AMD CrossFireX Drivers - Opportunity Lost @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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AMD CrossFireX Drivers - Opportunity Lost - AMD likes to tell us that it is "Gaming Evolved." The fact of the matter is that when it comes to driver support for its high end GPU configurations in CrossFireX, AMD has been doing anything but evolving. In fact, we think AMD has been regressing in the last year. AMD still has an opportunity to shine in 2012. Will it step up?
 
hybrid crossfire on my laptop sucks ass too.
it actually worsens frame rate most of the time.
 
Bought two 5870s at launch, sold one two months later due to driver suck.

Bought one 6970 at launch, bought second one six months later and was pleased.

Bought two 7970s at launch, sold one yesterday due to driver suck and lack of three displayports on card because I have three 120hz screens that need DP to work right.
 
it's sad to see amd so late with custom crossfire profiles. I remember setting custom sli profiles back when i had 2 8800gt cards. even with the profiles, not all games benefit from it, or at least until amd releases new drivers.

I'm running the 12.1 preview drivers and i still disable crossfire in skyrim.
 
Paid 700$ for this behemoth after launch. As the article says, on the hardware side, it was simply a work of art. On the driver side, it was an utter failure. I had to change drivers for my main 3 games at the time just to get actual scaling. After a year, they honestly dropped all support for it because i either got negative scaling or 10% increases on any new title. It's absolute horse shit. I sold it almost 2 years later for 600$ and took a 6 month hiatus from gaming. I bought 2 6950s to replace it in September and honestly crossfire has come so far I cannot even tell you. The only hitch left in my book is launching drivers on release of games.

Sometimes i think ATI had soured relationships with publishers and game studios that cripple their ability to keep up with releases. I remember the Doom 3 Alpha that got leaked from ATI, and iD releasing a statement that they would deal differently with ati on all future games.

BTW i still love my 5970 FK you for crippling it in the first place ATI. But thanks for the retartedly cheap crossfire scaling on the 6950s. . .can't wait to see what the 7 series looks like.
 
This is what happens when you let business people run your company instead of the people familure with your products. I am aware that intel does the same thing but they have also yet to deliver a graphics chipset good enough to do anything other than display the Windows desktop. Is AMD headed in that direction? I mean ruining their GPU line-up and then having nothing to compete with?
 
what a shame. AMD needs to balance their gpu division. you're only as good as your weakest link and right now AMD's software division is the weak link. great hardware, shitty software support. good read Brent & Kyle.
 
i also forgot to mention what a nightmare it is to uninstall old drivers then install new ones. my caps are stuck and won't uninstall, removing old drivers often gives me a bluescreen error.

when i removed the 11.12 drivers to install the 12.1 preview drivers, something fucked up to the point where my screen was all blue, purple and black. And to install the drivers again, i had to look up amd driver install screenshots on my laptop so i knew where to click the mouse (i couldn't see or read any text while the driver was corrupted). fun times indeed.. lol.
 
AMD/ATI and poor driver support? No way!

</sarcasm>

Personally I can't wait to turf my 5870's for whatever Nvidia is working on.
 
As a self professed ATi fanboi since the 4800's I have to say I am not really happy with the way things are working. Just nagging issues in their driver packages and long lead times for patches just wear on you... Ive been chasing a bug with BF3 with lockon icons for months on trifire/eyefinity without resolution, and it is grating. I wish all the luck to AMD and would love to see their driver teams step up and satisfy us as well as their hardware is!

Be awesome if someone comes to the AMD event this weekend and falls on their sword and tells us what they are doing to maybe re-embrace their customer base with the support we rightfully demand this year.
 
My experence with two 4850s in crossfire is why I bought one 6950 when it came out. Great hardware, but the software sucks, to say the least.
 
Ugh...... AMD, I almost would of prefered to hear that the card was a lukewarm performer but the drivers where blast proof.
 
I agree with every word in the write up. AMD is dropping the ball big time. Can't wait for Kepler. I'm sure I'll get some decent cash for my two 7970s.
 
Excellent article HARDOCP! Let us hope and pray that AMD hears the consumers, US, and start improving on drivers/crossfirex side for 2012!
 
I guess I have just not been noticing it. Then again, I seldom buy games at launch. Still no excuse.

