AMD CrossFireX Drivers - Opportunity Lost @ [H]

heatlesssun said:
Multi-GPU isn't at the API level, it's implemented in the driver level.
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Understood, but if the multi-GPU processing is truly DX-whatever compatible, then it should be able to take whatever API level instructions there are and process them regardless. There should be no game-to-game differences.

Game Engine -> API - > driver -> GPU -> Monitor

The driver should not have to know or care what game or engine is running just that it is getting information to be processed from the API....

If all this were programmed well, the driver should be able to be completely game agnostic, even for multi-gpu setups.
 
Spire3660 said:
You are an idiot if you think 3DFX getting absorbed into Nvidia didnt spur modern SLI designs. Yes they use different METHODS, but the end result is the same. Its not as different as you would like it to be.
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You are wrong.

Nvidia's SLI may be based on the 3DFX concept, but its implementation in practise is completely different.

Nvidias methodology wouldn't even be possible on pre-PCIe buses. 3dFX's implementation method worked on PCI.

3DFX used altering lines of pixels, and each video card rendered every other line (Scan Line Interleave).

Nvidias solution is actually closer to what ATI implemented on the Rage Fury MAXX than it is to 3DFx's technology.

Most titles use Alternate Frame Renderering (AFR) on nvidia multi-gpu systems. Some use SFR, which tries to dynamically split each frame between the GPU's such that each GPU gets an even render time.

SFR is more like 3DFX's sli in concept (the frame is split) but it is done in a completely different way. AFR is completely different from 3DFX's implementation.

IMHO, Nvidia's SLI was really more of a spiritual successor to 3DFX's SLI, without much technology or code wise in common. They more or less have the same name for marketing purposes. People knew SLI from the 3DFX days, and now Nvidia used it for branding familiarity. Nvidia doesn't even use the same words in the abreviation. Nvidia calls it Scalable Link Interface, instead of Scan Line Interleave.


It is really too bad that AFR has become the status quo in multi-GPU rendering as it contributes significantly to input lag, as was discovered back in the day with the Rage Fury MAXX.

Illustration (from old 1999 review):

lag.gif


So whenever you use AFR, your mouse or keyboard input will not be visible on the screen until after a longer period of delay at the same framerate as with a single GPU SFR/Scanline Interleave solution.

So why does everyone use AFR? Well, it scales better, as there is less overhead of figuring out what each GPU is going to render, splitting it up, puzzling it back together again, etc. etc, so people can see a better percentage performance increase than they would with SFR. Input lag - on the other hand - is not as easy to detect, but IMHO, equally if not more so important to fast paced gameplay.

There is a reason that people who play fast paced FPS's tend to stick with single GPU systems.
 
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Arguing semantics about SLI. Here's my question: who cares?

And while I have ZERO PROBLEMS with crossfire 7970 in my games, it performs beautifully and faster than my other 580 sli system ---- the sore point in my eyes is the lack of a Batman: AC dx11 profile. Someone tweet CatalystCreator about this! Its been too long IMO!
 
xoleras said:
Arguing semantics about SLI. Here's my question: who cares?

And while I have ZERO PROBLEMS with crossfire 7970 in my games, it performs beautifully and faster than my other 580 sli system ---- the sore point in my eyes is the lack of a Batman: AC dx11 profile. Someone tweet CatalystCreator about this! Its been too long IMO!
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can you speak to microstuttering between your 580 SLI and 7970 crossfire systems?
 
That's_Corporate said:
can you speak to microstuttering between your 580 SLI and 7970 crossfire systems?
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I have 2 7970s, while i only use 1 because crossfire sucks so bad. Stuttering is really bad. With 2 cards, 120FPS feels like 50FPS, while with single card, 60FPS feels and plays smoother. People who say "my games works perfect with crossfire" obviously play 1 game, in denial that they just wasted $600, or blind. I simply do not believe anyone who tells me there crossfire setup works perfectly. I speak from experience.
 
