ATI CrossFireX Application Profile 10.8a Performance @ [H]

I guess all the above is true, although the recent closing of BFG had me a bit worried....I just wonder why AMD hasn't lowered the prices of their own products, since it seems, at this juncture, they could afford/would do so.
 
heflys20 said:
I guess all the above is true, although the recent closing of BFG had me a bit worried....I just wonder why AMD hasn't lowered the prices of their own products, since it seems, at this juncture, they could afford/would do so.
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If the recent steam survey is any indication, it's because they don't need to.

Hopefully Eyefinity+Crossfire scaling improves to something that isn't horrible. If the 68xx has fixed EF+CF scaling (or if the drivers fix it sooner *crosses fingers*), sign me up for 2.
 
Nvidia might be moving inventory as fast as possible. Perhaps that fermi high end refresh is coming sooner than most think :D Either way October should be a good month for gaming as I believe AMD will release high end and mid range parts. If Nvidia comes to play they will probably lower the price of the 470/480 thus putting them in the mid range ballpark and introduce a new high end fermi king. If that happens we should be in for a treat. :) Competition is great.

I've been disenchanted as of late and I believe that's why I haven't purchased a card in some time. I miss those simultaneous launches. Where green and red release days apart and the 2 are benched on every hardware site. I think they work harder that way and we make out better. This 6 month lapse crap that's been going on is bullshit. They just keep leapfrogging eachother in sales and the technology stays stagnant. Well that's my opinion.
 
CATALYST MAKER said:
I am here to help... as tough as it may seem to believe :)
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Well then, why you are here. :) Specifically has 5970 CrossfireX scaling performance with and without Eyefinity been addressed? I've seen testing done using 10.3/10.3a and 10.4 drivers, but nothing newer than that. So far everything I've seen out there on sites that have tested it was all over the map. Even in single monitor configurations. Sometimes 5970 CrossfireX scores really well blowing a pair of GeForce GTX 480's out of the water, and then other times the performance improvement from adding a second 5970 is non-existent. I'm looking into a third 30" Dell monitor for my setup and I'm afraid that my 5970 won't cut it in all games alone and that a second one won't give me much bang for my buck if any. From what little data I've been able to gather on the subject Its hard not to draw the conclusion that I'd better be served with two GeForce GTX 480's instead of dual 5970's. I really hope that isn't the case anymore.
 
I wish the ATI driver would at least let us choose the crossfire method -- AFR, SFR, checkerboard, SuperAA.
 
I heard once that by renaming the executable for the program/game in question to something else that uses a CFX profile (ie. 3dmark.exe) can sometimes help. Is this still the case? I'd try it, but I don't have a second 5870 yet.
 
Creamy Goodness said:
I wish the ATI driver would at least let us choose the crossfire method -- AFR, SFR, checkerboard, SuperAA.
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You really only need that for games which are newer than the Catalyst driver. That's certainly the only time I've used that functionality with NVIDIA drivers which have pretty much always had that ability.
 
kllrnohj said:
The 470 is competing against the 5850, though, not the 5870. And in that respect, the two cost about the same, perform about the same, but the 5850 uses less power and thus produces less heat and is quieter. I think it OCs better as well, but I'm not sure on that one. And 5870 vs. GTX 480, the 5870 is now down to $350 + COD:MW2 on newegg right now vs. $420 + Metro 2033 for the GTX 480. I'm sure you can find deals, but that basically puts the 5870 at ~10% slower but ~15% cheaper (and of course the heat/power/noise savings).

Certainly not getting trounced in performance for the cost by any stretch of the imagination, I'd still call ATI's cards a better value if you plan to stick with a single card, but the gap is shrinking. Nvidia should have launched at their current prices :/
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The only way for 5850 to compete with 470 is by using release nvidia fermi drivers like reviews did in first days of fermi availability.

Speed order currently is 5970>480>5870>470>5850>460.

