Anyone been able to run BF3 with Quad Fire?

E

eclypse

2[H]4U
Joined
Dec 7, 2003
Messages
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Just wondering cause i've been going crazy the last 2 nights trying to get BF3 to run in Quad Fire with my 7970s. Game locks either right away or within 5 mins.

If i change the crossfire mode to 3 cards in the control panel i can play for over an hour no prob.

System seems pretty stable otherwise as i can run 3Dmark,Vantage and heaven with max settings no issues in Quad Fire.

Current system:

Intel 3960 @ 5Ghz
Asus Rampage IV Extreme
Quad Fire 7970
16GB 2133Mhz Ram
2x Ultra 4 1600WATT P/S
Water cooled
 
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i believe it is a known issue in the latest cats and amd crossfire w/7970's and bf3... gonna try and dig it up
 
Ive read that too, the latest drivers says in the patch notes it fixed a lot of quad fire issues...
 
not what i remembered seeing, but i knew i saw something


KNOWN ISSUES

Known issues under the Windows® 7 operating system

The following section provides a summary of open issues that may be experienced under the Windows® 7 operating system in the latest version of AMD Catalyst™. These include:


Call of Duty 4 may experience corruption when run in DirectX® 9 mode and the Edge Detect filter is enabled.
Portal 2 may generate a black screen when launched in 3D stereo mode.
The Morphological filter settings may be missing in the Vision Control Center.
Civilization V may experience random game crashes.
Forced Anti-Aliasing may not be available when playing Enemy Territory – Quake Wars.
Call of Duty – Black Ops may experience a crash when run in Crossfire mode.
Battlefield 3 may crash when run at ultra settings.
Vsync may be disabled after task switching when playing Rage.
Launching Rage with Crossfire enabled may cause the application to hang.
Random flickering may be observed while playing Battlefield- Bad Company 2.
Saints Row III may hang randomly during gameplay.
Dragons Age 2 may experience random flickering when run in Tri Crossfire mode with Vsync enabled or when run in DirectX® 9 mode.
Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 3 may experience flickering when run in Tri Crossfire mode
 
Thor said:
i believe it is a known issue in the latest cats and amd crossfire w/7970's and bf3... gonna try and dig it up
Click to expand...

Oh boy.. THANKS!

Hopefully i can try it out with an older driver set or something in the mean time. Trying to see if runing 4 scales better then 3 and will allow me to fully max everything out and run smmoth in eyefinity (61xx x1080). 3 is very close and hope 4 fills the need.

Plus i have the 7970 water blocks coming today and want to be sure i'm keeping that forth card before i go through the trouble of installing them hehe.
 
Hmm.. no issues doing Ultra and max everything else with tri fire.. guess for kicks i'll try the game in Quad Fire with High settings.
 
ITS WORKING! :) First tried it with everything on high.. played for a half hour then changed everything to Ultra/Max besides textures set to high and it plays just fine ;)

HELL'S YEAH!

THANKS GUYS!! HAPPY HAPPY!
 
Played again and its all good. Over 100fps at majority of the time on a 64 player outdoor map. Dont know if its any faster then 3 cards per say as i'll have to try it again hehe.. Bet it will be real nice on the next driver release.
 
Any stuttering? When going from 1 to 2 cards for Eyefinity I did notice some of the smoothness was lost even though the FPS increased. It was particularly noticeable on maps with a lot of blowing fog like Metro2033 and Grand Bazaar, also while zooming in to scope it would FPS drop and stutter.
 
Just wanted to mention that the 4th card is scaling higher then using 3 cards atm.. hehe. About 40 frames on teh same map i can tell. Enough to make a difference!
 
Vega said:
Any stuttering? When going from 1 to 2 cards for Eyefinity I did notice some of the smoothness was lost even though the FPS increased. It was particularly noticeable on maps with a lot of blowing fog like Metro2033 and Grand Bazaar, also while zooming in to scope it would FPS drop and stutter.
Click to expand...

NOPE! I dont even see it when using 4 cards in a single screen. I've gone through issues with it on Nvidia cards so we would know.. Its the first thing i noticed and i about cried when i first booted up BF3 with 2 7970s.. so freakin happy to finally have a smooth game!

I'm using 2 active mini DP to dual link DVI adapters and the main DVI out on my 120hz screens.

Single or eyefinity.. its all good!
 
Carbon_Le said:
Can we get pic of your rig please?!?! ;)
Click to expand...

Would love to but the water cooling aint nice looking at the moment on the CPU/MB with mixed matched fittings.. used what i had on me at the time. Just got my package with the 4 EK 7970 blocks and replacement fittings for the other blocks. When i get'r up and runing i'll post pics no doubt then.

In the mean time you can check out my former rig.. i'm using the same case and setup.. just different MB,CPU and graphics.

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=693435
 
Update.. thought everything was fine but later that night it showed up again. The past week i've been testing a bunch of different settings and it dont matter what i choose eventually BF3 will crash with 4 cards. With everything set to high it will just take a little longer. Finally tonight i said screw it and lets try 3 cards again so i turned off the 4th card on the Asus motherboard jumper making sure to first disable crossfire in windows frist before making the change on the board.