That's_Corporate said:
can you speak to microstuttering between your 580 SLI and 7970 crossfire systems?
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Yeah, I don't notice microstutter with vsync. Furthermore: MSI afterburner OSD has a feature where you can limit the framerate in 2.2 beta 11, this removes microstutter if you combine it with ingame vsync. I tried this on both 580 sli and 7970 crossfire. Also, CCC version 12 will have a similar feature to what I mentioned about afterburner, to perma remove it.

In any case, I don't get any microstutter in any games, and i've seen stutter with 6970 crossfires. Its a non issue thus far. I've seen a few people mention seeing microstutter on their 6970 crossfires, and that afterburner trick fixed it.
 
gar818 said:
I have 2 7970s, while i only use 1 because crossfire sucks so bad. Stuttering is really bad. With 2 cards, 120FPS feels like 50FPS, while with single card, 60FPS feels and plays smoother. People who say "my games works perfect with crossfire" obviously play 1 game, in denial that they just wasted $600, or blind. I simply do not believe anyone who tells me there crossfire setup works perfectly. I speak from experience.
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Do you have a 120hz monitor?

You will get tearing with vsync off. Thats just how it is. However, if you still notice stutter do this:

1) enable vsync in game
2) Using MSI afterburner 2.2 beta 11, go in the OSD settings and enable it. Then go in the riva tuner appet (this is the OSD) and enable the framerate limiter to 60 for a normal monitor, or 120 for a 120 monitor

This will completely obliterate any trace of microstutter.
 
xoleras said:
Yeah, I don't notice microstutter with vsync. Furthermore: MSI afterburner OSD has a feature where you can limit the framerate in 2.2 beta 11, this removes microstutter if you combine it with ingame vsync. I tried this on both 580 sli and 7970 crossfire. Also, CCC version 12 will have a similar feature to what I mentioned about afterburner, to perma remove it.

In any case, I don't get any microstutter in any games, and i've seen stutter with 6970 crossfires. Its a non issue thus far. I've seen a few people mention seeing microstutter on their 6970 crossfires, and that afterburner trick fixed it.
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wicked to know - thanks for the concise answer!
 
lets hear if it works corporate i might be in the market for a new cfx setup
 
Batman: AC now supports crossfire with the new 7970 driver posted today. Problem is flickering :( But at least it scales now.

Some flickering, but I think the release version will have crossfire up and running. Scaling isn't perfect but performance is WAY up compared to single card

BTW don't use the CAP with the 7970, the 1/20 driver has more updated profiles.
 
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gar818 said:
I have 2 7970s, while i only use 1 because crossfire sucks so bad. Stuttering is really bad. With 2 cards, 120FPS feels like 50FPS, while with single card, 60FPS feels and plays smoother. People who say "my games works perfect with crossfire" obviously play 1 game, in denial that they just wasted $600, or blind. I simply do not believe anyone who tells me there crossfire setup works perfectly. I speak from experience.
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I play the following titles on my machine with two 6970's in crossfire with no microstuttering or any issues at all.

- Red Orchestra 2
- Civilization V
- Counter-Strike: Source
- Deus Ex: HR
- Metro 2033

Haven't had any other games installed since having two 6970s, but all these work perfectly for me.

I preordered both Civ V and RO2 (the only games I have bought on launch since HL2) and they did have issues on launch, but now they run perfectly and have for a long time.
 
DX:HR had fairly weak scaling with my 6950 CF. Metro was one of the best cases at 1080p, near perfect scaling and minimal stutter. In Eyefinity though it was a whole different story when it came to stuttering. While FPS was 30+ the game was still unplayable.

While I owned the 6950CF setup, AMD botched pretty much every major release by not offering CF support on day one. Skyrim still doesn't have properly working CF in Eyefinity, not even after they supposedly fixed it. DX:HR as I said scaled badly, I got maybe 30% more performance at 5760x1080, and microstuttering that basically nullified any FPS benefit. BF3 I think still has issues with 6990, though my 6950 CF worked great at 1080p, and horribly at 5760x1080. I could get around 35 FPS in single player, and my new OC 7970 gets me 40, without any stuttering. Rage was a total trainwreck that I doubt is working properly months after release. You can pretty much get the picture that 6950CF+Eyefinity was a failure, mostly due to stutters and lack of proper drivers. CF has some really good scaling in a few important games like Metro and BF3 at 1080p resolution, but other than that there's a whole load of problems with just about everything else.

