ATI CrossFireX Application Profile 10.8a Performance @ [H]

[FrgMstr]

P.S. Any chance [H] will start doing gaming notebook reviews?

Money pit for us. Not happening.

 

[blastingcap]

I am happy that AMD is improving the crossfire experience. It seemed like SLI scaled so much better in comparison when it was a driver/profile issue. Now the question is should i buy a PC with (2)5770 Crossfire or a single 5850? They cost about the same but is the crossfired 5770 cards faster?

2x5770 is roughly as fast as a 5870, which is ~20% faster than a 5850. However, 2x5770 draws 216 watts TDP vs. 188 watts TDP for the 5870, and it's a multi-GPU setup so you need 2 slots on mobo and may run into the occasional game that rejects multi-GPU. Single biggest advantage of going 2x5770 is that you can get a pair for $260 after rebate on Newegg right now, compared to the much higher price of 5870.

 

[ontariotl]

I've given up lately on ATI with their monthly releases, only to have a hotfix the following week. For the hell of it, I will entertain this new CAP 10.8a and see if anything improves.

I lucked out finding and using TwL's 3.90a driver he worked on cleaning up ATI's mess. He didn't have good words for the new 10.8 drivers either, fix something then break another.
I've been running QuadfireX Eyefinity the past week with BC2 and its been awesome. Now if it would stop crashing to desktop using eyefinity (no issues with single monitor) which seems to be a EA/DICE issue.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

I've given up lately on ATI with their monthly releases, only to have a hotfix the following week. For the hell of it, I will entertain this new CAP 10.8a and see if anything improves.

I lucked out finding and using TwL's 3.90a driver he worked on cleaning up ATI's mess. He didn't have good words for the new 10.8 drivers either, fix something then break another.
I've been running QuadfireX Eyefinity the past week with BC2 and its been awesome. Now if it would stop crashing to desktop using eyefinity (no issues with single monitor) which seems to be a EA/DICE issue.

not really any different from nvidia.. release a drive next week theres a beta release.. just ATI publicizes them more then nvidia does.. you actually have to look for the beta driver which is usually to fix something they broke in the WHQL drivers..

while i agree it is annoying its actually kinda nice having the hotfixes instead of waiting an entire month for them to fix a simple bug that was in the drivers they released like we had to prior to the 5k series being released..

 

[ontariotl]

not really any different from nvidia.. release a drive next week theres a beta release.. just ATI publicizes them more then nvidia does.. you actually have to look for the beta driver which is usually to fix something they broke in the WHQL drivers..

while i agree it is annoying its actually kinda nice having the hotfixes instead of waiting an entire month for them to fix a simple bug that was in the drivers they released like we had to prior to the 5k series being released..

I agree and welcome hotfixes, but it seems lately issues that have been brought up with crossfire (and quadfire for a long time), vsync etc haven't been addressed in a timely manner. We still talk about 10.4a or 10.5 being a great driver at best, and yet here we are heading into September. At least Nvidia fixes a few things with their drivers and makes improvements (minus the fan speed issue), but whatever they borked with the WHQL drivers they do quickly respond. It's where AMD may fix one or two items then drop the ball on others that may have been working before and don't bother to fix it for months on end.

That's where my frustrations lead. New drivers shouldn't head in the opposite direction of progress.

On top of that, its kind of embarrasing to be forced to look for an outside source from Finland to get some good drivers.

 

[DOX]

And Kyle is correct, I am watching this thread.

Hopefully not be as observant as the catalyst crew feedback surveys are..

CF has been broken the last 3 MONTHS of drivers, 10.5a was the last driver that worked properly on your last gen flagship product the 4870x2.

Basically any dx9 game doesnt engage 3d mode clocks on the 2nd gpu which is left in 2d idle powerplay mode.

Perhaps if HardOCP does some benchmarks on on 10.5a and 10.8 on last gen ati cards, well see some fixes soon too.

 

[Pieter3dnow]

Nice article guys

 

[ecuador]

I don't get it, how can the graphics drivers not "use the CPU's properly"? Why would that even be controlled by the graphics driver?

 

[Michaelius]

So suddenly they managed to repair it very fast once articles showing bad performance against competitor product hit the big hardware site?

 

[Daz1967]

I registered for this forum specifically to reply in this thread. I live in the UK but I've been a frequent user of the Catalyst Feedback Form to report bugs and such like since March when I switched from a single NVIDIA GTX 280 to one then two ATI HD 5870s running in CrossFireX!

