AMD CrossFireX Drivers - Opportunity Lost @ [H]

ebduncan said:
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.
Click to expand...

I agree with that. Nothing has prevented me from playing any of the games, just inconvenienced on a few games of many, some newer, some older.
I also wait a couple of months on games to get patched, hate paying full price, and have other hobbies that need funds.
AMD needs to quit saying tomorrow it will be fixed to please our ears when they mean next week, month, or longer. They can't afford to lose market share. I hope to go back someday if and when things turn around. What ever happened to AMD selling their cards for $200-$300 like the 4850 and 4870 days? I thought they were going to outprice Nvidia?
 
Ive switched back and forth from ATI Rage 32 to geforce so many times. I really dont remember driver issues with either one, I went ATI 9800 pro to geforce 7800, 8800, 9800, then switched to ATI/AMD for good with 4850, 5830,5870s, 6850s, 6870s. all the cards ati/amd/nvidia -- The only driver issues I can remember are with the shitty integrated INTEL chipsets.

I will confess i am very new to crossfire, ive done a pair of 5830s and a pair of 6850s ... but even then i only enable crossfire for benchmarks. I currently game on just my APU while my three video cards hash away for bitcoins :)
 
I've had so many Nvidia cards physicaly fail on me and with AMD crossfire issues(although never a bad card, even my x1600 Pro), I just don't know what to do anymore. :confused: As time goes on I find myself more and more tempted to just use my girlfriends PS3...

Any suggestions/ideas???
 
Metrocall said:
I've had so many Nvidia cards physicaly fail on me and with AMD crossfire issues(although never a bad card, even my x1600 Pro), I just don't know what to do anymore. :confused: As time goes on I find myself more and more tempted to just use my girlfriends PS3...

Any suggestions/ideas???
Click to expand...

Are you playing at 1080p? A single 7970 really stomps everything at that resolution, especially if you OC.

Crossfire? well most games i've tried are fine , but i'd wait a couple of weeks if you're determined to go dual gpu
 
AMD is good with single cards, i just wish they would work on crossfire drivers. Ive had several SLI rigs, with minimal issues. Its a shame AMD has some impressive hardware, that being said the 7970 is amazing, im enjoying it very much. Tried crossfire and ended up returning one of the cards. 100fps crossfire felt slower than 50 fps single card. HUGE micro stuttering.
 
wish i knew what to do. i have a pair of 6950 2gb cards i bought for crossfire, though im less pleased with them every new game due to drivers.

and ive had almost every nvidia card ive owned go bad on me. only 3 nvidia cards ive bought still work. rest are dead.
 
gar818 said:
AMD is good with single cards, i just wish they would work on crossfire drivers. Ive had several SLI rigs, with minimal issues. Its a shame AMD has some impressive hardware, that being said the 7970 is amazing, im enjoying it very much. Tried crossfire and ended up returning one of the cards. 100fps crossfire felt slower than 50 fps single card. HUGE micro stuttering.
Click to expand...

CCC 12.2 removes stuttering, well at least on 6970 xfire. So a fix is coming, the question is when. Alternatively, ingame vsync + MSI afterburner's new OSD frame limiter also removes microstutter.
 
xoleras said:
CCC 12.2 removes stuttering, well at least on 6970 xfire. So a fix is coming, the question is when. Alternatively, ingame vsync + MSI afterburner's new OSD frame limiter also removes microstutter.
Click to expand...

Does the frame limiter only work for 7970 users? I downloaded the latest MSI afterburner and I don't see that option.
 
addictedto60fps said:
Does the frame limiter only work for 7970 users? I downloaded the latest MSI afterburner and I don't see that option.
Click to expand...

Works on 6xxx (I don't get microstutter on 7970s), play around with it though. I was able to fix a lot of it with ingame vsync + that. You have to enable the OSD (must use version 2.2 release 10), then go in your system tray for the riva tuner app. Within that app (which controls the OSD) you can specify a framerate limiter, which for me helped remove any stutter I had.

Again, CCC 12 should have a perma fix for this. IF you can find the 12.2 preview, users are reporting stutter gone with it.
 
I've tried AMD MGPU many times and I've never been able to stick with it. I first tried it with X1900 XTs. It always ends up annoying me to the point that I abandon it.

I don't use nVidia MGPU either and yes, I have tried it many times too. Their support tends to be more timely and solid.

