HD 7970's in Crossfire - An Enthusiasts Rant

A

AuxNuke

Gawd
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Nov 11, 2001
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Longtime PC enthusiast here just looking to vent on the HD 7970. I've always been an early adopter of the new iterations of PC hardware. I've never been loyal to a side (Intel vs AMD, Nvidia vs ATI); I always purchased whichever product was the best performing, usually on day 1. So when AMD recently released the 7970, I read the reviews at midnight and ordered a pair of 7970's since they nicely outperformed (~20%) the setup I had at the time, a pair of GTX 580's in SLI. I unboxed the cards, backed up up my machine, secure erased the SSD's and was primed for a fun day of re-installs, benchmarking, overclocking, and gaming. Over the last ~4 months, I've had nothing but frustration and poor performance. Some examples:
  1. Upon initial install of the drivers downloaded from AMD, which were only available as a beta for Win 7 64bit on release day, the PC BSOD'ed during the installation. I ended up having to use the drivers provided on disk and run a custom install deselecting the sound drivers to get them to simply install correctly. Subsequent driver releases were met with additional bugs including uninstall / install issues and CAP install issues.
  2. The Catalyst control center had numerous bugs throughout the driver releases such as Crossfire not staying enabled, CAP profiles not working correctly, power control settings not applying, and manual fan speeds not applying to both cards. Sometimes there was a work-a-round for an issue while other times I had to wait a month or more for a new driver release and hope it fixed the issue.
  3. BF3 stuttered, had flashing textures, and had a large amount of screen tearing. Over the months I updated drivers, added tweaks to the user.cfg, and edited AMD control center profiles. Constant tweaking upon every driver release to try and get a trouble free playable experience.
  4. Almost every other game that I played had some sort of issue. Rage had terrible tearing and texture pop in issues. Medal of Honor required ini file tweaks to stop a memory leak in the catalyst drivers that still isnt fixed today. Crysis 2 required multiple custom lines in the config file to stop the stuttering and bring performance to an acceptable level in DX11 mode. BF:BC2 had horrible black flashing screen issue that required console commands to resolve.
  5. Games and benchmarks, while putting up a good FPS, would not translate into a good viewing or gaming experience. There were always stutters and graphical anomalies. Drivers improved these anomalies over time but there were usually work-a-rounds involved.

Instead of enjoying my games, I've spent the last 4 months tirelessly tweaking and tinkering. This has really soured the experience with AMD for me and, from what I've read, others as well.

Last Thursday I ordered a pair of GTX 680's and performed my normal fresh install on Friday night. There were WHQL drivers for all operating systems available on day 1. Over the weekend, I have had nothing but a fast, smooth, and trouble free experience in each game that I've played. No config file tweaking, no stutters, no graphical glitches... just great performance, and more importantly, an enjoyable gaming experience!

TLDR: The HD 7970 launch was filled with numerous issues and the last 4 months of driver releases have only partially remedied the situation. AMD could stand to learn a lot from Nvidia's GTX 680 launch as SLI performance out of the box is excellent and trouble free.
 
Yea the new GCN tech is a headache for amd still.

good you have enjoyment back.:D
 
Agreed. AMD is horrible if you want a nice & easy enjoyable gaming experience. Their programming & software is crap. The only advantage they had was engineering great hardware... until Kepler reared it's ugly head showed us some competitive efficiency.

Now that Nvidia is equal or better on the gpu metrics, there's little reason to suffer AMD's crap software and incompetent drivers because the GTX680 simultaneously offers equal or better performance, and equal or better efficiency. The bonus is Nvidia is the gang authoring your driver suite and supporting your product development. Headache free gaming at AMD efficiency levels.

My only gripe is that GK104 is not high-end, but I cannot blame Nvidia for making the best of the situation. Smart move on their part.
 