Overall, I've found the drivers to be mostly fine with exceptions such as the lack of support for anti-aliasing under DX10 in both BioShock and its sequel, something NVIDIA managed almost two years ago. I'm continually disappointed by the apparent lack of commitment to CrossFireX for less popular games (sorry if that isn't the case but that's how it looks to me at times). CrossFireX is my first taste of mutli-GPU gaming but I sometimes wonder if I haven't just wasted my money and should have stuck with one card. For years I always refused to go SLI/CrossFire because I know they are heavily dependent on driver support and so far my experiences with two HD 5870s have just confirmed that.

These are some of the issues I've experienced even with this new Catalyst 10.8a Application Profile:

1. Blur still only runs on one GPU as ATI disabled support for CrossFireX after a bug was reported with multi-GPUs which causes the framerate to plummet and stay there when driving through any water unless you restart the race or game. As such the game runs at around 40 fps on one HD 5870 and it is irritating to see my second card going to waste, particularly as the game stills stutters from time to time.

If I rename the game executable to DiRT2_Game.exe then it runs on both GPUs with an improved framerate but it is clearly not optimised for Blur and feels oddly laggy despite the 60 fps framerate (according to MSI Afterburner's OSD). Why, oh why, can ATI not fix this? It is not acceptable in my view to have to wait three or four months for games to be fully supported.

2. Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands's framerate still drops to 20-30 fps if the prince dies and you restart from the last checkpoint when running the game under CrossFireX. If I disable CrossFireX then the game runs fine. I reported this issue (along with Blur's) to ATI well over two months ago and it is still not fixed. Massively disappointing.

3. StarCraft II has been out a month and still doesn't work very well with two GPUs, neither does Kane & Lynch 2 for that matter which brings me to my final point (for now).

4. That is that games without driver support can sometimes run worst on two GPUs forcing me to mess around disabling and re-enabling CrossFireX and/or Catalyst AI. This is made all the more cumbersome by the fact that the Catalyst Control Center still lacks per-game profiles like those that NVIDIA have been using for HALF A DECADE! You can create profiles of a sort, yes, even if they're a little clunky but they have to be activated manually and aren't auto-loaded when you run a game. How very 2005!

Sure there are excellent third-party tools such as ATI Tray Tools and japamd's RadeonPro which you can use to create game profiles that auto-trigger but, come on, isn't it about time ATI offered these as part of the drivers? What's stopping them anyway? Without those third-party tools I would have ditched the HD 5870s by now as using the CCC is achieve the same tasks is tedious at times!

How about allowing the user to edit and customise the Application Profiles themselves so that they or the community can add temporary fixes for new games while ATI work on more permanent ones? I personally get fed up of having to wait months for games I've just bought to be properly supported by ATI. By the time the issues are addressed I've moved on to something else. Single GPU users will be fine but if you have two or more cards then it's blind-luck whether the game will run OK or not in CrossFireX.

I hope ATI take the time to read and digest what I've posted because as an ex-NVIDIA user I have no complaints about the cards themselves; they're well-priced, nicely built and run cool and quiet, it's just that I feel the drivers could be much better if ATI had more involvement during game development. That way we could get support before the game's release or, in the worst case scenario, within a week or two at most of that date.

Isn't that what the Application Profiles were supposed to be for? So far we've have them released at the same time as the drivers which seems a bit of waste.

 

[magoo]

Two games are improved....
both have been out how long? Especially AvP.....been there, played it, moved on.

The CPU is to blame, not the driver? Nor the fact that there has been a totally stagnant release schedule......it takes nvidia to produce a competator and HardOCP to show just what we all have been saying, Crossfire ain't working well and the Application Profile stuff was all bullschizzle.

Too late to the dance there CatalystMaker......read [H] more ofter.

 

[cesium666]

Thanks for this update. Has anybody seen any difference with Star Craft 2 using Crossfire?

One of my friends with 5870CF says that on all the drivers so far he has gotten lower perf with CF on than with it off. CF works fine in other games so seems to be a driver issue. Made me hold off on my 2nd 5850 again

 

[John Gault]

There is hope. Thanks guys.

 

[Chameleoki]

Now, it says that the problem was not enough CPU for the driver. Was this only fixed for those two games or should we see performance for others? As it's just an CAP, I would assume just those applications.

 

[Jeffredo]

Now that's what I'm talking about. So now 2x 5850 or 5870 will fare better against 2x gtx 460 in these applications. Things are back in balance thanks to the extensive work of Hard OCP & finally ATI.

I doubt very seriously that the HD 5850 crossfire will beat GTX 460 SLI in this two games still.