And with the agressive pricing of nvidia cards few weeks ago i got my 470 for 50 euro less than cheapest 5850 was :D
 
Dan_D said:
You really only need that for games which are newer than the Catalyst driver. That's certainly the only time I've used that functionality with NVIDIA drivers which have pretty much always had that ability.
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I'm trying to play an old game (the witcher) and the crossfire mode it's selecting causes annoying flickering on some of the transparent textures. I'd like to try other modes to see if it's any better. I tried using ATI CrossFire Xtension 1.4, but it doesn't seem to work. It's the steam version of the enhanced edition game, Windows 7 x64. Not really sure if you should be renaming .exe files for steam games, might fail to launch or something.
 
cadaveca said:
psychok9, I'm gonna try that right now, because I'm still getting cursor corruption, that the release notes for this driver says are fixed.


Sad if the natural uninstaller doesn't work right, but I already knew that.
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Did it work?
 
DOX said:
Can you atleast confirm that you read that there is a issue with cf not engaging properly on the 4xxx/x2 series, cause posting religously in the catalyst feedback surveys seems to have done diddly squat.
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I have two 4870x2 in CrossFire on a Vista system with the Steam version of BFBC2. I did a complete Driver Cleaner wipe last night and installed 10.8 with the 10.8a Application Profiles. And… :drum roll: I get the same poor performance I saw with 10.6 - 10.8. Map load times in multiplayer are insane and once the map loads frame rate is terrible (I don't have numbers...but needless to say it was unplayable). My settings are: 1920x1200, AA: Off, AF: Off, all detail set to High (in 10.5a these worked fine).
At this point, I am looking into selling my 2 4870x2s and getting a 5970 to solve this problem.

//CATALYST MAKER Are you Listening?
 
CATALYST MAKER said:
AMD and I do care and will fix what we can, regardless of whether it is last generation or not.
Here is your reassurance.

As soon as we can see the issue, then we will investigate it and if possible fix it.
...I am here to help... as tough as it may seem to believe
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Awesome, it is appreciated.

Below are the reproducible bugs I've found with Catalyst 10.8 on Win 7 64bit using with 5850 @ 1080p 60Hz hdmi -> Denon AVR-2809CI -> Samsung HL61A750 TV

I've also reported these via http://www.amdsurveys.com/se.ashx?s=5A1E27D27E29B0E3

=====
Previously saved underscan/overscan settings are not restored after a reboot (new bug introduced in v10.8)

This one is pretty easy to see, in fact many are slack jawed this made it into the released drivers. This one is ugly/easy enough to warrant a hot fix no?

A programmer has already made a workaround using the ATI Display Library SDK, (see 'Overscan fix') below are his notes.
...
For the programmers out there, all the app does is use the ADL Display Library function calls to:

get the list of adapters in the system (my 5770 shows up as 3 adapters).
If the adapter is active, get the list of monitors.
If the monitor is connected, call ADL_Display_Underscan_Get() to get the underscan settings for that monitor.
Call ADL_Display_Underscan_Set() to activate the underscan setting.

The fact that this works tells me that the 10.8 driver is simply not applying the setting at boot and it's a simple fix that I would expect will be implemented in 10.9, if not sooner.
...
=====

======
Previously saved underscan/overscan settings are not restored after resume from s3 sleep (old bug introduced in v10.4)

This one is a little weirder, simply manually sleeping/resuming the machine doesn't seem to expose the behavior. It only manifests itself after the machine has slept for 'awhile'.
======

======
no video on resume from sleep, monitor shows 'no signal'. Can start media center to 'fix' (get video/signal, old bug introduced sometime after v10.4)

This one like above may only manifest itself after the machine has slept for 'awhile'.
======

======
Audio skips/repeats indefinitely when pausing in foobar2000 using WASAPI (new bug introduced in v10.8, presumeably due to undocumented changes attempting to fix the silent stream bug*)

Get a copy of foobar2000, download the wasapi plugin, copy .dll to <x>:\Program Files (x86)\foobar2000\components, configure via file,preferences,output,wasapi
========

========
Periodically see 'device not plugged in' in sound panel for ati hdmi audio device after switching between sources on audio/video receiver (an audio/video receiver power off/on 'fixes', new bug introduced in v10.8?)

