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7770 Crossfire problems- crossfire really that bad?

D

Diseaseboy

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 27, 2001
Messages
1,206
For something fun to do, and cheap, I thought I would play with 2 Radeon 7770's in crossfire. They had them for $117 each at Microcenter. Based on some of the online reviews I figured they would be faster then my current 460's in SLI and cheaper/faster then getting one 7850. Not sure if it was my system but I spend 6+ hours yesterday trying to get them to run as smooth and trouble free as my 460 SLI setup. I ended up just giving up and went back to the 460s. I could not get COD:BO to run with crossfire- had to disable one card to play it. I also had obvious microstutter in BF3 and Bad Company 2 and the framerates were no where near the 460 SLI. Counterstrike Source would crash if I tried to change any video settings with crossfire enabled. All those problems were solved when I just used one 7700. I did driver sweeps, changed memory timings and deleted some of the game configs files to make sure everything was set at the deafult settings before I changed things like resolution, AA, etc. I used the latest 12.4 drivers and the latest crossfire profile. I just dont see how it is my system- the 7700s use less power then the 460s and when I put the 460s back in everything ran as smooth as it has been. AMD just that bad with their crossfire implementation or am I just doing something wrong?
 
I think most of the problems that make people talk crap about them are CF related.
 
Cards are boxed up and I guess I will return them. I didn't realize CF is so poor. Anyone have any other suggestions before I return the cards?
 
The 7770 is slower than both the 6870 and 560Ti... I wouldn't expect 7770 crossfire to be faster than your GTX 460 SLI setup.
 
Problem #1 you are doing 7700 xfire. Very odd combination for Xfire IMO. Better off with a single stronger card. Crossfire in general can just be a nightmare. I am never going back to it after my brief experiment with it last summer. Like others have said. You have at best did a side grade. If not a downgrade in some areas.
 
Never had any issues with Crossfire, and I've run dual 4890s and now dual 6970s (unlocked 6950s).
 
Can you guys get crossfire to work with Call of Duty: Black Ops? The crossfire reviews I have read put the 7770's the same or slightly ahead of the 460 768's. For $234.00 I figured I would get a little boost, use less power and have a little more video ram then the 460s- plus it would be fun to play with. I was suprised that the crossfire did not seem as smooth during gameplay as the 460s in some games like BF3 and I could not get crossfire to work with COD:Black Ops (I had to disable one card to play). SLI worked fine with Black Ops. I may just take them back and wait for more price drops after the 670 and lower cards are introduced.
 
I am considering getting a couple 7770's for Crossfire so I would be interested in how they are doing now. Game compatibility better now?
 
Crossfire and SLI makes no sense with middle of the road (really, bordering on low end) cards like the 7770. It's a solution for those who run 2560x1400+, often with multiple monitors, who aren't willing to deal with framerate drops and want to run high settings. Period. No one else, and I truly do mean no one else, has any reason to consider Crossfire or SLI now. We've finally reached a point where a single high end GPU can easily run a 1920x1200 display or any lower resolution at 60+ FPS with max settings in 99% of games.

Crossfire and SLI introduce several issues best avoided if you can. Thre's more heat, more noise, and most importantly more complexity. You've doubled your potential points of failure (or in some cases, tripled or quadroupled) and greatly increased the complexity of the rendering pipeline when compared with a single GPU. You also potentially introduced microstutter, or poorly synchronized GPU output, which can make 130FPS feel like 20 if it gets bad enough. There will be problems, regardless of if you chose AMD or Nvidia -- I have had both and speak from experience, though I've been lucky and they've been fairly minor.

Why then would you subject yourself to this? If you're running a super high resolution display setup you don't really have a choice. Even the top of the line single GPU solutions (at this time, the Radeon 7970 and Geforce GTX 680) can struggle in many titles at these resolutions, so you may have to double up or even add a third GPU. Anyone else really should avoid these issues and just buy a single faster card.
 
silent-circuit said:
Crossfire and SLI makes no sense with middle of the road (really, bordering on low end) cards like the 7770. It's a solution for those who run 2560x1400+, often with multiple monitors, who aren't willing to deal with framerate drops and want to run high settings. Period. No one else, and I truly do mean no one else, has any reason to consider Crossfire or SLI now. We've finally reached a point where a single high end GPU can easily run a 1920x1200 display or any lower resolution at 60+ FPS with max settings in 99% of games.

Crossfire and SLI introduce several issues best avoided if you can. Thre's more heat, more noise, and most importantly more complexity. You've doubled your potential points of failure (or in some cases, tripled or quadroupled) and greatly increased the complexity of the rendering pipeline when compared with a single GPU. You also potentially introduced microstutter, or poorly synchronized GPU output, which can make 130FPS feel like 20 if it gets bad enough. There will be problems, regardless of if you chose AMD or Nvidia -- I have had both and speak from experience, though I've been lucky and they've been fairly minor.

Why then would you subject yourself to this? If you're running a super high resolution display setup you don't really have a choice. Even the top of the line single GPU solutions (at this time, the Radeon 7970 and Geforce GTX 680) can struggle in many titles at these resolutions, so you may have to double up or even add a third GPU. Anyone else really should avoid these issues and just buy a single faster card.
Click to expand...

crossfire/sli is a hit or miss.
always go for one card if possible.
less hassle down the road.
 
My 6850 CFX setup never had problems running COD:BO at 5040x1050 eyefinity. Don't forget to install the latest CAP
 
I never had any problems with crossfire either, and I've been running my dual 4890s for quite a while now. The only pain in the ass thing about it is it wont work in windowed mode. Other than that it's been alright. AMD drivers are still really fuckin bad though.
 
CFing such low end card is simply not worth it and likely don't get as much CF beta testing as higher up cards.
 
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