Hopefully AMD and Nvidia will improve their day one CF/SLI support and make them work in triple monitor resolutions too, since that's where the performance is needed. And the performance should come without any micro-stutters. It seems though it's too tall an order for either company at the moment, hence it is better to stick to a single GPU unless you really need something faster than a OC'd 7970.
 
Poor driver support is AMD/ATI's hallmark. It's why I haven't purchased an AMD/ATI GPU in nearly a decade, and never will again. All I ever hear from my AMD GPU using friends is how bad their drivers are. All I can ever say in response is, "I warned you..."
 
Daroller said:
Poor driver support is AMD/ATI's hallmark. It's why I haven't purchased an AMD/ATI GPU in nearly a decade, and never will again. All I ever hear from my AMD GPU using friends is how bad their drivers are. All I can ever say in response is, "I warned you..."
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complete and utter bullshit.

I have used both sides, objectively speaking, there is no difference between them in the end. 9 times out of 10 people bitching about drivers being shitty for their video card know absolutely nothing about what they are bitching about.
 
Daroller said:
Poor driver support is AMD/ATI's hallmark. It's why I haven't purchased an AMD/ATI GPU in nearly a decade, and never will again. All I ever hear from my AMD GPU using friends is how bad their drivers are. All I can ever say in response is, "I warned you..."
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Umm, actually single GPU AMD drivers are on par with Nv drivers. At worst you have to wait a little bit for AMD to get some feature working properly, usually AA. Current UE games mostly for the AA issue. Your "friends" that are having issues, would likely suffer similar ones with Nv in single GPU scenarios. In dual GPU scenarios, that seems to be a different ballgame. AMD seems to be taking longer to fix issues than Nv.

All I can say to that, is that I am just not having any real issues with my 6870 crossfire/eyefinity, setup. But, I also almost never buy a game at release. Usually a couple months go by b4 I buy a game, and for certain games I don't buy til the GOTY comes out. Issues are generally fixed for me by then, either by a driver release, a game patch, or both.
 
Daroller said:
Poor driver support is AMD/ATI's hallmark. It's why I haven't purchased an AMD/ATI GPU in nearly a decade, and never will again. All I ever hear from my AMD GPU using friends is how bad their drivers are. All I can ever say in response is, "I warned you..."
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that's sure not my experience

when i tell my friend with his 580 that i'm having driver problems with my card (AMD) he just says "me too!" - same type of issues, just different games
 
Yeah, been using a lot of AMD cards the last years and not had any problems worth mentioning. Why? Because I'm not doing CFX or Eyefinity. It's really that simple. Same with Nvidia though, single card driver quality is similar to AMD's, Surround and SLI is less so. But as others have mentioned, Nvidia make less mistakes in that specific area than AMD, probably because of their closer relationship and interaction with developers, which is why they (still) got a better driver reputation.
 
That's_Corporate said:
that's sure not my experience

when i tell my friend with his 580 that i'm having driver problems with my card (AMD) he just says "me too!" - same type of issues, just different games
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Really? Sure all drivers have their issues but out of new games I'm certainly having very few driver problems. The only two driver problems that I'm aware of with the 290.53s, 3D Blu Ray doesn't work while SLI is on and Dirt 3 refuses to run in 2D mode, its stuck in S3D mode for some reason.
 
yeah nvidia just has too much in teh way of resources to throw at their drivers it would make sense that their drivers would be more mature than AMD's
 
heatlesssun said:
Really? Sure all drivers have their issues but out of new games I'm certainly having very few driver problems. The only two driver problems that I'm aware of with the 290.53s, 3D Blu Ray doesn't work while SLI is on and Dirt 3 refuses to run in 2D mode, its stuck in S3D mode for some reason.
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same reason why some drivers work for some people, and not others - the bazillion different permutations out there

just look at any driver thread; no one driver is the solution for everyone, be it nvidia or AMD
 
personally I would say that if they do not have the major flaws worked out in 4 weeks thne I would be concerned but a week after release? comon now.......
 
