AMD CrossFireX Drivers - Opportunity Lost @ [H]

I think AMD drivers are awesome if you're on a single card. On the cayman they had a few issues with CFX, that I cannot deny. So far everything has been great on 7970 CFX for me but, I hope they know that users expect day 1 CFX support in games. Thats what NV has done for skyrim and bf3.
 
Devil's advocate here!
I think the broken driver support on big launches , reflects poorly on the gaming industry.
A game developer's goal is to get their game's in as many hands as possible , not customize
their game to which ever gpu maker chills out the most money.
How many TWIMTBP games came out with abysmal or no optimization for AMD cards.

As for the amd's side of the driver for crossfire, they need to get drivers that work without caps, and give basic scaling. And caps to optimize and max the scaling.

With Cat 12.1 ,doesn't give scaling if u manualy make a profile for game on a 7970 ?
 
12.1 doesn't work on the 7970, to my knowledge. 7970 is a different architecture than previous cards and requires different drivers. The 12.1 preview was for 6xxx and lower cards.

I had to use the driver on the sapphire installation CD to get CFX working on the 7970. For some reason this driver isn't on the AMD website, which is stupid.
 
So which driver comes with the cards on the install disc?

I just figured that the best driver would be the one that was released on the web after launch. I haven't even put the disc in yet.
 
xoleras said:
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.
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Funny, most reviews I am seeing show it not working.
 
I used to use ATI only catds for the longest time (from socket 7 days till now). Never had a problem with any of the drivers and always wondered why people said they sucked. Never done crossfire though. I fold and have 12 pc's in the house and all are nvidia just becouse of the folding but my next card in a month or so on my gamer will be a 7970
 
AdamNesvick said:
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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Nvidia sli works very well.... amd cfx, not so much.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Funny, most reviews I am seeing show it not working.
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I have found about 10 crossfire 7970 reviews. Not a single review anywhere says CFX isn't working. IMO you're just baiting with that statement (which is clearly untrue) because you're an nvidia loyalist. Thats cool though, I like NV too but I don't like them enough to go around blindly smearing AMD. I still have GTX 580s in fact :)

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...ssfire-graphics-card-review-introduction.html

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/his-hd7970-crossfire-review/

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/his-hd7970-crossfire-review/

Obviously many websites have gotten CFX to work just fine. Many users as well, including myself.

I like [H] but I think Kyle is wrong in this case. Bottom line like I said before, the AMD website driver is different than the installation cd driver, the cd driver works with crossfire.
 
xoleras said:
I have found about 10 crossfire 7970 reviews. Not a single review anywhere says CFX isn't working. IMO you're just baiting with that statement (which is clearly untrue) because you're an nvidia loyalist. Thats cool though, I like NV too but I don't like them enough to go around blindly smearing AMD. I still have GTX 580s in fact :)

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...ssfire-graphics-card-review-introduction.html

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/his-hd7970-crossfire-review/

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/his-hd7970-crossfire-review/

Obviously many websites have gotten CFX to work just fine. Many users as well, including myself.

I like [H] but I think Kyle is wrong in this case. Bottom line like I said before, the AMD website driver is different than the installation cd driver, the cd driver works with crossfire.
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http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/HD_7970_CrossFire/26.html


We see plenty of performance for the latest and greatest titles at maximum resolution and maximum settings. Unfortunately AMD's reviewer driver did not ship with working CrossFire profiles for Batman Arkham City and Elder Scrolls Skyrim. Battlefield 3 at 2560x1600 also fell back to single GPU performance, even though lower resolutions scale just fine. While I am confident AMD that will provide working CrossFire profiles for these major titles soon, they really need to work on getting their driver support to work right at launch day, when loads of people want to play these games.
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Well, I did it again.

I just think I like to be kicked in the nuts once or twice a year, yeah that's it.

I have a nice Triple Crossfire of a 6990 and a 6970, the cards are the shizzle, no doubt.
But I have suffered through half-assed drivers since October.
First it was Dead Island, then Rage, then Modern Warfare 3, every time I turned around, one thing worked and another thing didn't.