You summarized exactly how I feel about AMD/ATI. I have given ATI 2 chances in recent memory. An x800 and then a 5870. Each time was frustrating and I ended up replacing the card with an Nvidia product. At this point I've near sworn off AMD completely. When I spend several hundred dollars on a videocard I expect it to just work.
 
demingo said:
You summarized exactly how I feel about AMD/ATI. I have given ATI 2 chances in recent memory. An x800 and then a 5870. Each time was frustrating and I ended up replacing the card with an Nvidia product. At this point I've near sworn off AMD completely. When I spend several hundred dollars on a videocard I expect it to just work.
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Don't get me wrong, I'd buy AMD again if they can prove that they have solved these issues for future products. Early adopters always face the possibility of launch issues. It's the fact that these issues still exist 4 months later that causes the bulk of frustration.
 
Thanks for the post. I was just about to buy the MSI Lightning at Newegg but think I'll wait now for the GTX 680 4GB and then reevaluate the situation.
 
demingo said:
You summarized exactly how I feel about AMD/ATI. I have given ATI 2 chances in recent memory. An x800 and then a 5870. Each time was frustrating and I ended up replacing the card with an Nvidia product. At this point I've near sworn off AMD completely. When I spend several hundred dollars on a videocard I expect it to just work.
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Sorry for your bad luck, I've had many ATI/AMD cards and have yet to have any issues.
 
It is worth noting that many of the problems on the AMD side have been with multi-card setups. Still, my last 2 cards were AMD (4890 and 6870) and they did not work as well with games as Nvidia. More stuttering, more crashes, graphical anomolies, etc. The consensus opinion has historically been that Nvidia has better drivers and that remains true today. It is a shame since AMD has some truly excellent hardware that has been held up by subpar software for a long time.
 
My only gripe is that GK104 is not high-end, but I cannot blame Nvidia for making the best of the situation. Smart move on their part.
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GK104 is as much high end as the 7970.

It doesnt mather if there is coming something faster in the future, is the gk110 confirmed by nvidia? pls show me..

On Topic:

The BF3 doesnt run very well on 7970 CFX, its stuttering, screen tearing and low GPU usage, AMD really need to wake up here, what are they doing over there? when the GTX 680 SLi runs great, why not 7970 CFX?

The drivers they pop out (and there have been many of them lately) have not really improved anything (BF3), the only positive i can say is the MLAA working without performance loss on the 8.95.5

I have been a ATI/AMD user since X1900XT. had 2900PRO CFX, 4870X2 and now 7970 CFX, next time, i most likely end up buying nvidia..
 
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biggles said:
It is worth noting that many of the problems on the AMD side have been with multi-card setups. Still, my last 2 cards were AMD (4890 and 6870) and they did not work as well with games as Nvidia. More stuttering, more crashes, graphical anomolies, etc. The consensus opinion has historically been that Nvidia has better drivers and that remains true today. It is a shame since AMD has some truly excellent hardware that has been held up by subpar software for a long time.
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Agreed, this was mainly a rant about crossfire performance. I have a 6950 in a secondary PC, and while it has had some issues, its fared far better than the Xfire'd 7970's.

x3sphere said:
The GTX580 was mostly trouble free with SLI at launch, doesn't seem to be the case with the 680... I've come across quite a few complaints here and on other forums.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1681799
http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=1515575&mpage=1&print=true
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Looks like one of those guys had a bad SLI bridge. I'm sure that there will be people with issues in specific hardware configurations but, over the last few generations, Nvidia has had the better multi-gpu product from an "ease of use" standpoint, IMHO.
 
Simkin said:
GK104 is as much high end as the 7970.

It doesnt mather if there is coming something faster in the future, is the gk110 confirmed by nvidia? pls show me..

On Topic:

The BF3 doesnt run very well on 7970 CFX, its stuttering, screen tearing and low GPU usage, AMD really need to wake up here, what are they doing over there? when the GTX 680 SLi runs great, why not 7970 CFX?

The drivers they pop out (and there have been many of them lately) have not really improved anything (BF3), the only positive i can say is the MLAA working without performance loss on the 8.95.5

I have been a ATI/AMD user since X1900XT. had 2900PRO CFX, 4870X2 and now 7970 CFX, next time, i most likely end up buying nvidia..
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Are you running eyefinity, because BF3 runs great for me with a 7970 CFx setup with a single monitor.
 
Sorry to hear about your troubles.