Now i can play Ultra everything and everything else either turned on or maxed out settings with 0 probs. Played BF3 for 2 1/2 hours without issue on 64 player maps.

SUCKS! No idea if its a driver issue or some setting i need to have set in the bios of my Asus Rampage IV Extreme.

Need to figure this out as i'm runing out of days before i can return 3 of the cards locally if needed.. bought the last one at newegg. Plus i have 4 new EK 7970 water blocks sittin in there box just waitin for me to figure out if 4 cards is doable or worth it for BF3 (only game i care about) over 3.
 
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Newer build and didnt update the sig yet as i was busy selling off the old parts first.

Edit: Your talking about the first post where i listed the specs? Yeah i entered the wrong mb hehe. opps.
 
Could be a heat problem. I know my two 7970's heated up quite badly in crossfire before an upgrade to the cooling in the case. Then again I've only got 1/8-2/8 inches of clearance between the cards. I assume your motherboard has quite a bit more clearance between the cards. What kind of temps are you seeing on your GPU's? I know I experienced a few BF3 crashes before I upgraded the cooling in my system when the topmost 7970 would get up into the high 90's degrees celsius. Most of the reviews out there for the regular and overclocking temps have the cards running in open bench scenarios. It's a completely different ballgame running in a closed case with a system loaded with hardware.
 
If you didn't look at his link, I suggest you do. I don't think he has a problem with cooling...
 
eclypse said:
Now i can play Ultra everything and everything else either turned on or maxed out settings with 0 probs. Played BF3 for 2 1/2 hours without issue on 64 player maps.
Click to expand...

Well if your getting great performance with 3 cards, then maybe no need for the fourth one at the moment and just go with tri-fire.
 
Well atm the cards are air cooled till i test them out to see if i want 3 or 4 cards. Non overclocked cards also atm. The temps never go over 70c for the top card... mostly in the 60c range. Also i'm not removing the 4th card so the air flow dont change period for the top 3 cards in either config. Dont feel heat is the factor as i'm able to push harder graphic settings with 3 cards without crash in BF3 then i'm testing with 4 cards.

I've also ran BF3 with the system at default settings to remove the overclock from the system and that didnt change anything either with 4 cards.. BF3 will either crash as soon as i touch any key for movement or within the first 30 mins if i run lower graphics settings.
 
there's a few guys with 4 of them on xtremesystems, some with full cover WC blocks too

maybe they can help
 
No help from there yet..

So anyways, last night i was messing around with it some more and it still really bugs the crap out of me that i cant get the thing to hickup with 3 cards at maxout everything in BF3 and its pretty damn smooth but 4 cards.. NOPE! So i was testing again and noticed that i can pin it down to certain maps. Like on Metro its like an insta game crash.. sometimes will just knock me to the desktop which never happened before.. usually just locks and i have to hit Control/Alt/Delete and end the game and its all is well. On some outdoor maps i can play for a while without crashing. Kirkland maps i dont seem to have any probs. I might have to try a game on each map and take notes and find out where to send off the info cause i'm sure not many are playing with quad-fire.
 
Have you tried swapping the fourth and first cards, maybe number 4 is defective, (and possibly even having it in the board, disabled or not is giving you grief)
 
Thor said:
Have you tried swapping the fourth and first cards, maybe number 4 is defective, (and possibly even having it in the board, disabled or not is giving you grief)
Click to expand...

I guess i could try that problem is though that the forth card is not the newest card. When i added the forth card i ended up budding the cards in groups of brands.. so 2 are Diamonds (last 2) and the first 2 are XFX. The new card is either the 1st or 2nd card now. And prior i had 0 probs! :(

Also everyting is fine when i dissable the forth card with the switch on the board even when its sitll in the system.

1 thing i have not tryied is using a different cross fire cable for the 4th card.. i can try the cable that came with the mb for that one.
 
Hmmm... On that, I assume the cards are all reference, I have this nagging feeling that the ram chips are not the same...it might be able to deal with timeing differences with one extra card, but something goes wonky with 4... different brands of ram between boards... *shrug* shots in the dark, but seems feasible. Google your boards, see if you can get the specs on the ram... (google foo from my phone, not so good right now)
 
Thor said:
Hmmm... On that, I assume the cards are all reference, I have this nagging feeling that the ram chips are not the same...it might be able to deal with timeing differences with one extra card, but something goes wonky with 4... different brands of ram between boards... *shrug* shots in the dark, but seems feasible. Google your boards, see if you can get the specs on the ram... (google foo from my phone, not so good right now)
Click to expand...

You may be onto something there.. Yes there all reference cards but i guess the bios may be different. Might have to hunt for a bios reader and find out if there timings are differerent on the cards.

Sucks cause last night i could of ordered another 2 XFX cards and returned the 2 Diamonds but the wife didnt like me using that much cash even though i would of ended up saving about $40 after overnight shipping from buying them locally with tax hehe.
 