.
 
Majinhoju said:
it's sad to see amd so late with custom crossfire profiles. I remember setting custom sli profiles back when i had 2 8800gt cards. even with the profiles, not all games benefit from it, or at least until amd releases new drivers.

I'm running the 12.1 preview drivers and i still disable crossfire in skyrim.
Click to expand...

nvidia had custom profiles way before that.. as far as skyrim goes thats a whole different story and i don't think AMD nor Nvidia can fix multi-gpu support in that game. they both suffer from the same problems.
 
Not sure why they wouldn't be pushing this, I ditched nVidia for ATI back in the Dark Age of Camelot days when the Nvidia drivers caused random system reboots when playing, drove me nuts thinking my CPU was overheating, bad ram etc until it was finally disclosed that it was the new driver.

Promptly bought a new 8500 after some data loss.

Switched back to the 8800 GTS, which was absolutely terrible for Price vs how long it stayed able to play games half decently, dont recall any driver issues.

Now 5850 and it's been amazing pretty much most of the time since i had it, bit old now but only issues are some shadow interlacing problems in various games from time to time but i've had that from both sides.
 
as a 4870x2 owner i can say that the ONLY problems i've EVER had were driver related

i can echo the sentiments of the [H]omie who said the cards are great but the drivers are the weak link. it's absolutely true.

when everything is singing, it's bliss.
when a stupid driver issue keeps you from enjoying a game, it's infuriating.
 
That is disappointing. I appreciate commentaries such as this; I was wondering where the crossfire review was.

I'll admit that I'm not in the market for a 7970 or xfire 7970 and I don't generally purchase games or video cards within a few weeks of release. However, it is unacceptable for those who are willing to pay for the high end experience.

Poor game support for ultra-wide resolutions requiring extra effort and a yearning for no bezels is pushing me towards a single 2560x1440 or 2560x1600 monitor. Eyefinity on a single card hasn't given me any show-stopping issues, and I've been tempted to add another for crossfire, but then I hear of driver problems and just decide to turn the details down to medium instead of buying another video card.
 
I can see all the Nvidia fanboys posting here. Funny, I've never had any ATI driver problems with all the ATI cards I have owned. Although I've never had crossfire and never will, its not needed.

Your also a fool if you think Nvidia drivers are better. Which there seems to be plenty of here.
 
And with a biased hate filled article like this, they probably won't give you one either. I wouldn't blame them.
 
tc17 said:
I can see all the Nvidia fanboys posting here. Funny, I've never had any ATI driver problems with all the ATI cards I have owned. Although I've never had crossfire and never will, its not needed.

Your also a fool if you think Nvidia drivers are better. Which there seems to be plenty of here.
Click to expand...

Single gpu, is not the problem, and has not been for a while. It's dual gpu where AMD has dropped the ball. It takes them a while to get Xfire drivers out that support newer games.
 
Precisely why I stopped buying day one with AMD products. I went through enough crap with my 5870 xfire setup and have no desire to do it again.

Also a prime example of the difference good management makes. If AMD wants to retain its market share, let alone grow it, it needs to step up and take better care of its customers. The most obvious area of lacking in that respect is its driver support.
 
tc17 said:
And with a biased hate filled article like this, they probably won't give you one either. I wouldn't blame them.
Click to expand...

Apparently, you only read the part of the article you wanted and then scream bias.

Many of the owners of Crossfire rigs will tell you this. Go cry somewhere else until you OWN a pair of new 7970's and have to wait for crappy drivers. AMD has great hardware but their software for Xfire sucks balls. This is fact.

Shoo fly.
 
tc17 said:
I can see all the Nvidia fanboys posting here. Funny, I've never had any ATI driver problems with all the ATI cards I have owned. Although I've never had crossfire and never will, its not needed.

Your also a fool if you think Nvidia drivers are better. Which there seems to be plenty of here.
Click to expand...

Nvidia's multi-gpu support IS better. There is absolutely no arguing that. Single-gpu wise they're pretty much the same. They both have their issues and honestly I'd say they both suck ass.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tc17
I can see all the Nvidia fanboys posting here. Funny, I've never had any ATI driver problems with all the ATI cards I have owned. Although I've never had crossfire and never will, its not needed.