 

[FrgMstr]

I doubt very seriously that the HD 5850 crossfire will beat GTX 460 SLI in this two games still.

We are working on that right now. We want to see as well. And once we address AvP and BC2 again (as well as Metro 2033) we are going to pick some more games and see what happnes with those when compared to 460 SLI.

I think the value alternative is still going to point to 460 SLI, but we want to know for sure. Keep in mind this is coming from a guy with 5870 CFX in his own box. I was playing Mafia II for the first time last night and I was extremely disappointed in the performance. I need to load it up on my 480 GTX test box I have been working with and see if there is a world of difference now.

 

[Notleh]

Brent and Kyle, thank you for being our advocates and making this happen. You guys rock.


I love how they say it took some time to replicate the error. How about just sticking in a game and playing it? Or reading your own damn forums.

Or how they blamed it on that particular map used for the test, lol.

I guarantee that they knew but didn't give a shit until [H] hit them over the head with real numbers. They didn't care as long as sales were good. Look at how they have kept the 5xxx prices so high even though they were getting trounced in performance. Bad customer service like this does not deserve my hard earned money, so they have lost my business for awhile.


On the bright side, Nvidia cards are having some great deals right now...check out the [H]ot Deals section: http://hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=28

 

[Pinky Floyd]

Please bear with me, this is my first post here.

My specs:

Motherboard: Asus P5Q Deluxe
RAM: 4gb Corsair Dominator
GPU: 2 x Asus HD5850
CPU: Q6600 @ 3.2ghz
OS: Windows 7 64 bit

The last driver to work with Crossfire and Bad Company 2 for me was 10.5a. This driver works, and works superbly for me. No driver since this has worked in this way. In fact, and I know this is hard to believe, every single driver release since 10.5a is actually SLOWER in Crossfire in Bad Company 2 than with a single card (I test this by turning off CAT AI).

I have tried numerous installs of the newer drivers, using full uninstalls each time and nothing makes a jot of difference. I'm sure you won't be too surprised to hear that when I went back to 10.5a, Crossfire was suddenly, magically and amazingly working again.

Imagine my delight at reading about the 10.8a app profiles, a fix at last!

Not for me with the 10.8 driver and the 10.8a CAP. The exact same issue manifests itself. Crossfire in BC2 gives worse performance than turning off CAT AI and just using a single card.

I have to admit, I am at a complete loss as to what is going on down at ATI towers. Frustration is kicking in. I simply do not understand if 10.5a work so well, what ATI did to break the driver so spectacularly and for so long now.

Despite the news of a fix this STILL isn't right, or anywhere near it.

I mean, for Crossfire to work in 10.5a then in 10.6 onwards to have LESS performance than a single card is just incomprehensible. Who in their right mind would spend money on 2xGPU's if that were the case?

I'm pretty much at the end of the road installing and uninstalling drivers. My goodwill towards the company I have over £400 to for my GPU's is fast disappearing.

I am happy to provide any DXDIAG's, traces or any other tests that ATI would like me to run in order for them to fix this issue. I would happily go on to any BETA test list. I have already reported my problem officially via the AMD driver feedback survey page.

In short, 10.5a works brilliantly for me with Crossfire and BC2. Every other driver, including 10.8 is horribly, and spectacularly broken.

I'm simply at a loss as to how to move the issue forward now, especially if ATI regard the issue as fixed.

 

[DarkStryke]

Nothing was apparently broken, they just added 'new functionality', so there must be nothing to fix. Yeah, I got that reply and I can't tell if it was just some twitter sarcasm, or if that's the actual thought process going on over at team red's driver HQ.

I think most that have been putting up with this are frankly tired of waiting through driver revisions (that contain some worthwhile updates for other things) for a fix. I know it, along with the 460's being a great release, have turned my builds off of the 5xxx series, and that's not really a great vibe to be pushing when there is a Q4 6xxx series on the horizon.

 

[Pinky Floyd]

Well I'm back on 10.5a, and Crossfire is once again perfect for BC2.

I didn't install any app profiles along with 10.5a, instead I installed the 10.8a CAP and everything is still fine.

Looks like it's not the CAP, but the driver causing the issues, but I think I knew that anyway.

 

[fausto412]

this is the reason i prefer single gpu cards. a dual gpu card would be ok...but crossfire and slip depend too much for my tastes on driver updates

 

[psychok9]

I'm very disappointed.
I'll never buy CF system or another 5850, if AMD/ATi has abandoned 4xxx users (not very old gpu, but an generation back), it's ridicolous... 6xxx gpu It's on the door, and i don't want see the same behaviour with 5xxx CF users.