I have had just the opposite experience.
I have CF 7970s and run EF in landscape on three 24" monitors.

I used the RC1 drivers at launch and now use the 12.2 Beta drivers and 12.3.1 CAPs
I have not had a single problem that I can relate to drivers or the CCC.

My only gripe is not being able to confidently OC my cards past the CCC limits in CF.
Afterburner crashes the system.......individually it works like a dream, but never has in CF.

Yeah, Rage was and still can be a PITA but I got over that.

In my opinion, the 7970 drivers have been much better and the CF profiles much more timely than when I had CF 6970+6990.
 
Are you running eyefinity, because BF3 runs great for me with a 7970 CFx setup with a single monitor.
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Single 120Hz 1080p. Its mostly the damn screentearing that is the most annoying part, i know of a guy wich had the exact same issue with two 7970, he changed to 680 SLi and problem gone..
 
Simkin said:
Single 120Hz 1080p. Its mostly the damn screentearing that is the most annoying part, i know of a guy wich had the exact same issue with two 7970, he changed to 680 SLi and problem gone..
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Yep. One of the many issues I had. Try putting this in you user.cfg file.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Battlefield 3\user.cfg

RenderDevice.ForceRenderAheadLimit 1
Worldrender.spotlightshadowmapenable 1
RenderDevice.TrippleBufferingEnable 1
GameTime.MaxVariableFps 200

If you want to see your FPS you can include this as well:
Render.DrawFps 1
 
biggles said:
It is worth noting that many of the problems on the AMD side have been with multi-card setups. Still, my last 2 cards were AMD (4890 and 6870) and they did not work as well with games as Nvidia. More stuttering, more crashes, graphical anomolies, etc. The consensus opinion has historically been that Nvidia has better drivers and that remains true today. It is a shame since AMD has some truly excellent hardware that has been held up by subpar software for a long time.
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I agree, though AMD's attitude towards enthusiasts is poor, IMO. I remember my HD5770 CF setup effectively breaking the Starcraft 2 beta (void zones in the game itself!), while nVidia quickly moved to support the beta, AMD? "It's not a final product."

Screw that, I was still stupid enough to get a HD5870 later on (then another for more CFX), before I hit issues with Mafia II's demo/beta (including the post-game screen dimming... until I reboot the computer). AMD? Didn't care. nVidia? Sent devs over to the studio to help work it out. Video playback screwing up the GPU clocks? AMD? Didn't care. It was two XFX HD5870 launch cards, for crying out loud. XFX before they ended up being a junk brand, too. Even then, Just Cause 2? I actually delayed playing that game for several months due to my GPU's always screwing with the game stability. Then to top it all off? The driver install process for the cards back then required a full reboot.

Eventually, I just went nVidia. Two GTX570 SLI, before moving into a single GTX580. The fact that eVGA is nVidia only doesn't hurt, either. I'm seriously considering the GTX680, mainly due to reference board DP support (DL-DVI cable to U2711 is thick, ungainly, and difficult to route in my FT03 case).

Yes, I normally just say, even to this day, "I didn't really have that many issues with AMD drivers; PEBKAC to you, sucker!" However, when I think about it, I did move away from AMD because of driver issues, none other. I still like AMD products, much more so than any nVidia product, however, I refuse to even consider ANYTHING AMD powered, especially after dealing with the joke of a mobile driver program AMD has for laptops. Why can nVidia just get it right, while AMD? They don't care, really. Pass the buck onto OEMs.
 
I have had almost zero problem with my CF & single X1950GT, CF & single 4850, 4870, my CF & single 6950, OR my 7970!
 
jeremyshaw said:
I agree, though AMD's attitude towards enthusiasts is poor, IMO. I remember my HD5770 CF setup effectively breaking the Starcraft 2 beta (void zones in the game itself!), while nVidia quickly moved to support the beta, AMD? "It's not a final product."