It does not matter if you talk about crossfire or just a single video card. AMD with all its might and massive size still cannot compete with nVidia in single card solutions. Over the years I keep dabbling in AMD cards because I service alot of computers and no one can doubt they offer good performance for the price. But nVidia keeps pulling me back with better drivers and less issues. I understand that people who bought 7950s are mad but IMO you need to start simple and deliver good single card drivers before you can go more complex. After all single card is where the very vast majority of the market is and forms their opinions.
 
rudy said:
It does not matter if you talk about crossfire or just a single video card. AMD with all its might and massive size still cannot compete with nVidia in single card solutions. Over the years I keep dabbling in AMD cards because I service alot of computers and no one can doubt they offer good performance for the price. But nVidia keeps pulling me back with better drivers and less issues. I understand that people who bought 7950s are mad but IMO you need to start simple and deliver good single card drivers before you can go more complex. After all single card is where the very vast majority of the market is and forms their opinions.
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Its great that nvidia loyalists come here to troll

I'm sure all the 7950 owners are mad :rolleyes:
 
It's good that ATI/AMD fanbois can't see the truth for what it is it keeps AMD from making the investment it needs to in driver support which punishes all of us. I am not a loyalist or fanboy. I do not give a flying shit from what country, company, or person I purchase a product from. It is just the simple facts that I have less driver problems with nVidia cards. Currently in my house I have 6 desktops with 2 running AMD/ATI. I also service computers for many friends and family members which gives me an look into a range of components at various prices from many companies.
 
Really? Seriously? I'm such an AMD fanboy that I have two GTX 580s, two of these:

http://chattypics.com/files/HPIM06561JPG_tmzmliggd2.jpg

Look, some of us aren't blindly loyal to 1 brand and really don't care. I buy whats the best and I still have sli 580s and recently got the 7970s in another rig. They are both great hardware. Now with that said, there are no issues in my experience with AMD drivers in single card configurations. Most of the driver stories you hear about (in single GPU configs) are from NV loyalists who are trolling. Where AMD is struggling is that they take longer to release multi-GPU support for games.

Some of us can think objectively based on their experiences and years of use of both sets of hardware.
 
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Well then you should be honest enough to admit AMD needs work on their drivers. I am not blind as you impose I do not hear stories, I experience them and I do not use isolated anecdotal incedents. I have personally owned more cards than I can even remember from both major players and past players including 3dfx. My primary focus has always been value in hardware first, and that works fine for me as a tech enthusiasts but when it comes to helping family members I cannot deny I run into more problems that need messing with when workign with AMD/ATI. In fact in the last year I demoted an AMD card from an HTPC because it was less flexible and reqired you to find settings no non tech person would find to get it set up right. And right now my daughters computer has an AMD card that sporatically forgets the correct resolution on a CRT. Moving nVidia cards into these computers permanently fixes the problem. So you can say whatever you want about it may be a problem with some other component but the fact is nVidia has built things in which make them more resiliant in most situations.

As I said when people stop trying to cry the fanbois arguement and jsut get out, as the current article does and tell AMD to shape their shit up maybe AMD will finally get it. Given their recent hardware success they could actually crush nVidia if not for drivers.
 
It sounds to me that you're just smearing amd because you are a loyalist. I'm not loyal to either brand, and i've no driver issues (for single cards). I'm not saying they're perfect - AMD definitely takes longer to release some multi gpu profiles than NV does. But in my mind for single card AMD drivers are just as good or bad as NV drivers depending on how you look at it. 2 of my friends still get TDRs CONSTANTLY if they use any driver past 275 on their 580s. There are still literally hundreds of people complaining at the nv community site complaining about TDR issues.

I'm not saying NV drivers are bad either. I'm saying most of the AMD issues are with late xfire / eyefinity profiles. I honestly have not heard of any single GPU issues, nor have I had any.
 
