Is Eyefinity + Crossfire Possible?

Mix-Master said:
I have obtained my 3 x dell u2410 for some eyefinity action, and the results are dependant on the game played with crossfire, Using the new 10.4a preview and some games cannot run at all unless crossfire is disabled. Crysis warhead, Just cause 2 and Batman AA all spaz out when selecting 6040x1200 res, Disable crossfire and they work fine, As to the previous poster, yes only the main card can be used to drive the displays at atm
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There's no other word for it: That's lame.
 
ordovician said:
There's no other word for it: That's lame.
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Well it's not a universal issue. I just re-tested Batman AA on my 5970.

The in-game benchmark at 6048x1080 was
Crossfire on = 87fps Average
Crossfire off = 56fps Average

That's not great scaling (Dirt2 for instance is almost 100% with crossfire on) but it's not like it's broken.

P.S. I tried the Just Cause 2 demo and Eyefinity and Crossfire worked just fine as well.
 
Yea but dude your using a 5970. We are really talking about crossfiring two 5850s or two 5870s. I had a sapphire 5970 and now I am running two toxic 5870 2gbs and crossfire is not working in games where the 5970 was able to use both gpus.
 
Hoegaarden White said:
Yea but dude your using a 5970. We are really talking about crossfiring two 5850s or two 5870s. I had a sapphire 5970 and now I am running two toxic 5870 2gbs and crossfire is not working in games where the 5970 was able to use both gpus.
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Strange, I'm using 2 5870 Eyefinity6 cards and CrossFireX is working World of Warcraft, Crysis(Warhead), S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games.
 
Must have been bad timing getting my 3 monitors and using the 10,4a previews, and i have uninstalled and re-installed to the 10.4 (first previews) and all those games bar just cause 2 work in eyefinity with crossfire.

Still need some more work in this area me thinks.
 
By not working do you mean that you experience micro stutter even though the frames have increased versus one card?
 
Oh, Sorry for the delay, Just cause 2 will not even start in crossfire for me, It starts to load and the screen goes black, and stays there, press the mouse button and you get dumped back to the desktop. Disable crossfire and works fine. (Also tried to delete the config file to no avail) will have to wait untill ati fix it.
 
Spree said:
By not working do you mean that you experience micro stutter even though the frames have increased versus one card?
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I had that too till I used driver 8.73/8.74 betas with 2 5870 E6 cards. It didn't fix it for 2 5970s though.
 
Imo I don't know what AMD were thinking when they developed eyefinity, is a great feature no doubt, but REALLY they thought most of people that could afford for this kind of setup would end up with ONE card? some people argue why nvidia requires two gpus for vision surround, but for those kind of resolutions if you want to stay up 60fps+ most of the time you will end up with a second gpu...
 
Same issue, dual 5970's on an x58 mobo with i7 920 @6040x1200. everything is smooth with crossfire disabled, but frame rates drop by more then half and gets very choppy with crossfire enabled. tried all drivers, running 16x on both cards and even full reinstalls without luck.
been back and forth with ati support and so far only generic responces.

I asked out right if there was an issue with eyefinity and crossfire due to all the forum posts and here was the answer.

Dear Customer,

Your service request : SR #{ticketno:[1111111111]} has been reviewed and updated.

Response and Service Request History:

Regarding the issue of "can you confirm that dual 5970's with eyefinity actually work with crossfire enabled?"



Yes crossfire should work.



The question you ask "are there any known issues?" not that we are aware of, but if you have issue with crossfire, eyefinity and low framerates, (i.e. performance) we would investigate it and try and create the issue in house to verify if that is correct.



If it is correct, the steps and information would be sent to the engineers who would work towards a solution, and then post if on the website or in the next versions of drivers.
 
Actually 5970 is internal CF, right? So CF works for you. Just not the 4-way iteration.
 
Ok I bit on a sapphire 5870 so now I have crossfired 5870's at stock paired with a i7 860 @ 3.4 ghz and 4 gb of ram.

General experience / impressions: I have no such stuttering that's been mentioned in this thread. Everygame is stutter free and input lag free. However, what I'm disappointed in is the general poor scaling of crossfire in eyefinity resolutions. From reviews and personal benches, it seems that scaling gets WORSE with resolution for some reason. It should be the opposite right?