As far as Rage is concerned....yeah it kind of sucked as a game.......all I kept hearing was new drivers for Crossfire are coming......Jesus Christ, I finished the game twice before that happened.

Hell, this goes back to Crysis (the original) and my 4870 X2.......the GTX 285 kicked it's ass; again shitty utilization of an excellent piece of hardware.

What did I do again?
I can't believe I did it......but I bought into the Koolaid when AMD said they were going to kick ass in 2012 and ramp up their driver teams.......I just forked out 1160 dollars of hard after tax American Dollars for two of your best, you dumbasses............and now on the front page of my favorite website, a website that give your company EVERY benefit of the doubt......see that you are sucking once again and giving out the same old song and dance......" we'll have you a fucking dandy of a driver by week's end"........bullshit I'll believe it when I see it.

I'm about a half-second from sending the GPUs right back..........this is shameful, fucking shameful.
I'd be embarrassed to come to work.
 
xoleras said:
I have found about 10 crossfire 7970 reviews. Not a single review anywhere says CFX isn't working. IMO you're just baiting with that statement (which is clearly untrue) because you're an nvidia loyalist. Thats cool though, I like NV too but I don't like them enough to go around blindly smearing AMD. I still have GTX 580s in fact :)

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...ssfire-graphics-card-review-introduction.html

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/his-hd7970-crossfire-review/

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/his-hd7970-crossfire-review/

Obviously many websites have gotten CFX to work just fine. Many users as well, including myself.

I like [H] but I think Kyle is wrong in this case. Bottom line like I said before, the AMD website driver is different than the installation cd driver, the cd driver works with crossfire.
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Pcper says it doesn't work.... much more major of a site than those ones. So does h. Again.... not buying it. I may send my 7970 back since I wanted to go dual card soon.
 
Yeah I am honestly considering to return mine as well with all these issues that I am running into. Might just end up going back to 2x GTX 580's that I can snag on the cheap for now.
 
Over the years that I have used my 5850 I have consistently come across bugs etc. that take literally months for them to fix. Plus missing custom per game profiles was a huge step backwards from nvidia.

I definitely will be going back to nvidia in the future, even if my wallet cries for it...

Two big issues from 2011:
RAGE - absolute AMD driver crapfest
Laptop APUs with crossfire - still waiting for a driver that does not refuse to install... still running 11.5 as a result
 
Some of the basic functionalities are in one of the drivers, not in the other, but the driver is still chock full of bugs, scaling issues, and power control issues. The reason we have been putting off a CFX review is because AMD has told us this as it does not want us showing CFX in a bad light, which is understandable. It taking so long to get an appropriate driver together, is simply out of line.

If you are happy with your CFX performance, then great, this does not pertain to you.
 
Well, I have 2 6870s in crossfire and they work great. I always have MSI Afterburner open on a second screen so I can watch usage and temps.

Scaling is really very good compared to running one card.

I haven't really had any of the issues that I have seen reported.

I will also say that Nvidia drivers are no better than AMD drivers.. at least in single card setups. I have never run dual Nvidia card setups, but the few machines I have worked on that had SLI setups did seem to have weird issues.
 
AthlonXP said:
Yeah I am honestly considering to return mine as well with all these issues that I am running into. Might just end up going back to 2x GTX 580's that I can snag on the cheap for now.
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+1 to that.

This Opportunity Lost article is a great way to tell it like it is. First time I went with AMD in over 3 years and it does suck that in this day and age, we can't get something as important as a quality driver on release day for crossfireX, hell even within the first week. I don't even mind spending a premium on these cards to AMD if that would help get better drivers, but that isn't the case here.
I may not share the same disqust as others mainly because I have not lived the nightmare over the past years with suck drivers, so I might be ignorantly optimistic.

I will give AMD 2 more weeks before I'm forced to send my two 7970s back for being defective in crossfireX, then wait for Nvidia to release Keplar.
 