That said, I prefer a single strong GPU over both of them. Most games are written and coded for precisely that; a single GPU.
 
Blacklash said:
That said, I prefer a single strong GPU over both of them. Most games are written and coded for precisely that; a single GPU.
Click to expand...

But when you combine the best single GPUs in multi-GPU you can get some stunning performance. SLI turns 8 this year and I think it's to the point where it's quite dependable, it definitely will more often than not deliver even better than tomorrow's single GPU today.

Never going back to single GPUs probably as long as it works as well or better as it does today, at least today's SLI.
 
Wow how pointless is this... Umm it is brand new crazy technology and its only been a week and people are complaining about crossfire not properly working. This happens most of the time when a new video cars series is released so I don't understand what all the fuss is about. Motherboard makers sell their mobos and stuff doesn't work correctly all the time which is why there are BIOS updates. For instance how about overclocking problem gigabytes x79 mobos had. New sound cards have lists of problems but new drivers fix that eventually. Solid state hard drives first came out had shuts load of problems. Firmware updates fixed them years later. Still can't raid a ssd. New ssds didn't have trim and OS didn't support trim but ssds were still sold. New operating systems have problems but updates come out and address those issues. I can keep on going and going. Point is its brand fcking new give it a few Damn weeks.

On a side note nvidias 500 series when first came out had problems with SLI in games too. No one seemed to care though because its NVIDIA I guess.
 
I, like many of you, have owned AMD/ATI products for the past few generations. I always try to go with what the best bang for the buck is. The past few generations has proved for the most part that it's not worth paying huge premiums to get nVidia gear when the AMD/ATI is just as good or close enough for most people.

That said, I am very, VERY much starting to debate on getting into the 79xx series or not or simply wait for GTX 6xx. I have a pair of 6970 and have worked fine for the most part in CFX. A few hiccups sure, but nothing super crazy. I am however noticing more and more and more how they do not seem to have CFX and drivers ready for game release dates. I don't know what the deal is, or why there are so many TWIMTBP games out there, but seriously AMD need to POUR money back into the graphics driver team. It's a shame because there are SOOO many talented and hard working software programmers out there right now. You can't tell me that you can't get the right people in there and make something happen. Honestly, I agree with what someone else said earlier that I would almost have rather had the hardware bump be less-so if that meant that from now on we were going to get awesome driver support. AMD CPUs are having major problems right now, and I'm sure that it's mostly the graphics division keeping everyone afloat.

If anyone from AMD is reading this...please...we beg you as your consumers and just as reasonable, normal people, please fix this soon. You are only hurting yourself. We want your products. We want to recommend it to all our friends. HardOCP is SO ready to endorse you guys. You know that they are fair and patient, but they also know consumers and what consumers want and are experiencing. Please make this right. Do whatever you have to do, but do it soon.
 
jmm5351 said:
On a side note nvidias 500 series when first came out had problems with SLI in games too. No one seemed to care though because its NVIDIA I guess.
Click to expand...

I don't think it was like this. I bought 3 580s on launch day and while I can't recall 14 months ago with perfect clarity I certainly don't remember a large bulk of the new games at the time not working in SLI at all, even when the 480 came out I think it was better than the 7970s which was the new architecture and I had three of those in SLI as well.
 
jmm5351 said:
Wow how pointless is this... Umm it is brand new crazy technology and its only been a week and people are complaining about crossfire not properly working. This happens most of the time when a new video cars series is released so I don't understand what all the fuss is about. Motherboard makers sell their mobos and stuff doesn't work correctly all the time which is why there are BIOS updates. For instance how about overclocking problem gigabytes x79 mobos had. New sound cards have lists of problems but new drivers fix that eventually. Solid state hard drives first came out had shuts load of problems. Firmware updates fixed them years later. Still can't raid a ssd. New ssds didn't have trim and OS didn't support trim but ssds were still sold. New operating systems have problems but updates come out and address those issues. I can keep on going and going. Point is its brand fcking new give it a few Damn weeks.

On a side note nvidias 500 series when first came out had problems with SLI in games too. No one seemed to care though because its NVIDIA I guess.
Click to expand...


SLI in games are a mix between Drivers and game support. CFX is profiles. I fail to see and considering every card that's launched by AMD has been plauged with slow CFX profiles says it will continue. Look how long it took AMD to get Skyrim CFX on the 6000 series but the 5000/4000 were hit or miss or not at all.