Need to test with an avr or other pre-processor using hdmi to see this one
========

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=18163660&postcount=463
*The silent stream bug is when audio gets cut when there's no sound. It takes a second to come back on, so you lose the beginning of sounds, and short sounds completely (like Windows chimes). The Realtek driver (as well as both drivers with the 4000 series) doesn't suffer from this, and outputs audio continuously. When there's no sound, it's "outputting" a "silent stream". With the 4000 series, the ATI driver also used to have this bug, but ATI fixed it. We hope they do the same for the 5000 series soon,

While you're looking you might check out the ATI HD 5000 Series Known Problems (5870 5850 5770 5750 5670 5570 5450) thread first post people with their primary interest in home theatre pc's are concerned about.
 
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LOL, took this long? Thats pathetic. I have always said, ATI has good hardware, bad software.
 
AGlassOfMilk said:
I know. ;) Just with all the attention on the 5xxx I want to bring some of it back to the 4xxx.
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I don't. I no longer have 4xxx cards so I couldn't care less about those. :D On a more serious note, anyone who bought dual 5970's for CrossfireX hasn't very likely got their money's worth out of that setup. I'm only interested in it because I'd prefer to use dual 5970's instead of selling mine and grabbing a pair of GeForce GTX 480's for my multi-monitor gaming needs. I think the 5970 is a better card, I'm just disappointed in what I've seen out of them with regard to CrossfireX results.
 
Dan_D said:
I don't. I no longer have 4xxx cards so I couldn't care less about those. :D On a more serious note, anyone who bought dual 5970's for CrossfireX hasn't very likely got their money's worth out of that setup. I'm only interested in it because I'd prefer to use dual 5970's instead of selling mine and grabbing a pair of GeForce GTX 480's for my multi-monitor gaming needs. I think the 5970 is a better card, I'm just disappointed in what I've seen out of them with regard to CrossfireX results.
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And I'd prefer to keep my 4870x2s and not have to buy a 5970. :D
 
I don't think most of you understand how software development, or in this case, software fixes happen.

It's not an overnight process, you find a bug, you fix it, you test to make sure you fixed it, and didn't break anything else, unfortunately it is IMPOSSIBLE to test everything, and even the testing that is done takes time, specially when it's a problem that is hard to reproduce.

Stop bitching and be happy that the developers are actually in here, listening to your concerns, and trying to address your problems, 99% of the other companies would tell you to call tech support, and you'd never have contact with a developer unless you're a fortune 500 company with a pricey contract, so to have one come in here, and directly look @ the customers concerns that use the product is rare.
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
I don't think most of you understand how software development, or in this case, software fixes happen.

It's not an overnight process, you find a bug, you fix it, you test to make sure you fixed it, and didn't break anything else, unfortunately it is IMPOSSIBLE to test everything, and even the testing that is done takes time, specially when it's a problem that is hard to reproduce.

Stop bitching and be happy that the developers are actually in here, listening to your concerns, and trying to address your problems, 99% of the other companies would tell you to call tech support, and you'd never have contact with a developer unless you're a fortune 500 company with a pricey contract, so to have one come in here, and directly look @ the customers concerns that use the product is rare.
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Overnight? This problem has been going on for months now (since 10.5). I certainly mean no disrespect to my fellow Code Monkeys. However, I do expect the performance problems to at least be acknowledged as a problem (none of the Release Notes have indicated the problems with BFBC2 and CrossFire).
 
If you want to get technical, CrossfireX scaling problems have been a problem ever since CrossfireX was made available to the public. The 3870x2, 4870x2 and 5970 have all suffered from poor CrossfireX scaling. Both the 4870x2 and 5970 have enjoyed being the most powerful single cards available for awhile after their release, but when combined in SLI/3-Way SLI NVIDIA's cards have overpowered them. ATI would have been able to maintain their lead in multi-card/GPU configurations except that the poor scaling simply wouldn't allow for it.
 