In general, I see less than 150% scaling. To get 150%+ is rare. One of the biggest disappointments with scaling is Just Cause 2. It has something like a measly 120-125% scaling at 5760x1080. According to Tom's recent review of xfire 5870's, it looks like JC2 suffers from huge scaling losses as resolution increases for some reason... maybe it's a driver issue, but not holding my breath for a fix.

BC2 scaling is OK and I'm overall pretty satisfied with it as I'm now able to play at higher settings with higher FPS and no lag / stutter issues whatsoever.

I tried a lot of other games and it seems to be a mixed bag in terms of scaling. However, 5760x1080 scaling is pretty much always WORSE than 1920x1080 scaling. That's a big problem.

Oh, Sorry for the delay, Just cause 2 will not even start in crossfire for me, It starts to load and the screen goes black, and stays there, press the mouse button and you get dumped back to the desktop. Disable crossfire and works fine. (Also tried to delete the config file to no avail) will have to wait untill ati fix it.
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Definitely NOT an ATI issue. I have JC2 running in crossfire eyefinity at 5760x1080 just fine... just a little lacking in performance. Can't justify an entire second card for this specific game.
 
Oh, And have just done a full re-install of win 7 x64 pro and nothing but drivers and steam installed, Same prob as before, No crossfire with just cause2.
 
Mix-Master said:
Can i ask which OS are you using, Looking around a few forums it seems people with windows 7 like me are having somewhat the same problem.
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I have windows 7 x64 and JC2 works fine in eyefinity with crossfire enabled. Crossfire is *working* in the game, but like I said earlier scaling is very disappointing so you're not really missing all that much at the moment if it's not working.
 
Fair enuf that the crossfire performance is sub-par, Would still like to get to the bottom of why its not working tho. Might have to try some 8.74's beta.:confused:
 
Mix-Master said:
Fair enuf that the crossfire performance is sub-par, Would still like to get to the bottom of why its not working tho. Might have to try some 8.74's beta.:confused:
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I forgot to add that I'm using the official 10.4's right now. Did crossfire eyefinity even work in 8.74?

I've tried a couple more games and I've found one game with massive stuttering issues: Crysis Warhead. It's completely unplayable. Metro 2033 on the other hand doesn't stutter with crossfire. However, even crossfire can't push enough frames to have it set to high at 5760x1080.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
I forgot to add that I'm using the official 10.4's right now. Did crossfire eyefinity even work in 8.74?

I've tried a couple more games and I've found one game with massive stuttering issues: Crysis Warhead. It's completely unplayable. Metro 2033 on the other hand doesn't stutter with crossfire. However, even crossfire can't push enough frames to have it set to high at 5760x1080.
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Crysis have issue with Multi-GPU setup, it was never fix..

both nVidia and ATI have horrible stutter in some area..

but some part are due to lack of VRAM...
 
Most if not all games that i have tried work a lot more smoothly without the 2nd card active.
Only 1 game needed the 2nd card and that was gta 4 and the expansions. Previous poster is correct in terms of higher memory usage with eyefinity resolutions. I really need to get out of the habit of thinking its a single screen so lets max every settings out.
 
Ok have finally figured out why my just cause 2 wasnt working with crossfire. Just had to re-create the eyefinity group again and it worked fine. weird. Now at last i can enjoy the stuttering of just cause 2 with eyefinity crossfire ;)
 
Can anyone comment more on BF:BC2 with 5870 CF? I'm playing the game now at 5760x1200 with a single 5870 and it's certainly playable, but I thought adding another 5870 would be beneficial. But then I've read a bunch about EF/CF issues in general and specifically related to BC2. Not too interested in dropping in another 5870 if it's not going to help (or even make things worse with the stuttering, etc).

Just wondering whether recent driver updates have helped at all (right, I know this is ATI and this is unlikely).
 
verylostindeed said:
Can anyone comment more on BF:BC2 with 5870 CF? I'm playing the game now at 5760x1200 with a single 5870 and it's certainly playable, but I thought adding another 5870 would be beneficial. But then I've read a bunch about EF/CF issues in general and specifically related to BC2. Not too interested in dropping in another 5870 if it's not going to help (or even make things worse with the stuttering, etc).