Did nVidia have those problems at release? No.

Reason why this is a big issue now is the fact it's been a week sense launch and still no official driver with CFX Support. That is Un-Acceptable to those who bought two which $1000-1200... and still cant use them as they're suppose to be used.

Reason why nVidia isn't brought into this article is the fact they release a new driver just before or right after the product releases thus removing this issue from the table entirely.
 
Now correct me if I'm wrong, but isnt CrossfireX using two different gpus of the same generation i.e. a 4850 with a 4870. Whereas crossfire is running two identical gpus.

Regardless, I have run crossfire setups since the 48xx series was king. I've run dual 4870's, 5870's and 6950's and 6970's. I can honestly say that I have never had an issue with any of these setups.
Whether or not a game was officially supported, there almost always was a benefit from adding a second. There are a few games where there was actually negative scaling, however in these games the framerate was already so ridiculously high it didnt matter. The only games that ever seem to do this is games running older game engines i.e. source games and WoW.
Ive never had an issue installing or uninstallng drivers.
So now the questions begs to be asked, what am I doing differently than most users that are having issues?
I think that a lot of the time PEBKAC is to blame, especially with driver install/uninstall.

PS: to all of those claiming that Nvidias drivers the best, consider this AMD has NEVER put out a driver that literally burned up cards like Nvidia did.
 
Maybe at AMD it was a push to get the cards out "Drivers be damned". Hate to think my chances of success with a CFX 7970 and my current BD systems :D. I can't find any reviews there come to think about it :rolleyes:. I hope some well working 7970 CFX BD systems are purring at the FX GameExperience :cool:.

I am understanding HardOCP a little better, maybe that is. Site cannot exist waiting months for good drivers on a new games, new hardware for reviews in the most powerfull configurations. It would become irrelevant rather quickly. Having new hardware and pretending it purrs along on new games when it doesn't would piss people off. Having new hardware/games and explaining it is not working as well as it should well pisses people off as well but at least they know what they are getting into.

No where do I see the driver page on AMD site saying "This driver does not work for CFX".
Come on, that is just plain poor! You type in your card on the driver download page and it takes you to that Unofficial driver. Frankly this article maybe a little bit too friendly.

PR team at AMD job is not to mislead folks, since the folks buying what they are selling, a.k.a 7970's are usually very hardware, game aware to begin with. PR team needs to understand that the review sites have customers as well, looking at the sites content and hopefully convince to purchase the products being reviewed, using the on site advertisements to purchase items so another review can be done down the road. No one cares about last years hardware and games in general, what is new, excitting is the ticket. Anyways appreciate the blantant honesty that HardOCP has to do at times which I hope gets AMD to just get better at making sure it is ready and sticks out as awesome all the way around.
 
Squall_Rinoa89 said:
SLI in games are a mix between Drivers and game support. CFX is profiles. I fail to see and considering every card that's launched by AMD has been plauged with slow CFX profiles says it will continue. Look how long it took AMD to get Skyrim CFX on the 6000 series but the 5000/4000 were hit or miss or not at all.

Did nVidia have those problems at release? No.

Reason why this is a big issue now is the fact it's been a week sense launch and still no official driver with CFX Support. That is Un-Acceptable to those who bought two which $1000-1200... and still cant use them as they're suppose to be used.

Reason why nVidia isn't brought into this article is the fact they release a new driver just before or right after the product releases thus removing this issue from the table entirely.
Click to expand...

Well looking around the net and on my regular forums i don't see virtually any 7xxx CF users moaning.
 
OmegaSupreme said:
Now correct me if I'm wrong, but isnt CrossfireX using two different gpus of the same generation i.e. a 4850 with a 4870. Whereas crossfire is running two identical gpus.

Regardless, I have run crossfire setups since the 48xx series was king. I've run dual 4870's, 5870's and 6950's and 6970's. I can honestly say that I have never had an issue with any of these setups.
Whether or not a game was officially supported, there almost always was a benefit from adding a second. There are a few games where there was actually negative scaling, however in these games the framerate was already so ridiculously high it didnt matter. The only games that ever seem to do this is games running older game engines i.e. source games and WoW.
Ive never had an issue installing or uninstallng drivers.
So now the questions begs to be asked, what am I doing differently than most users that are having issues?
I think that a lot of the time PEBKAC is to blame, especially with driver install/uninstall.