I'll try swaping the cards.. atm its xfx in the first 2 slots. I believe prior to the 4th card i had a Diamond in the driver seat. It will be about 3 hours before i get a shot at it though.
 
just did some digging on the ram issue... the diamonds are 1375 mhz, the xfx are going to be 1425 (tdbc<- black edition) or, 1375 (tnfc<- reference), but again, just because they are the same speed, dose not mean they have the same timings, and even if they have the same timings, they may not be the same manufacturer (and sometimes that matters... :/ )


or ...

maybe the drivers are still crap... it is bleeding edge still... how these people can make a product, and not know how it works is beyond me.. but it is like this every cycle. "Lets get it to market... worry about making it work later..." Just be glad they are not cars... looks at Toyota... (too soon?)
 
May be right there.. and i'm leaning to thats what it is just need someone else to tell me they have the same issue and then i'll rest knowing its just not something wrong.

Update testing further with GPU-Z to see the bios #'s Was hoping to see the ram timings of each brand just to be sure..

Bios flash program says cant find a Ati graphics card?? Might not be compatable with the 7970s or its cause there in crossfire mode. Just got home to mess with it and with 4 GPU-Z programs opened and each card selected everything is indentical.. The bios are all the same numbers. I've made a copy of each brand bios and was hoping to open one up to take a look and see if there is any different ram timings.

One thing i did notice is that the last 2 cards show Crossfire disabled on them?? First 2 show Enabled (4 GPUS). Might be the norm no idea.
 
EDIT: Upgrading every year (max return on the old stuff) and the tax check every year surely helps out convincing the wife! haha
 
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Nothing i tried fixed the issue.. even down to swaping ever card in there in a different spot then before. I guess i need to figure out if i want 3 or 4 real damn quick. Today should be a day where i put on 4 water blocks for the cards but i feel its gona be a day were i play around more with 3 cards and see if its fast enough for me since i have no hassles with 3 over 4.

Basicly have to run everything at high insted of Ultra and sometimes thats not good enough.. I've played with turning other crap off as well.

Event tested the game at 60hz and the monitors set at 60hz and V-sync and damn was there screen tearing even though the max frame rate was 60! Still locked up just as fast.

Before i was thinking it was just in eyefinity but nope earlier today i had just one screen and the other 2 with GPU-Z for all 4 cards showing votlages and stuff and the other for Afterburner.. Was nice to see all 4 cards runing identical in the usage. :(


I've read that BF3 will crash with the graphcis set at Ultra.. but it dont happen with 3 cards!

I guess i could run it with 4 cards in the system and change the crossfire mode to 3 cards for BF3 only till she gets fixed.. but damn, what if they dont ever fix it?? Out $580+122 for the block. Ouch.
 
I've signed up just to give a 'me too' post, hopefully knowing that it isn't just you will stop you going insane :)
Its an issue with Quadfire and BF3, whether it is the game or the drivers or both I don't know but I've been trying to investigate. My 2x6990's show the same problems when run in quadfire; some maps will crash within 1-15 mins, but Karkland I seem to be able to play for ages and rarely (if ever) get the crash. If I disable one card so that I'm just using 2 GPUs, I never crash.
My temps are fine etc etc and any other game or benchmark will run without problems.

I'm guessing yours will look exactly the same:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: bf3.exe
...snip.....
Additional Information 1: 0a9e
Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Additional Information 3: 0a9e
Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

There are threads around various forums reporting the same issue. I've tried a number of times to send crash reports to AMD and DICE (I've dumped bf3.exe's ram at the point of crash) but they don't seem to be interested. Instead they ask me to reinstall drivers, reinstall BF3 etc etc, which of course I've done many times.
What is weird is that the single player campaign doesn't have this problem. There are also reports that before the B2K update there was no problem but I don't know as I bought my second 6990 after that. I've tried every version of Catalyst drivers and CAPs I can get my hands on, including preview drivers and leaked betas.

Here are some other reports of the same problem. There were a load of threads on the official AMD forum, but they seem to delete anything that suggests their products don't work properly :rolleyes:
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2832654347810183449/
http://www.overclock.net/t/1184703/6990-crossfire-skyrim-bf3-ctd-help
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2832654624837209435/
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2832654347842401167/

Hope this helps.
 
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Thanks for the info Lee82UK! GLad to know i'm not alone and this may be a common prob.

Quick dumb question.. real dumb. Didnt even notice this thing till after pulling the stock cooling off a 7970 but what the hell is the tiny switch on the side of the card near the 2 crossfire teeth connectors??? Says 1 and 2 for the switch and there all in the 1 possition.

Am i supposed to select which connector i have the crossfire connector attached to?

No i changed mine around alot as i was swaping and moving cards around. Slot 2 to slot 2 then slot 1 to slot 1 then slot 2 to slot 2. At one time i had it slot 1 to slot 1 then slot 2 to slot 2 and slot 1 to slot 1.
Anyways there should of been some warrning sticker on the card or something to tell me i had to select the right connector if thats the case.. coming from Nvidia cards for years i had no idea.
 
i wish i was this rich :p. oh well dual 6950's and 3 24 1920x1200 is where i'll be at for awhile. excellent setup man :)
 
No one needs this kind of rig to game normally. :) This is just cause i can. No means plug and play without headaches getting everything runing great.
 
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