 

[psychok9]

this is the reason i prefer single gpu cards. a dual gpu card would be ok...but crossfire and slip depend too much for my tastes on driver updates

Yes, but it's worst.
With future Catalyst your CF system can break again without AMD will care or fix it because the focus it's on last generation card. If i update drivers, the minimum it's that catalyst don't goes worst or disable my 2nd card... and fix showstopper bugs with future games.
I'm very unhappy because I love AMD since my first cpu AMD K6-2, and it's the only brand that have a good policy (vs Intel or nVidia bad guys).
I like to spend my money on items that have a good reliability.
I'd like to get reassurance on that from CatalystMaker, but maybe I'm dreaming.

 

[psychok9]

In short, 10.5a works brilliantly for me with Crossfire and BC2. Every other driver, including 10.8 is horribly, and spectacularly broken.

I'm simply at a loss as to how to move the issue forward now, especially if ATI regard the issue as fixed.

I don't know you and sorry if you have a lot of knowledge of the steps, but this is my tips/step (try cost only time):
1) Uninstall ALL ATi voices from control panel.
2) Boot in safe mode.
3) Remove drivers using Driver Sweeper ATi voice and run batch file "ati_shit_cleaner.cmd" (made by TwL on another forum) or Driver Cleaner.NET (ATi, ATi CCC, ATi HDMI AUDIO, ATi WDM).
4) Go to device manager -> video cards > select vga card and uninstall.
5) Boot in normal mode, another launch of "ati_shit_cleaner.cmd" and/or Driver Cleaner.NET.
6) Install your new drivers and application profiles.

 

[cadaveca]

psychok9, I'm gonna try that right now, because I'm still getting cursor corruption, that the release notes for this driver says are fixed.


Sad if the natural uninstaller doesn't work right, but I already knew that.

 

[kllrnohj]

I love how they say it took some time to replicate the error. How about just sticking in a game and playing it? Or reading your own damn forums.

Replicating the error means having something consistent, repeatable, and objective to test whether or not the fix actually worked. It does take time to figure that out, and simply playing the game doesn't work.

Or how they blamed it on that particular map used for the test, lol.

Entirely possible, even likely. If you look at other reviews, you'll see BFBC2 working just fine with CFX, even [H]'s old review showed 5970 rocking in it. It wasn't until they switched maps that suddenly CFX tanked.

Compare: http://hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTI4MDEzMjAyMktaeXptalVUemdfMV8xX2wuZ2lm

To: http://hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTI4MDg3MDE5MnpYc3R0enVpZ1FfMV80X2wuZ2lm

5970 dominates 460 SLI in the first, but 460 SLI dominates 5850 CF in the second. The difference between the two tests? A different map was used. ATI's explanation is perfectly believable.

Look at how they have kept the 5xxx prices so high even though they were getting trounced in performance.

lol wut? When was that? Only the 460, which is still fairly new, offers *anything* competive in price/performance, other than that ATI has dominated single card value this entire generation across the board.

 

[Brent_Justice]

Very impressive. I didn't know you guys actually tested through a whole segment. I thought you did 30-60 second runs like most others.

We like to keep our runs between 5-10 minutes, we strive to play through the entire level we are FRAPSing from start to finish, we go pretty fast, so it doesn't take a long time, but the graphed data you see contains all elements of gameplay from a particular map. Keep in mind, this is just what we graph, this isn't only what we use to figure out the highest playable settings, we actually play through several maps for this, areas in the game we know are hard on performance and different game elements you encounter in the game, to figure out the highest settings you can play at, we just have to chose one map to actually graph, and we try to find one of the hardest graphically to do that in.

 

[the_real_7]

well I dont know about everyone else .. but man im glad crossfire performance is back up for the red team , i was about to sell my two babies . . . .

 

[jds29]

In AMD's response they basically admit that they pay no attention to user feedback for 3+ months about xfire performance unless they can replicate it in their office? And they only paid attention to it once Hard berated them in a conclusion to their article? That doesn't sound right.

 

[CATALYST MAKER]

Yes, but it's worst.
With future Catalyst your CF system can break again without AMD will care or fix it because the focus it's on last generation card. If i update drivers, the minimum it's that catalyst don't goes worst or disable my 2nd card... and fix showstopper bugs with future games.
I'm very unhappy because I love AMD since my first cpu AMD K6-2, and it's the only brand that have a good policy (vs Intel or nVidia bad guys).
I like to spend my money on items that have a good reliability.
I'd like to get reassurance on that from CatalystMaker, but maybe I'm dreaming.