Just wondering whether recent driver updates have helped at all (right, I know this is ATI and this is unlikely).
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before I got rid of 5870s, no issue at all with BC2 @ Eyefinity.
 
Hey guys, when you go XF with the 5000 series cards, do you get that huge fucking annoying cross-fire badge stuck to the upper righ corner fo the screen at all times in eyefinity ?
 
bizzmeister said:
Hey guys, when you go XF with the 5000 series cards, do you get that huge fucking annoying cross-fire badge stuck to the upper righ corner fo the screen at all times in eyefinity ?
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There's some option to turn it off IIRC. It didn't pop up by default for me so I never looked into it.

Can anyone comment more on BF:BC2 with 5870 CF? I'm playing the game now at 5760x1200 with a single 5870 and it's certainly playable, but I thought adding another 5870 would be beneficial. But then I've read a bunch about EF/CF issues in general and specifically related to BC2. Not too interested in dropping in another 5870 if it's not going to help (or even make things worse with the stuttering, etc).

Just wondering whether recent driver updates have helped at all (right, I know this is ATI and this is unlikely).
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I'm going to say it again... I have no stuttering in any games (JC2, BC2, and about 20 other games I've tried xfire in) except for one game: Crysis Warhead. BC2 was alright on a single 5870 in dx11 mode on medium. What bothered me was the dips into the 30's during MP. With two 5870's, I can turn it on high and it'll never dip below the 40's and usually be 50-60+. I can actually turn on 4xAA and the frames don't suffer too much (5-10 fps lower), but I feel like it's not as smooth so I turn AA off.
 
bizzmeister said:
Hey guys, when you go XF with the 5000 series cards, do you get that huge fucking annoying cross-fire badge stuck to the upper righ corner fo the screen at all times in eyefinity ?
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You can turn that off. In the taskbar, right-click the ATI logo, go to your video card, then go to CrossFireX Settings, then uncheck Show CrossFireX Status Icon.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
There's some option to turn it off IIRC. It didn't pop up by default for me so I never looked into it.
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GriMReapeRAK said:
You can turn that off. In the taskbar, right-click the ATI logo, go to your video card, then go to CrossFireX Settings, then uncheck Show CrossFireX Status Icon.
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Well, thats good to know. I still dont have the cards, just been seeing them in videos and such. Im still waiting on the 2GB Sapphire Toxic 5870's, its been over a month. Still not in stock and my main pc is just sitting here collecting dust after returning this GTX 480 SLI setup. God damn it. Im on my backup pc now with a single 5850 and eyefinity though. I dont know how much longer i can take not having my main pc lol.
 
I believe i have fixed my crossfire eyefinity stuttering. I have tried many things, But the last thing i changed which worked was to disable the pci express link state power management. By default it is set to moderate power savings. Tested the games which game me grief before and they all work fine and very smooth. Games being Just cause 2, BC2 and GTA4.
Maybe others can test? (running win 7 x64 btw) also the same setting in vista
 
Mix-Master said:
I believe i have fixed my crossfire eyefinity stuttering. I have tried many things, But the last thing i changed which worked was to disable the pci express link state power management. By default it is set to moderate power savings. Tested the games which game me grief before and they all work fine and very smooth. Games being Just cause 2, BC2 and GTA4.
Maybe others can test? (running win 7 x64 btw) also the same setting in vista
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I'm going to necro this thread to say that I took the plunge on another 5870 for 3x1 CF/EF, and thus far BC2 (only game I've tried) has showed somewhat higher framerates but appears to suffer from some form of stuttering. It seems less smooth, actually, than playing with crossfire disabled.

I expect that there is no real solution to this, unfortunately, but any thoughts?
 
Mix-Master said:
I believe i have fixed my crossfire eyefinity stuttering. I have tried many things, But the last thing i changed which worked was to disable the pci express link state power management. By default it is set to moderate power savings. Tested the games which game me grief before and they all work fine and very smooth. Games being Just cause 2, BC2 and GTA4.
Maybe others can test? (running win 7 x64 btw) also the same setting in vista
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Where is this pci exprress link state power managment? Bios?
 