Screw that, I was still stupid enough to get a HD5870 later on (then another for more CFX), before I hit issues with Mafia II's demo/beta (including the post-game screen dimming... until I reboot the computer). AMD? Didn't care. nVidia? Sent devs over to the studio to help work it out. Video playback screwing up the GPU clocks? AMD? Didn't care. It was two XFX HD5870 launch cards, for crying out loud. XFX before they ended up being a junk brand, too. Even then, Just Cause 2? I actually delayed playing that game for several months due to my GPU's always screwing with the game stability. Then to top it all off? The driver install process for the cards back then required a full reboot.

Eventually, I just went nVidia. Two GTX570 SLI, before moving into a single GTX580. The fact that eVGA is nVidia only doesn't hurt, either. I'm seriously considering the GTX680, mainly due to reference board DP support (DL-DVI cable to U2711 is thick, ungainly, and difficult to route in my FT03 case).

Yes, I normally just say, even to this day, "I didn't really have that many issues with AMD drivers; PEBKAC to you, sucker!" However, when I think about it, I did move away from AMD because of driver issues, none other. I still like AMD products, much more so than any nVidia product, however, I refuse to even consider ANYTHING AMD powered, especially after dealing with the joke of a mobile driver program AMD has for laptops. Why can nVidia just get it right, while AMD? They don't care, really. Pass the buck onto OEMs.
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In my opinion it is a matter of allocating scarce resources. Nvidia dedicates more to the software side but their hardware tends to be behind (higher power consumption, lower performance, more heat). AMD dedicates more to the hardware but then we have more driver issues (games crashing, graphics anomalies, crossfire not increasing performance, etc).

It is all about trade-offs.
 
Doing just fine over here with my CF 7970's. Cuts through games like butter at both 1600p 60Hz and 1080p 120Hz. Drivers will only get better. Overclocks fantastic. No complaints.
 
I haven't had any of the issues this user is reporting, sorry to hear that your setup has created so many headaches, I would trade them in for a set of 680's since it seems you have had a bad experience with the cards.

I don't think i've noticed any real game stoppers in any game with my 7970s. Everyone has a different experience it seems.
 
Different experience here. 4X 7970 Quad-Fire + 3X 30'' Eyefinity at 7680X1600 on my main computer, and now 2X Asus DirectCU II 7970 Crossfire in my other computer.

No problems. Everything is working fine for me. Over 150 games in my Steam account.
 
oldmanbal said:
I haven't had any of the issues this user is reporting, sorry to hear that your setup has created so many headaches, I would trade them in for a set of 680's since it seems you have had a bad experience with the cards.

I don't think i've noticed any real game stoppers in any game with my 7970s. Everyone has a different experience it seems.
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While some have had positive experiences, the general consensus from users online and in person is that these cards can have issues running in Cossfire. Hell, even [H] posted an article back in January stating more of the same: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/01/17/amd_crossfirex_drivers_opportunity_lost/
 
AuxNuke said:
While some have had positive experiences, the general consensus from users online and in person is that these cards can have issues running in Cossfire. Hell, even [H] posted an article back in January stating more of the same: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/01/17/amd_crossfirex_drivers_opportunity_lost/
Click to expand...

I think that is a very badly generalized statement.
In fact, I think it's the other way around.
The article you quoted was over two months ago, and yes, at the end of last year AMD was really and unexcusably late with their drivers and Crossfire profiles.

That said, there is NOTHING wrong with the function of the drivers AMD puts out, in fact I don't think Crossfire has ever been more efficient than it currently is.
It has taken some time for AMD to come around, but if you will also notice, the CCC now allows one to make custom CF profiles if AMD is late to the party.

I have had ZERO problems with my Crossfire setup since the Release Candidate drivers came out in mid-January. In fact I think I've only updated the drivers once, excepting CAPs.:D
 
I think that is a very badly generalized statement.
In fact, I think it's the other way around.
The article you quoted was over two months ago, and yes, at the end of last year AMD was really and unexcusably late with their drivers and Crossfire profiles.

That said, there is NOTHING wrong with the function of the drivers AMD puts out, in fact I don't think Crossfire has ever been more efficient than it currently is.
It has taken some time for AMD to come around, but if you will also notice, the CCC now allows one to make custom CF profiles if AMD is late to the party.