PS: to all of those claiming that Nvidias drivers the best, consider this AMD has NEVER put out a driver that literally burned up cards like Nvidia did.
Click to expand...

Because you are way cooler then most :p. To me it looks like AMD does address CFX issues after awhile for games and hardware which if you are like me you wait until the games are patched or confirmed working good before buying or when dirt cheap ;) meaning they are working if not we just don't waste time with them. Plus wait a little bit before getting a new hardware setup. This time I didn't, got 990FX board before BD and got BD as soon as it was available :eek: as well as the 7970 which is AWESOME :). This is a CFX issue with new hardware, new games, where HardOCP has to be on top of the game to survive. AMD is dropping the ball on that aspect of a release.
 
Whach said:
But I want/need two......

......of some GPU!! :p

Maybe two of these?
Click to expand...

Hmm, if driver/multi gpu support from day one is more important than performance for you, then those gtx 580's may be the way to go. If you can wait a little bit longer, I'd wait and see if AMD can get their act together. I personally would wait for Kepler and see what all that is about before deciding on anything.

In any case, those gtx 580's are the safest bet. You absolutely cannot go wrong with those. The other two are still huge question marks: 7970 cfx support/driver support is a big question mark at this point. Kepler - who knows when that will come out.
 
Final8ty said:
Well looking around the net and on my regular forums i don't see virtually any 7xxx CF users moaning.
Click to expand...

Maybe because they just paid over $1100 for hardware and are to embarrassed :eek: to admit it is working like poo poo. I've read a few complaints as a note but mostly positive so far as well.
 
noko said:
Maybe because they just paid over $1100 for hardware and are to embarrassed :eek: to admit it is working like poo poo. I've read a few complaints as a note but mostly positive so far as well.
Click to expand...

I doubt its because of embarrassment and more to be with the fact that's its always been like this even with tweaked arc let alone new arc and that they expect it.
 
Last edited:
OmegaSupreme said:
PS: to all of those claiming that Nvidias drivers the best, consider this AMD has NEVER put out a driver that literally burned up cards like Nvidia did.
Click to expand...

Never say never, forever is a long time. I'm not of fan of most of nVidia's dual-GPU cards, had a couple of 7950s and a 9800GX2, not the best cards, AMD's dual-GPU cards I think have been much better than nVidia's.

However the issue with the 590 isn't the norm and even if it did effect every 590 you would have gotten a new card and moved on. AMD just seems to have more persistent issues with game support particularly with CF consistently.
 
addictedto60fps said:
Hmm, if driver/multi gpu support from day one is more important than performance for you, then those gtx 580's may be the way to go. If you can wait a little bit longer, I'd wait and see if AMD can get their act together. I personally would wait for Kepler and see what all that is about before deciding on anything.

In any case, those gtx 580's are the safest bet. You absolutely cannot go wrong with those. The other two are still huge question marks: 7970 cfx support/driver support is a big question mark at this point. Kepler - who knows when that will come out.
Click to expand...

I want to wait to see what Kepler is about too. Just having an itchy "buy" finger :\
 
Whach said:
I want to wait to see what Kepler is about too. Just having an itchy "buy" finger :\
Click to expand...

Lol, I have the itchy finger as well, but I'm glad I waited. My 6970's, for the most part, are still pretty good cards and will tide me over until Kepler, unless Doom 4 happens to get announced now. :eek: At that point, then I will not wait! :p
 
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.
Click to expand...
Good article Brent! But honestly, in your experienced opinion regarding vid cards, good bet on AMD? and any hunches regarding Kepler? Thx!
 
Last edited:
addictedto60fps said:
Lol, I have the itchy finger as well, but I'm glad I waited. My 6970's, for the most part, are still pretty good cards and will tide me over until Kepler, unless Doom 4 happens to get announced now. :eek: At that point, then I will not wait! :p
Click to expand...

I am on the Sandy Bridge iGPU in the meantime. Its sort of like being in a GPU lifeboat lol
 
While I too agree that the drivers should have been more refined for Xfire at release, there isn't a single "enthusiast" who can honestly say that adopting any completely brand new architecture like GCN (or any other new architecture) on launch day is anything more than a hit or miss proposition, at best.