Personally I never had a 2-Way SLi problem back when I was using 2 250 GTS's in SLi. As far as single set up with nVidia i can't really say I've had a game breaker problem either besides the TDR issue that's going around which pauses my computer for a whole 45 second which goes away after said 45 seconds than never comes back unless I reboot.
 
so that's what happened to Terry Makedon. I actually thought he left AMD.
 
Such a shame. I wonder where the underlying problem is - is it within QA? Or is it higher up? Since there is no cfx driver, how is it that there are review sites out there that have cfx reviews? That makes no sense to me.
 
addictedto60fps said:
Such a shame. I wonder where the underlying problem is - is it within QA? Or is it higher up? Since there is no cfx driver, how is it that there are review sites out there that have cfx reviews? That makes no sense to me.
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Video drivers a incredibly complex, especially when you throw multi GPU into the mix I think nVidia simply devotes more resources to it..
 
i really don't see any educational value behind this article. What i see mainly is a group of gamer's known as (hardocp) who have made a article public complaining about driver support of Amd's newest graphics card.

Now this clearly can represent a host of gamers who have purchased these cards already who lack proper support. This message while hurtful to Amd's product image, is one that needs to be published and broadcast across the community, to shake things up at AMD.

I hope the goal of this article, makes its point to AMD, and they jump on the ball to prevent future articles further tarnish their name/products.

good job kyle and crew at OCP, for expressing your valued opinion.
 
as bad as they are kyle is sporting them in his rig that's saying something

but yeah they drivers are teh suck
 
Snowknight26 said:
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.
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Everybody who is in Dallas this weekend, give the guys from AMD a $1200 piece of your mind. I would if I were going to be there.
 
Crap...... Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Just as I was going to "add to cart". It sucks being in the limbo period between GPU generations. More waiting ensues...... >_<
 
Whach said:
Crap...... Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Just as I was going to "add to cart". It sucks being in the limbo period between GPU generations. More waiting ensues...... >_<
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The 7970 is a good card. Just don't buy two of them. :D
 
I'll attest to the 7970 being a good card, it's what I'm putting in my own personal gaming system.

Hoping for better CFX support this year and overall general gaming fixes/improvements for new games quickly when they are released.
 
ebduncan said:
i really don't see any educational value behind this article. What i see mainly is a group of gamer's known as (hardocp) who have made a article public complaining about driver support of Amd's newest graphics card.

Now this clearly can represent a host of gamers who have purchased these cards already who lack proper support. This message while hurtful to Amd's product image, is one that needs to be published and broadcast across the community, to shake things up at AMD.

I hope the goal of this article, makes its point to AMD, and they jump on the ball to prevent future articles further tarnish their name/products.

good job kyle and crew at OCP, for expressing your valued opinion.
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who says every article needs to be educational.

i think this needs to be said, especially from [H] which co-host events with AMD for gamers. if this doesn't get through AMD's driver team/management's thick skulls then we are all screwed as gamers. i'll give credit for AMD coming out with a new architecture but they should of been testing the hell out of crossfire with the architecture way before the cards came out so this issue would of never happened.
 
I got something positive out of this article... hopefully new drivers to be released this week...

We're on Tuesday that means could be tommorrow... thurs or Friday..
Maybe Sat morn but i doubt they will be workin on Saturday.
 
I made the mistake (habit) of downloading the drivers from the website. I mean, I haven't used the drivers that came on the CD for video card installation in a long, LONG time. Think Creative Labs Nvidia TNT 16MB. Things are humming along with the CD drivers, but not being able to download working CrossfireX drivers from AMD's website is just piss poor support. I *hope* this isn't a prelude of things to come.

I can't send my cards back as Tiger Direct has this listed as an item that "Manufacturer and Supplier Restriction" item. It's my own fault for doing not this research before pulling the trigger. I hope CrossfireX support improves. If not, someone may be getting a good bargain when Kepler comes out. That, or my i7 860 system will be getting a pair of powerful cards.