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xoleras said:
It sounds to me that you're just smearing amd because you are a loyalist. I'm not loyal to either brand, and i've no driver issues (for single cards). I'm not saying they're perfect - AMD definitely takes longer to release some multi gpu profiles than NV does. But in my mind for single card AMD drivers are just as good or bad as NV drivers depending on how you look at it. 2 of my friends still get TDRs CONSTANTLY if they use any driver past 275 on their 580s. Now you are just clueless if you think NV drivers are perfect. There are still literally hundreds of people complaining at the nv community site complaining about TDR issues.

This article if you had spent 15 minutes reading it is about crossfire profiles taking longer. There are no single card driver issues that i'm aware of or have ever had.
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True. Single card drivers are not the problem in most cases. They really need to step it up for the dual card users out there.
 
rudy said:
Well then you should be honest enough to admit AMD needs work on their drivers. I am not blind as you impose I do not hear stories, I experience them and I do not use isolated anecdotal incedents. I have personally owned more cards than I can even remember from both major players and past players including 3dfx. My primary focus has always been value in hardware first, and that works fine for me as a tech enthusiasts but when it comes to helping family members I cannot deny I run into more problems that need messing with when workign with AMD/ATI. In fact in the last year I demoted an AMD card from an HTPC because it was less flexible and reqired you to find settings no non tech person would find to get it set up right. And right now my daughters computer has an AMD card that sporatically forgets the correct resolution on a CRT. Moving nVidia cards into these computers permanently fixes the problem. So you can say whatever you want about it may be a problem with some other component but the fact is nVidia has built things in which make them more resiliant in most situations.

As I said when people stop trying to cry the fanbois arguement and jsut get out, as the current article does and tell AMD to shape their shit up maybe AMD will finally get it. Given their recent hardware success they could actually crush nVidia if not for drivers.
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Of course AMD need to work on their drivers, its just that its not had bad as the article made out in regarded to the 7xxx as users were already using better CF compatible drivers at the time of the article and only 3 days after that they have an even better one still.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038289772 said:
I play the following titles on my machine with two 6970's in crossfire with no microstuttering or any issues at all.

- Red Orchestra 2
- Civilization V
- Counter-Strike: Source
- Deus Ex: HR
- Metro 2033

Haven't had any other games installed since having two 6970s, but all these work perfectly for me.

I preordered both Civ V and RO2 (the only games I have bought on launch since HL2) and they did have issues on launch, but now they run perfectly and have for a long time.
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Looking at your setup I see this
PLP Triple head setup 1 Dell U3011 (30” 2560x1600), 2 Dell 2007FP (20" 1600x1200

I thought crossfire required the same resolution for all 3 screens,. are you running games in windowed mode or using 3rd party software?
 
rinaldo00 said:
Looking at your setup I see this
PLP Triple head setup 1 Dell U3011 (30” 2560x1600), 2 Dell 2007FP (20" 1600x1200

I thought crossfire required the same resolution for all 3 screens,. are you running games in windowed mode or using 3rd party software?
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Crossfire is simply the running of multiple AMD GPU's.

You are thinking of EyeFinity. I do not currently run EyeFinity as neither AMD's nor Nvidia's solutions currently allow for this with my setup (but the first to do so will definitely find me switching to two or more of their top end products.

I occasionally play games on multiple monitors, but only with SoftTH, and this only works with some titles, and lacks DX11 compatibility.

Usually I play on the center monitor with After burner charts on the left and Task Manager CPU load screen and HWMonitor on the right.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038294800 said:
Crossfire is simply the running of multiple AMD GPU's.

You are thinking of EyeFinity. I do not currently run EyeFinity as neither AMD's nor Nvidia's solutions currently allow for this with my setup (but the first to do so will definitely find me switching to two or more of their top end products.

I occasionally play games on multiple monitors, but only with SoftTH, and this only works with some titles, and lacks DX11 compatibility.