AMD and I do care and will fix what we can, regardless of whether it is last generation or not.
Here is your reassurance.

As soon as we can see the issue, then we will investigate it and if possible fix it.

 

[clarkkent57]

What a half-ass approach to driver releases; profiles should be released with driver updates.

Sorry, but that's the way I see it.

 

[CATALYST MAKER]

Nothing was apparently broken, they just added 'new functionality', so there must be nothing to fix. Yeah, I got that reply and I can't tell if it was just some twitter sarcasm, or if that's the actual thought process going on over at team red's driver HQ.

I think most that have been putting up with this are frankly tired of waiting through driver revisions (that contain some worthwhile updates for other things) for a fix. I know it, along with the 460's being a great release, have turned my builds off of the 5xxx series, and that's not really a great vibe to be pushing when there is a Q4 6xxx series on the horizon.

You misinterpret me yet again.

What I was attempting to say within the confines of 140 characters, is that we did indeed add new functionality. Period. The map that now runs faster was running slow with 10.8, 10.7, 10.6, 10.5 and yes even 10.4.... in other words it was always running that way. We found a CPU optimization that basically used four cores effectively (in a four core CPU example).

I did NOT say nothing was broken. What I said is that we fixed one issue by the above stated new functionality. If there was a map that was working great up until Cat 10.5a and then stopped running as fast with Cat 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8 please let me know which map it is and a quick FPS comparison of 10.5a and 10.x

I am here to help... as tough as it may seem to believe

 

[FrgMstr]

I can understand some of you guys' hostility, but the fact is that Terry is here to help you now, so let's utilize his resources with specific feedback so he can see if there are other issues that need to be addressed. And when I say specific, please be specific about the issue. Details are what Terry will need will need to address your concerns. "It's broke" gets us nowhere.

 

[heflys20]

lol wut? When was that? Only the 460, which is still fairly new, offers *anything* competive in price/performance, other than that ATI has dominated single card value this entire generation across the board.

I was waiting for someone to say this. However, the 470' have started to creep down in price substantially, and the 5870 is only like 10-12% better, yet cooler and probably calmer.

 

[byusinger84]

ATI, I have bought your last two generations of products. Please pay attention to what the guys here at HardOCP are saying. We need updates like this more frequently and better communication from you guys. It would go a LONG way in at least letting us know that you've acknowledged the problem and are working on it. Giving us updates helps us know you care about us as customers.

HardOCP, thanks for staying on top of this.

 

[DOX]

Can you atleast confirm that you read that there is a issue with cf not engaging properly on the 4xxx/x2 series, cause posting religously in the catalyst feedback surveys seems to have done diddly squat.

 

[FrgMstr]

I was waiting for someone to say this. However, the 470' have started to creep down in price substantially, and the 5870 is only like 10-12% better, yet cooler and probably calmer.

I think we tried to make a point that AMD has still ruled the roost in single card configurations. The current price slide on the GTX 480 is surprising. Have seen some of those for less than a 5870 in the last couple of days.

 

[Pinky Floyd]

Terry, it's brilliant that you are on here engaging with us over these issues, it's very much appreciated!

Do you have any insight into my problem?

I'm totally open to any suggestions or can give more information if needed.

 

[FrgMstr]

LOL. Yeah, you guys made that pretty evident, I was more baffled by some of the user comments. I will say, Nvidia has lowered their prices by a ridiculous amount in the past month. I guess the oncoming 6xxx series has them concerned.......

In your opinion, Kyle, are these substantial price drops a bad sign?

I NEVER see price drops as a bad sign. NVIDIA is just figuring out where it needs to be to sell NOW. Don't think that NVIDIA is changing prices now worrying about what AMD's move in October is.

 

[kllrnohj]

I was waiting for someone to say this. However, the 470' have started to creep down in price substantially, and the 5870 is only like 10-12% better, yet cooler and probably calmer.

The 470 is competing against the 5850, though, not the 5870. And in that respect, the two cost about the same, perform about the same, but the 5850 uses less power and thus produces less heat and is quieter. I think it OCs better as well, but I'm not sure on that one. And 5870 vs. GTX 480, the 5870 is now down to $350 + COD:MW2 on newegg right now vs. $420 + Metro 2033 for the GTX 480. I'm sure you can find deals, but that basically puts the 5870 at ~10% slower but ~15% cheaper (and of course the heat/power/noise savings).

Certainly not getting trounced in performance for the cost by any stretch of the imagination, I'd still call ATI's cards a better value if you plan to stick with a single card, but the gap is shrinking. Nvidia should have launched at their current prices :/