Edit: I decided to buy these cards instead of the AR-10A4 I wanted. If the Zombie Apocalypse happens, I know who to blame for being *slightly* less defenseless against the walking dead :D.
 
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I bailed out on my 5870 last summer due to sporatic driver issues here and there. Like getting kicked to the desktop anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 hours into a game. Prior to that I had a 4870. Seems to me the drivers have slowly been deteriorating. I always try new drivers, but will go back to what works the best if the newer ones suck. I still feel to this day that the AMD video quality was better overall, but hated the glitches. Went to a GTX 560 TI SLI setup and have had zero issues since. By the way, prior to the AMD days I had issues with Nvidia as well on a GTX 260 setup. Nvidia had some glitchy years, now AMD does. I am sure in time they will work it out.
 
Brent_Justice said:
I'll attest to the 7970 being a good card, it's what I'm putting in my own personal gaming system.

Hoping for better CFX support this year and overall general gaming fixes/improvements for new games quickly when they are released.
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So sad, and when they were building such great drivers with the X1800's and on... so sad to see them let go.

If they are getting pushed out of early development with name titles due to Nvidia pushing them out with support $$$$ they need to bring in the lawyers, them being hush isn't looking good for their image and in all honestly I'm starting to believe the nvidia bumping ATI out of game development is bull shit.

ATI fix yo crap, this is starting to remind me of the ATI 8500! AWESOME CARD! after they took a year to write a driver for it...
 
I bailed out on my 5870 last summer due to sporatic driver issues here and there. Like getting kicked to the desktop anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 hours into a game. Prior to that I had a 4870. Seems to me the drivers have slowly been deteriorating. I always try new drivers, but will go back to what works the best if the newer ones suck. I still feel to this day that the AMD video quality was better overall, but hated the glitches. Went to a GTX 560 TI SLI setup and have had zero issues since. By the way, prior to the AMD days I had issues with Nvidia as well on a GTX 260 setup. Nvidia had some glitchy years, now AMD does. I am sure in time they will work it out.
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I cannot speak for the 5XXX series cards i never had one, But i did have a 4870 and now dual 6870's. I've had cards from both camps, and well both camps have had driver issues. To this date i haven't had a driver problem which prevented me from playing any games. Now i haven't played every game there is, nor have i tried with crossfire, as that is a rather new addition to my system.

I think the point is, if you have a driver issue, how long will you have to wait for it to get resolved. In the case of AMD cards well you might wait longer than nvidia card owners, but then again its all just speculation. Based on the current track record, Nvidia seems to have the upper hand in Day one support of games. Now smart money concerned gamers never buy a game on release date, they wait 1-2 months and grab it for a much lower price and usually all driver problems are resolved by that time. Then again who ever buys 1000$+ graphic hardware should have day one support on every game released. The people in the driver team if have a issue should be working 24/7 to resolve the issue. Want to earn the respect of the gamers? fix a driver issue within 24 hours of it being reported and do so every time there is a problem.

who says every article needs to be educational.
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I never said the articles had to be educational, was just pointing out that i didn't find this article to be educational.
 
Whach said:
Crap...... Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Just as I was going to "add to cart". It sucks being in the limbo period between GPU generations. More waiting ensues...... >_<
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you're running a 24" bro, a single 7970 would be perfect all the while avoiding crossfire headaches
 
Hmm...very sad, I just ordered a second one since the one I just got seemed so solid. I assumed it all worked since I saw several crossfire X reviews that said it was awesome, just figured the other sites were a bit slow to do all the benchmarks. :(
 
AngelicPenguin said:
Hmm...very sad, I just ordered a second one since the one I just got seemed so solid. I assumed it all worked since I saw several crossfire X reviews that said it was awesome, just figured the other sites were a bit slow to do all the benchmarks. :(
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it all depends on the game.. BF3 it works great then there are some games its total garbage or doesn't work at all. aka the same crap everyone dealt with prior to the 12.1 preview drivers.
 
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