I have had ZERO problems with my Crossfire setup since the Release Candidate drivers came out in mid-January. In fact I think I've only updated the drivers once, excepting CAPs.
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there is NO DOUBT that there are issues in BF3 with 7970 Crossfire. and according to the OP and a another guy who have had both 7970CFX and 680 SLi, the problem is not there with the 680 SLi. And that is the screentearing..
 
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Simkin said:
there is NO DOUBT that there are issues in BF3 with 7970 Crossfire. and according to the OP and a another guy who have had both 7970CFX and 680 SLi, the problem is not there with the 680 SLi. And that is the screentearing..
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I don't have any tearing. Gee two guys have a problem(so you say) so CrossFire is absolutely, totally and from this day forward...........fucked as a technology.:eek:

I own both nvidia and AMD video cards. I do not consider myself any sort of raving fan of either company. I tell it as I see it on my own computer.;)

Maybe nvidia's new V-Sync technology is helping with the tearing problem?
 
I'm ready to get rid of my 3 7970s in tri- fire, the only 4 things that work right are BF 3, heaven, Metro and 3dmark 2011. Games I want to play that run like complete shit with negative scaling Crysis 2 ( no matter what settings I use I get 40 to 50 fps ) batman ( this is astounding how shitty this can run ) Witcher 2 ( ran better on my 6970s ) there are other games but I'm almost ready to just sit out PC gaming in general for awhile.
 
magoo said:
I don't have any tearing. Gee two guys have a problem(so you say) so CrossFire is absolutely, totally and from this day forward...........fucked as a technology.:eek:

I own both nvidia and AMD video cards. I do not consider myself any sort of raving fan of either company. I tell it as I see it on my own computer.;)

Maybe nvidia's new V-Sync technology is helping with the tearing problem?
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Same here, I have no tearing my with 7970 CFx setup. BF3 actually runs great with my setup.
 
Simkin said:
there is NO DOUBT that there are issues in BF3 with 7970 Crossfire. and according to the OP and a another guy who have had both 7970CFX and 680 SLi, the problem is not there with the 680 SLi. And that is the screentearing..
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I have ZERO problems with 7970 crossfire and BF3. It runs great.
 
Was there a breakthrough in crossfire technology from the 6970 to the 7970 series cards? Crossfire has always been an iffy technology -- even when it works, you get micro-stuttering. Most of the games I play have issues with crossfire - negative scaling, flashing objects that shouldn't be flashing, 100% utilization spikes that don't go away without Alt-tabbing to the desktop, load balanced GPU utilization without an increase in frame rate, the endless downloads of Catalyst Application Profiles for fixes -- it's a technology you use when you have no other choice. For me, I needed it for eyefinity but the irony was that most of the crossfire problems seemed to have a eyefinity component.

I'm looking forward to upgrading to a single card solution using the MSI Lightning 7970 or the GTX 680 4GB version when it comes out and then just upgrading annually or as needed when newer chips come out. Right now, I'm leaning toward the Nvidia solution but only because of AMD's history of driver issues. I do think AMD generally has the better hardware.
 
oldmanbal said:
I haven't had any of the issues this user is reporting, sorry to hear that your setup has created so many headaches, I would trade them in for a set of 680's since it seems you have had a bad experience with the cards.

I don't think i've noticed any real game stoppers in any game with my 7970s. Everyone has a different experience it seems.
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This and other comments in the thread tell me that we actually need polls comparing driver performance and game stability for Nvidia vs AMD. It is like buying a car using consumer reports. Better to rely on them for reliability versus anecdotal evidence. My own anecdotal evidence clearly shows AMD drivers pale in comparison to Nvidia, but it would be compelling to see statistics proving it one way or the other.
 
magoo said:
I don't have any tearing. Gee two guys have a problem(so you say) so CrossFire is absolutely, totally and from this day forward...........fucked as a technology.:eek:

I own both nvidia and AMD video cards. I do not consider myself any sort of raving fan of either company. I tell it as I see it on my own computer.;)

Maybe nvidia's new V-Sync technology is helping with the tearing problem?
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im talking mainly about BF3 here, and i have this problems myself with 7970cfx.

