making it a bigger headache than it is worth for you guys. You tried your best but everything has it's limits. Good luck!
 
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