Dan_D said:
If you want to get technical, CrossfireX scaling problems have been a problem ever since CrossfireX was made available to the public. The 3870x2, 4870x2 and 5970 have all suffered from poor CrossfireX scaling. Both the 4870x2 and 5970 have enjoyed being the most powerful single cards available for awhile after their release, but when combined in SLI/3-Way SLI NVIDIA's cards have overpowered them. ATI would have been able to maintain their lead in multi-card/GPU configurations except that the poor scaling simply wouldn't allow for it.
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True, but generally performance has been getting better all the time. Then came 10.5...
 
Hi, As another poster my current drivers on my 5770x2 xfire rig works a treat with bfbc2 etc, 10.6 was bad 10.7 saw me experience the BSOD in windows7 since I got windows 7. Should I stick with 10.5a rather than move to 10.8a is it really if it aint broke dont fix it for me??

Also can anyone please run a comparison on crossfire performance FPS wise say on bfbc2 on crossfire comparing 10.5a and 10.8a, in theory newer drivers should equal better performance?

Could our lovely hardforum author who has ATIs ear do this?
 
drady said:
Hi, As another poster my current drivers on my 5770x2 xfire rig works a treat with bfbc2 etc, 10.6 was bad 10.7 saw me experience the BSOD in windows7 since I got windows 7. Should I stick with 10.5a rather than move to 10.8a is it really if it aint broke dont fix it for me??

Also can anyone please run a comparison on crossfire performance FPS wise say on bfbc2 on crossfire comparing 10.5a and 10.8a, in theory newer drivers should equal better performance?

Could our lovely hardforum author who has ATIs ear do this?
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Hi drady, I also have have a 5770x2 xfire rig with 10.5a's and 10.5 CAP. I'll see if i can provide something in a few days on Zero Dark Thirty. (My save files got deleted about a month ago.)
 
10.7 has been good to me for the most part. I saw performance improvements in Battlefield Bad Company 2 for sure, and a few other titles. I am experiencing some image corruption in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky. Though I'm not sure if I can lay that problem on ATI's doorstep as the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games are pretty horrible when it comes to technical issues. I've seen problems like this with both NVIDIA and ATI cards over the years. I do see the occasional cursor corruption problem but going into one of my RDP sessions which I usually have open resolves that. If not a reboot is all that's required.
 
Dan_D said:
If you want to get technical, CrossfireX scaling problems have been a problem ever since CrossfireX was made available to the public. The 3870x2, 4870x2 and 5970 have all suffered from poor CrossfireX scaling. Both the 4870x2 and 5970 have enjoyed being the most powerful single cards available for awhile after their release, but when combined in SLI/3-Way SLI NVIDIA's cards have overpowered them. ATI would have been able to maintain their lead in multi-card/GPU configurations except that the poor scaling simply wouldn't allow for it.
Click to expand...

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-hd5800-3way-cf_6.html#sect1

I was under the impression after reading this almost two months ago that both camps were getting pretty good (or at least comparable) scaling between their setups? (not all are comparable, but Warhead is very comparable, and some show GTX 470 SLI beating GTX 480 SLI...)

(Admittedly they didn't go a 5970 quad-fire config test...)

After reading that, it was making me consider ATi again next round if I go multi-GPU (and pray the GSOD thing is history...)

I owned a 5870, and decided to go GTX 480s for multi-GPU. Had I read the xbitlabs article first, I may have kept the 5870 and gone xfire/tri-fire instead.
 
Hi Terry, just giving you some specific scenarios in which CFX is broken, courtesy of my friend who does not have a [h] account. Hopefully it will put your team on the right track to getting CFX working as good as possible.