And no, its not just me and 2 other guys.. its alot more, here on hardforum and other forums. But if it work for you, nothing is better than that, right?

Screentearing on BF3 is a headache for many 7970cfx owners.
 
No problem here with BF3, 4X 7970 Quad-Fire + 3X 2560X1600 Eyefinity. It's glorious! :)

The Nvidia viral marketing machine is hard at work to spread the ''fact'' that Nvidia drivers are better then AMD. :rolleyes:
 
Simkin said:
im talking mainly about BF3 here, and i have this problems myself with 7970cfx.

And no, its not just me and 2 other guys.. its alot more, here on hardforum and other forums. But if it work for you, nothing is better than that, right?

Screentearing on BF3 is a headache for many 7970cfx owners.
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So, if you are unhappy, get something else.
All I'm saying is my stuff works fine.

There is a ton of complaining here I've noticed. The answer is simple, if you don't like the product, buy something else.

I do agree though with some of the stuff. When I had my 6900 cards, I used triple Crossfire and it did not perform as it should. The scaling was poor and many times only one card would be utilized in a game due to shitty CF profiles.
That said, I do not think anything over two cards in CF works worth a shit, and I've tried this theory out in three generations of cards, so complaining about 4 card Crossfire not working makes alot of sense to me from past experience.

In this current generation of cards, I'm seeing excellent utilization and nearly 100% scaling in the games I play. I have no screen tearing, no artifacting, and I have not had any driver related crashes.

I'm using the 12.2 Beta drivers and the latest CAPs. I only use EyeFinity in landscape, 5760 x 1200. My cards are mildly OC'd to 1125/1400 and I have had nothing but great performance.
 
Simkin said:
Ok, so if anyone in here experience any kind of trouble, they just shut up and buy something else?

Many people experience problems with this, but HEY, YOU dont have any problems, so then everybode else can just shut their mouth, right?
Click to expand...

How bout looking at it another way: "Have a problem, fix it instead of only whining about it."

You can either a) try to solve your issue with the hardware you have or b) buy new hardware that you think will run better. These constant "wah wah I couldn't get whatever to work" posts without any indication of trying to fix anything or asking what steps could possibly be used to fix an issue are just killing the signal to noise ratio on [H].
 
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Zero issues here.
Its a little odd that you state that SLIGTX680s are trouble free when in reality they seem just as issue prone to some users as the 7970s are in Crossfire.
I have had no issues with any drivers for my 7970 at all.

These constant "wah wah I couldn't get whatever to work" posts without any indication of trying to fix anything or asking what steps could possibly be used to fix an issue are just killing the signal to noise ratio on [H].
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Truth. I often hear from people in real life and in forums the tired old saying of "I know how to install it, I did everything right". Most times I find that the user did something wrong and was in a rush to use the new hardware.
 
FaRKle0079 said:
How bout looking at it another way: "Have a problem, fix it instead of only whining about it."
[H].
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Ahhh, i totally forgot, i just fix it, right, stupid me...

I'm actually gonna fix it right away.. thank you for your help!

Zero issues here.
Its a little odd that you state that SLIGTX680s are trouble free when in reality they seem just as issue prone to some users as the 7970s are in Crossfire.
I have had no issues with any drivers for my 7970 at all.
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No issues here either other than screentearing in BF3, im not talking about ANY OTHER game..
 
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I like hearing from the complainers. Helps to determine whether a video card is worth spending several hundred dollars on it. Would rather find out about the problems before buying a card instead of afterwards. Main reason I browse forums like these is to fully research these purchases.

It is easy to distinguish the whiners versus those with material issues based on how much detail they provide. The OP of this thread produced solid evidence of the problems he experienced with 7970s in crossfire. That, combined with the hardocp review, has convinced me to avoid a crossfire solution for the time being.

These folks saved me a lot of money by avoiding a bad purchase.
 
If reading about people on forums having issues with high end hardware effects you (beyond reviews like kyles and others) and you're purchases then I have to wonder how you have ever pulled the trigger on 400-500 dollar video cards. I havent seen one generation of video hardware in which AMD or nVidia were flawless and caused no user any pains...
 
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