I believe that there is in fact a solution to this, but it may require a bit of trial and error. First thing, I would try to uninstall / sweep all drivers and install the 10.6 CCC package from ATIs website along with the 10.6 Crossfire Application profiles (same download page) and then post your results. I have 2 Asus 5870 ROG cards that I had a bunch of different issues with including tearing, stuttering, inability to CFX and others; and since I installed the 10.6 series drivers I no longer have these issues, and performance not only increased but seems to be more stable.
 
blackhawk777 said:
I believe that there is in fact a solution to this, but it may require a bit of trial and error. First thing, I would try to uninstall / sweep all drivers and install the 10.6 CCC package from ATIs website along with the 10.6 Crossfire Application profiles (same download page) and then post your results. I have 2 Asus 5870 ROG cards that I had a bunch of different issues with including tearing, stuttering, inability to CFX and others; and since I installed the 10.6 series drivers I no longer have these issues, and performance not only increased but seems to be more stable.
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Interesting. I had tried 10.6 initially, but BC2 was a slideshow, so I went back to 10.5, which everyone has suggested for that game. Maybe I'll try a full wipe of the drivers and give 10.6 another go.
 
I understand; the same thing happened to me time and again through the "testing" phase. Also, have you turned V-sync all the way off in CCC? And in BC2? That helped improve some of my earlier lag issues.
 
blackhawk777 said:
I understand; the same thing happened to me time and again through the "testing" phase. Also, have you turned V-sync all the way off in CCC? And in BC2? That helped improve some of my earlier lag issues.
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I normally leave v-sync off, but it may just be on "default off, defer to application" or whatever in Catalyst. I'll switch it to always off and give it a shot.
 
Quick update: disabling v-sync and the like didn't really help. But turning off pci express link state power management did sort of reduce the stuttering. To be sure, it's still there, but it is lessened, I guess.

And I was able to push to 2xAA, 8xAF at 5670x1200 and maintain around 60 FPS. Not too shabby. Still would like to eliminate stutter altogether, of course.
 
how bad is the tearing without v-sync? I want more gpu horse power but not all of the headaches I am hearing about getting CF to play nice with EF and then loosing v-sync in the exchange.. doesn't sound good to me.. :(
 
revenant said:
how bad is the tearing without v-sync? I want more gpu horse power but not all of the headaches I am hearing about getting CF to play nice with EF and then loosing v-sync in the exchange.. doesn't sound good to me.. :(
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Can't help you out there; I never use v-sync.
 
Hi all not had time to read all this thread but can anyone tell me if some setups with eyefinity and trifire have problems?

I have 2 6950's flashed to 70's plus 1 6970 running eyefinity but can’t get the performance, if I run 2 cards it’s ok in most games but do get some lag from mouse to screen and jerky lines across screen but when I use 3 cards it all goes to pot, my fps drop and very choppy game play all this with eyefinity soon as I use 1 screen with trifire no problems :s at a loss now I have done everything to fix the problem but nothing makes a difference. Any input would be grateful

My Rig
3x 6970’s
Asrock Extreme 7
16gig Ripjawx Ram
60gig OCZ SSD
Antec 1000w PSU
2600k @4.8
 
crezzlin said:
Hi all not had time to read all this thread but can anyone tell me if some setups with eyefinity and trifire have problems?

I have 2 6950's flashed to 70's plus 1 6970 running eyefinity but can’t get the performance, if I run 2 cards it’s ok in most games but do get some lag from mouse to screen and jerky lines across screen but when I use 3 cards it all goes to pot, my fps drop and very choppy game play all this with eyefinity soon as I use 1 screen with trifire no problems :s at a loss now I have done everything to fix the problem but nothing makes a difference. Any input would be grateful

My Rig
3x 6970’s
Asrock Extreme 7
16gig Ripjawx Ram
60gig OCZ SSD
Antec 1000w PSU
2600k @4.8
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What power supply is that? Can you link to specs on newegg. 1000w should be fine as long as the power supply is decent.
 
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