Or have you all forgotten the Sandy Bridge Recall, the Camino chip set recall, the Pentium FPU bug, OCZ 22nm SSDs, Intel 8MB bug, Crucial M4 endless reboot, manually setting fanspeed on nVidia cards every fucking reboot because the drivers were hosed, nVidia substrate issue, MSI boards burning up, shitty marvel SATA 6 controllers, shitty nVidia RAID performance, exploding Dell batteries, Dell 2407 lineup that came without HDCP capability, or any one of a couple dozen other fuck ups that companies have foisted upon early adopters over the years.

Vista, anyone?
Windows 98 First edition?
Windows ME?
Excel 97 can't even add numbers correctly?
Adobe's entire fucking line up of products?
Anti-Virus software wiping out your OS install because critical files are incorrectly marked as malware?

The list goes on and on and on....

Guess what people, Welcome to the "bleeding edge". Stand by for heavy seas.
 
heatlesssun said:
..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.
Click to expand...

AMD let 3rd-party corporations do their work. Stop nitpicking on them, Tridef has done some quite awesome on the 3D side on AMD/ATI cards.
 
notarat said:
Or have you all forgotten manually setting fanspeed on nVidia cards every fucking reboot because the drivers were hosed, nVidia substrate issue, MSI boards burning up, shitty marvel SATA 6 controllers, shitty nVidia RAID performance
Click to expand...

How come that when Nvidia fucks up, Nvidia users get angry at Nvidia

...but

When AMD fucks up, AMD users also get angry at Nvidia. :eek:
 
Whach said:
I am on the Sandy Bridge iGPU in the meantime. Its sort of like being in a GPU lifeboat lol
Click to expand...

Oh man, that's horrible - lol. Not sure I could be as patient as you in this case, then. Maybe you could find a cheap gpu in the meantime? Not sure if that's something you would want to do but just throwing that out there.
 
maboblivion said:
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.
Click to expand...

look at the CF best practices docs, the drives DOES scale by default unless it detects what it thinks are operations that need to be duplicated per gpu

i've seen various games that scale without any profile or tweaking (railworks, section8 prejudice barely, usually every source engine game or at least older ones like vindictus, etc)

you can always attempt to force AFR yourself, but there's no guarantee the game will be doing its rendering without frame dependencies, hence flickers or not so good scaling (just like nvidia which has multiple afr modes & game profiles the same way)
 
addictedto60fps said:
Oh man, that's horrible - lol. Not sure I could be as patient as you in this case, then. Maybe you could find a cheap gpu in the meantime? Not sure if that's something you would want to do but just throwing that out there.
Click to expand...

I considered that at first, but then thought that's extra money i'll conserve for the main GPU course....that's if I can find out whats on the menu from the cooks in the red and green hats!
 
Nvidia didnt have functional sli driver for windows vista for a year.
Not sure why its a suprise launching a new videocard with new core that driver team will have a backlog?
 
This article is 200% true.

From the 4000 series to the 7000 series, AMD driver support has been lacking IMO.

Wow I had no idea 7000 series had no official Crossfire driver.

Guess I can hold out until Kepler
 
DASHlT said:
This article is 200% true.

From the 4000 series to the 7000 series, AMD driver support has been lacking IMO.

Wow I had no idea 7000 series had no official Crossfire driver.

Guess I can hold out until Kepler
Click to expand...

THE CF driver is on the CD that comes with the card.

AMD 7970 Crossfire 120Hz Portrait Eyefinity Battlefield 3 Karkand Multiplayer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovm7XBtaQAM

I have two more monitors inbound to make this a 5x1 portrait setup.
Click to expand...
 
Final8ty said:
THE CF driver is on the CD that comes with the card.

AMD 7970 Crossfire 120Hz Portrait Eyefinity Battlefield 3 Karkand Multiplayer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovm7XBtaQAM
Click to expand...

Did you even read the article? AMD kept saying they would send the CFX driver to hardocp.

They are still waiting for this day.

If AMD had a CFX Driver, why would they tell Hardocp, they would have the driver for at a certain date, and keep stalling if the CFX driver is already out?
 
It's not just crossfire support....AMD have been behind the curve on release day for several AAA titles even for single cards....Rage, BF3 and Skyrim all performed disproportionately poorly on AMD hardware until AMD got their drivers sorted sometime later.....Nvidia are much better in this respect and AMD MUST learn this lesson, many people, particularly those that buy high end hardware want to play games on release day not several weeks later.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top