Your also a fool if you think Nvidia drivers are better. Which there seems to be plenty of here.
Johnny_Utah said:
Apparently, you only read the part of the article you wanted and then scream bias.

Many of the owners of Crossfire rigs will tell you this. Go cry somewhere else until you OWN a pair of new 7970's and have to wait for crappy drivers. AMD has great hardware but their software for Xfire sucks balls. This is fact.

Shoo fly.
Click to expand...

Are you saying HardOCP has a bias against AMD, TC? LOLZ

Maybe you missed the AMD/HardOCP event they are throwing this weekend.

The Hard guys ALWAYS are upfront about their feelings... hence the reason I have been [h]ard for 12+ years. If you have a good product you will get rep'd here, and this review is a PERFECT example of that... IS AMD PR gonna be mad? Hell yeah... but not a damn thing they can do about it, because they ALWAYS get a fair review, along with nVidia and whoever gets products reviewed here,
 
And all the people sending pm's saying I'm stupid (in a will you upgrade to 7970 from 6970's thread) for pointing out that xfire performance in the last 5 months has sucked ass can kindly go eat some crow right about now.

tc17 said:
I can see all the Nvidia fanboys posting here. Funny, I've never had any ATI driver problems with all the ATI cards I have owned. Although I've never had crossfire and never will, its not needed.

Your also a fool if you think Nvidia drivers are better. Which there seems to be plenty of here.
Click to expand...

The problem is not with single card drivers, it hasn't been for a few years. The problem lies with Xfire, or lack thereof. Try reading before you type.
 
Awesome!!

The industry needs more of this. If it looks like it, smells like it, then it just might be it!!

They need to be called out like this.

Kudos to you guys for having the testicular fortitude to "Do the Needful"

Hardocp +Rep, is that even possible!! :D
 
tc17 said:
Your also a fool if you think Nvidia drivers are better. Which there seems to be plenty of here.
Click to expand...

LOL! That's rich. The which drivers are better debate is old, hey if it works for you great. but the last three nVidia setups I've had, all 3x SLI setups did have official 3x SLI support at launch and most existing games at the launch of the card did have at least some 3x SLI scaling.

Indeed I've run all three of those SLI configurations on the same OS installation that's currently on my sig rig, OS install date 12/19/2009. Sure there have been some issue, but most those have been with 3D support, something AMD has, not so amazingly, been slow to support on the driver side.
 
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CFX 5870's, loved them... when it worked. Hated the dumb work arounds you needed to do until a decent driver update came out that "fixed" or enhanced performance to something tolerable. If the renamed exe's didn't work you needed to wait. Paying $800 at launch, I had every right to rage and flip a shit when it didn't work back then. Single card setup was fine, never experienced anything worth posting about.

...not going to say I had amazing days either with SLI (8800GT's, GTX260's, GTX470's), niether front is perfect, but I remember the 5870's most vividly *shudders*

Now, only single card setups, need to get my damn game on without getting pissed off. :)
 
I think i am in the same boat as most people here. I have bought several iterations of ATI cards, the last 4 being 2 4850's and I have 2X 6950's in my system now. After seeing this, I am certainly not going flop 1200+ dollars for this kind of thing again. I am really tired of having issues in games that seem to have more to do with ATI than anything else.

My next set of cards will most likely be Nvidia. It just doesnt seem like AMD wants to be in the graphics business. I dont think they want to be in the processor business either. what is left for them? flash? IDK
 
Its a real delay in my purchase for this Video card because there are no drivers for operating systems other than windows 7 64
 
I wonder what the AMD people (if there will be any) at the HardOCP FX Experience will say when asked why their drivers are seemingly so poor.
 
tc17 said:
I can see all the Nvidia fanboys posting here. Funny, I've never had any ATI driver problems with all the ATI cards I have owned. Although I've never had crossfire and never will, its not needed.

Your also a fool if you think Nvidia drivers are better. Which there seems to be plenty of here.
Click to expand...
Are you a freaking idiot? Is that why you have reading comprehension problem? Seriously, I have to wonder if you're still living with your parents because I would imagine you have trouble finding jobs.
 
tc17 said:
I can see all the Nvidia fanboys posting here. Funny, I've never had any ATI driver problems with all the ATI cards I have owned. Although I've never had crossfire and never will, its not needed.