Usually I play on the center monitor with After burner charts on the left and Task Manager CPU load screen and HWMonitor on the right.
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WOW - I can't believe I made a noob mistake like confusing eyefinity with crossfire! That's what I get for reading forums while watching TV ;)

Do you feel that setup is worth the cost?
 
rinaldo00 said:
WOW - I can't believe I made a noob mistake like confusing eyefinity with crossfire! That's what I get for reading forums while watching TV ;)

Do you feel that setup is worth the cost?
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I like it, but the "worth it" factor is an individual decision.

I kind if built it up in stages though. I didn't go out and buy it all at once.
 
I bought a 3850 in the past.

I used it for 3 months.

I had 20+ blue screens in the first 17 hours of ownership which corrupted some data on one of my drives.

I have yet to recommend an ATI product to anyone ever since.

Man that's a lot of I's, even in my sig!

That's not even complaining about the massive driver modding/tweaking I had to do in order to get and keep the card stable throughout driver changes (yay for Rage3D forums, ATI Tray Tools and RivaTuner). Oh and the lack of native custom game profiles was one of the worst things I've ever experienced after coming from the NVIDIA side.
 
DAOWAce said:
I bought a 3850 in the past.

I used it for 3 months.

I had 20+ blue screens in the first 17 hours of ownership which corrupted some data on one of my drives.

I have yet to recommend an ATI product to anyone ever since.

Man that's a lot of I's, even in my sig!

That's not even complaining about the massive driver modding/tweaking I had to do in order to get and keep the card stable throughout driver changes (yay for Rage3D forums, ATI Tray Tools and RivaTuner). Oh and the lack of native custom game profiles was one of the worst things I've ever experienced after coming from the NVIDIA side.
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Very likely a faulty card that you should of sent back in the first place, lucky you didn't get a faulty NVIDIA card or one with the TDR issues or you would have nowhere to turn to as you could not recommend them either and you would be left with an Intel integrated.

You were back to front and totally lacks a methodical and logical approach to issues, the first rule is don't use any 3rd party tools that could interfere when there is a problem and the whole system should been back at stock settings with no OCing assuming that it was OCed in the first place.

I have built many PCs for people and only once did i ever have a PC coming back because of the gfx card driver kept crashing and it was not the cards fault at all.


Memtest does not rule out memory & motherboard compatibility issues that can lead to CTD, Blue screen, driver has stopped responding from 3 to 8 times a day while gaming for 3 weeks to nail this one down.

OCZ Gold 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 (OCZ3G1333LV4GK) (1333MHz)
Asus M4A79XTD Evo.
Passed memtest 12 hours, Passed Prime-95 8hours passed, Furmark passed, 3Dmark06 passed.
Changed the gfx card.
Drivers 10.4/ 10.5 hotfix/10.6.

Fire up WOW which is the only game the customer plays at the moment & instant multiple driver has stopped responding or sometimes hours or more would pass.

Put in some G.Skill RipJaw 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C8 & not had a single issue.
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That was the first time that i had to deal with a problem like that where all the benching and stability programs passed but as soon as fired up that game, Driver has stopped responding and it was all down to the RAM not liking the motherboard which passed all the tests but crashed the driver when gaming.
 
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DAOWAce said:
I bought a 3850 in the past.

I used it for 3 months.

I had 20+ blue screens in the first 17 hours of ownership which corrupted some data on one of my drives.

I have yet to recommend an ATI product to anyone ever since.
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I can't speak about BSODs, but I have a 4350 in my HTPC and, while it's an alright card (passive cooling so it's great for HTPC use) the drivers will constantly revert back to default overscan (which is for some reason the smallest amount), making the picture tiny and having black bars around the screen. Nearly every time I turn on the goddamn TV it will do this. The HTPC is running 24/7 so it's not a restart issue. Even updating the drivers has not helped; it does it regardless. Plus, even though it's a lower-end card, HD playback is disappointing (freezes for no reason in the middle of a video, for example, and then comes back with a ton of artifacts).

I used to have an 8800 GTX in my HTPC and never had any of these problems. Frankly it almost makes me want to get a lower-end nVidia card just to be done with the driver bullshit.

Just my experience with AMD lately.
 
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