Hardware Config:
Core i5 750 @ 3.8GHz
4GB DDR3
2x5870 1GB
Cat 10.8 + 10.8a CAP

Starcraft 2
2v2 Twilight Fortress map
1920x1080 0xAA

At initial loading, just looking at the base, consistent 70fps with CFX enabled over 3 tries.
Same scenario, getting 100-110fps with CFX disabled over 3 tries.
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BC2
Valparaiso MP map
1920x1080 4x wide tent adaptive AA

10.8 + 10.8a CAP
65-70fps over 3 tries with both CFX on and off

10.4
115fps over 3 tries with CFX on
~60fps over 3 tries with CFX off
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Far Cry 2
1920x1080 4x AA
Ranch Small benchmark

~115fps over 3 tries with CFX on
~60fps over 3 tries with CFX off

Clearly shows that his driver install is not borked because he gets proper scaling in FC2 under 10.8 + 10.8a CAP
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Hope this helps!
 
@Tolyngee
Now we know that article that you posted need an update with 10.8a drivers, and minimum fps goes up too :)
@cesium666
Nice post :)
 
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CATALYST MAKER said:
AMD and I do care and will fix what we can, regardless of whether it is last generation or not.
Here is your reassurance.

As soon as we can see the issue, then we will investigate it and if possible fix it.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Terry. Try this one on for size: 10.4a was the last driver I've installed (among 10.5/10.6/10.7/10.8) in which the Overdrive function recognized and responded to changes I want to make in the 2nd Xfire card---the card that is linked to the monitor driver in the overdrive panel being the first Xfire card in the pair. Prior to and with 10.4a, the second card always responded to whatever changes I could use overdrive to implement quite independently of the settings I had made for xfire card #1. As of 10.5, using overdrive to try and set settings for the second Xfire card is an effort in futility as no settings will save to the overdrive profile for the second xfire card.

10.8 was the fourth driver revision I have waited on for this problem to be fixed, and it has not yet been fixed. I'm not even quite sure if xfire beyond 10.4a is anything but broken for my pair of 4850's. I don't understand how such xfire functionality could work so well all the way up to 10.4a and then change drastically, beginning with 10.5, so that changes to card #2 in a xfire configuration simply don't register in Overdrive, and of course will not save, just as if the second xfire card was not present.

Something happened in the drivers, Terry, to make this so. I'd surely appreciate it if you guys could isolate it and then fix it! Thanks in advance.
 
To Catalyst Maker: Thank you for your work on FFXIV! The drivers work great on the benchmark, unfortunately crossfire doesn't work in the actual game, (you cannot rename the .exe since the game uses a launcher). This game hits open beta August 31 and launches Sept. 22, really hoping you can release an app profile or hotfix!

Thanks for your hard work as seen in this thread as well.

- ffxivgame.exe
- 4870x2
- win 7 x64
 
DarkStryke said:
Very good point in the last remarks. It has taken entirely too long and required the very loud bitching of [H] in particular to make them move on something like this. Frankly that is unacceptable to ATI users, and they really need to understand why people were getting very angry.

Hopefully this is a nice kick in the rear so they smarten up for the future.
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Geno750 said:
Too little too late in my book. When competition is starting to increase, that is not the time to drop the ball on the software side. I've been very happy with my 5870, but with the display port adapter issues, the inability to run a 3x DVI setup in crossfireX, and the driver issues. It made it very easy for me to sell my 5870 and pick up two 470 GTX's.
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Hear, hear. I'm in love with the way that the 5870 is competitive with the 480 at a fraction of the die size and power cost, but I just can't buy their products when stuff like this happens. It's not like CFx scaling has always been this bad, and ATi just came out with a wonder fix - no, thanks to the savvy [H] fanbase, we know that this was actually a regression. How can you release something with such a glaring bug? I'd rather get driver updates less often that actually fix things, than monthly driver updates that just break things. It's sloppy, and shows poor attention to detail. And it's really sad that ATi arguably has the better-engineered hardware (don't give me that look, anyone can make a giant hothouse of a logic spam design, nV), but it's software screw-ups like this that keep them playing second fiddle. It just adds insult to injury that this comes at a time when nVidia was putting some really competitive products on the market. People are deciding between a 460 and a 5850 or 5870, and this is what they see? Who wants to buy into that?
 