Your also a fool if you think Nvidia drivers are better. Which there seems to be plenty of here.
Click to expand...

SLI driver support in general is much better than Crossfire driver support. If you never used crossfire, WTF are you posting in a thread complaining about poor Crossfire driver support?

For example, nVidia had an SLI patch driver released the night before Skyrim was released... ATI/AMD released a Crossfire capable driver 16 days after Skyrim was released. Plus the crossfire scalling for Skyrim has always lagged that of SLI.

BTW I OWN two ATI 6950 2GiB's, An nvidia fanboi I am not.

However, I do agree, that other than crossffire support and pre release game optimizations, ATI drivers have improved greatly in terms of stability and ease of upgrading and is on par with nVidia drivers in those two criteria.
 
I'm honestly confused about your crossfire writeup. It is true that
specific game support has not been as good as NV, but CFX *is* working
on the 7970. You have to use the driver that comes on the installation cd and not the one on
their website. The website driver does NOT work.

Many other websites have done CFX reviews already, and CFX works for
many of us at OCN. So did you pull the trigger too quickly on this
writeup? Because it works. Just use your installation CD driver. That driver is not on their
website -- which doesn't make sense, but there you have it.

Please note MANY websites have done CFX reviews already. If you don't have the installation CD let me know and I can upload the CFX driver somewhere.
 
tc17 said:
I can see all the Nvidia fanboys posting here. Funny, I've never had any ATI driver problems with all the ATI cards I have owned. Although I've never had crossfire and never will, its not needed.

Your also a fool if you think Nvidia drivers are better. Which there seems to be plenty of here.
Click to expand...

Troll much?
 
tc17 said:
Funny, I've never had any ATI driver problems with all the ATI cards I have owned. Although I've never had crossfire and never will, its not needed.
Click to expand...

Way to both state and invalidate your own opinion within two sentences. At least you were concise!

What I remember most about my AMD card experience (5870 CFX, 5970, 6970 CFX) was when the only good BC2 driver for months was the May 2010 driver, but if I wanted StarCraft2 support I had to install the August 2010 driver...except that the August 2010 driver sucked balls for BC2.

Months and months of that idiocy drove me over to Nvidia. The only way I'll go back to AMD now is if I can get an all-DVI single card solution that can drive multiple displays...maybe.
 
xoleras said:
I'm honestly confused about your crossfire writeup. It is true that
specific game support has not been as good as NV, but CFX *is* working
on the 7970. You have to use the driver that comes on the installation cd and not the one on
their website. The website driver does NOT work.

Many other websites have done CFX reviews already, and CFX works for
many of us at OCN. So did you pull the trigger too quickly on this
writeup? Because it works. Just use your installation CD driver. That driver is not on their
website -- which doesn't make sense, but there you have it.

Please note MANY websites have done CFX reviews already. If you don't have the installation CD let me know and I can upload the CFX driver somewhere.
Click to expand...

I'm genuinely confused, hopefully Kyle will comment. I know AMD hasn't been the best with CFX with the cayman, and many game drivers were a bit late. But CFX is working at least for a bunch of us at other boards on the 7970.

Kyle, if you have contacts within AMD you should mention that separating drivers and CAP profiles is too confusing for consumers. I really think they should merge releases like NV does, its a lot easier for the end user to deal with. Its ridiculous, at guru3d you'll see people try to come up with the perfect combination of driver release and cap release and mix and match them. Also, they really do need to make sure they're on top of their game with game CFX support. No disagreement there, they really failed with cayman in that area.

Like you said, hopefully AMD won't blow this opportunity. The 7970 is a beast of a card.
 
Nvidia's drivers are not any better than AMD's, never really have been, I tend to like AMD's implementation more.

BUT, and this is a really big but, Nvidia makes a conscious effort to fix issues and give users what they want, thats the main reason I like them over AMD in most cases.

The only reason my rig has a 5850 is time of availability, I got it months before Fermi cards were available, and you know what, it has been flawless, but then, I am not delving into the minefield of multi-GPU gaming... I got sick of dealing with that in the Voodoo2 days.
 
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