Really, there only seems to be the potential for major issues if you crossfire. I doubt single GPU users will be that unsatisfied.
 
Am I being to hard here, but from my reading it appears that crossfire owners are really being dudded??
 
Dan_D said:
I don't. I no longer have 4xxx cards so I couldn't care less about those. :D On a more serious note, anyone who bought dual 5970's for CrossfireX hasn't very likely got their money's worth out of that setup. I'm only interested in it because I'd prefer to use dual 5970's instead of selling mine and grabbing a pair of GeForce GTX 480's for my multi-monitor gaming needs. I think the 5970 is a better card, I'm just disappointed in what I've seen out of them with regard to CrossfireX results.
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Anyone who spent the money to acquire two 5970'a for Crossfire, isn't likely to care about getting their moneys worth.
 
Magnus said:
Anyone who spent the money to acquire two 5970'a for Crossfire, isn't likely to care about getting their moneys worth.
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Your statement makes no sense. If you spent more money investing in a high quality setup you probably are even more sensitive to getting your monies' worth since you have a larger investment than someone with a $200 5770.

There seems to be quite a bit of resentment on these boards when it comes to people who have spent a lot of money on video cards and I don't understand it. Regardless, everyone deserves to have working products.
 
"In our internal benchmarking we did not see CrossFireX scaling issues. With HardOCP’s initial articles on the topic of scaling we were alerted that something was not right."

Either that quote was pure BS from ATI, or it is proof that the only real way to know how a setup is going to perform is to try it, not take a review as gospel.
 
Dethred said:
"In our internal benchmarking we did not see CrossFireX scaling issues. With HardOCP’s initial articles on the topic of scaling we were alerted that something was not right."

Either that quote was pure BS from ATI, or it is proof that the only real way to know how a setup is going to perform is to try it, not take a review as gospel.
Click to expand...

Yeah, safe to say it is PR bullshit.
 
LOL that was the first thing I thought too... We were too lazy to actually have Q&A testers play the popular games with our drivers... so until a major fan site busted our chops for months we finally decided to do something.
 
Tolyngee said:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-hd5800-3way-cf_6.html#sect1

I was under the impression after reading this almost two months ago that both camps were getting pretty good (or at least comparable) scaling between their setups? (not all are comparable, but Warhead is very comparable, and some show GTX 470 SLI beating GTX 480 SLI...)

(Admittedly they didn't go a 5970 quad-fire config test...)

After reading that, it was making me consider ATi again next round if I go multi-GPU (and pray the GSOD thing is history...)

I owned a 5870, and decided to go GTX 480s for multi-GPU. Had I read the xbitlabs article first, I may have kept the 5870 and gone xfire/tri-fire instead.
Click to expand...

Dual GPU scaling on both sides is pretty good. When you get passed that things change. The 5970's haven't been tested too much in CrossfireX, but what little data there is typically shows terrible if not almost non-existent scaling. There are some games where that setup dominates but they are few and far between. 5970 CrossfireX scaling has been pretty pathetic since day one and only as recently as 10.7 has that been addressed to any degree from what I understand. The only reason I'm not running dual 5970's right now is because the scaling seems to be so terrible, its not worth buying the second card.
 
Here's an odd one. Upgraded from 10.6 to 10.8 (not 10.8a) and it broke Bookworm. On the opening screen when the title slides down it stutters, and in the game when I clear the flaming tiles the screen just freezes. I have to exit and emter to get the screen back to normal, then it freeezes again the next time I clear tiles when a flaming tile is on the board. So I uninstalled 10.8, rebooted, and played using just the default Windows driver and it worked fine. Reinstalled 10.6 and it's still fine. I don't know what else it affected, but I never expected a driver to mess up 2D animation.

I'm using Win7 Ultimate x64, a single 5850, Gigabyte GA-X38-DS4 w/C2D e8400.
 
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