HD 6950 Crossfire vs Crysis

D

dobieg2002

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 7, 2007
Messages
234
I'm getting great scaling ~70-100% in everything I have tried except Crysis / Crysis Warhead, I get ~10-20% negative scaling when crossfire is enabled.

I have tried 11.1a and 11.2 drivers. Going by benchmarks I have seen I should at least see some gain.

The bencharks seem to use the 10.11 beta ~ 10.12a drivers, but I do not want to downgrade.

I swapped out my MB (Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5) with one that has a space between the cards (MSI X58A-GD45) thinking it was heat related, but there was no change except both cards now run cool.

I did perform a fresh install of Win7 Ultimate 64 bit.

I tried both cards individually and in Crossfire at stock, 6970 bios, Unlocked shaders, and Unlocked shaders + OC the same results each time, the single card was 5 - 10 fps faster than crossfire depending on settings.

System specs

MSI X58A-GD45

i7 950 ~ 3.8 167 bus (turbo ~4ghz) stock voltage on all settings

12 GB @ 1333 cas 7 1T

Could someone verify Crysis / Crysis Warhead performance and what driver version you are using?

Thanks,
 
Maybe the motherboard? I don't think that's it though since everything else works. Did you update crysis to the latest patch?
 
I'm running the version in steam tried 32bit and 64bit. I changed the MB out from a Gigabyte to MSI and no change. I'm also running a Thermaltake XT 875 PS. Running 11.2 CAP2
 
Tried 10.12a and 10.12 Cap1 with no luck same performance.

I will have to live with it and hope Crysis 2 works.
Here are the numbers for the tests I ran so far

Just Cause 2

CF 116 / S 60

Heaven Benchmark 2.1

CF 99.2 / S 49.4

3dMark11

CF 9656 / S 5433

Dirt2

CF 136 / S 79

AVP benchmark

CF 122 / S 65

and the one that doesn't work

Crysis

CF 50 / S 60
 
Try another Crysis disk, it's the only thing you did not change and it would have been the chespest thing to try first since it was only that game acting up.
 
I'm running at 1080P DX10 64 and 32 bit with custom config that seems to exaggerate the issue 10 – 15 FPS difference with the custom config. Built in GPU Benchmark. CPU Benchmark 2 (Ice) the difference is 4-6 FPS.

If I run at Very High with 0AA or 4xAA, the performance difference is ~ 5 FPS, but it is too slow to play at those settings.
 
dobieg2002 said:
I'm running at 1080P DX10 64 and 32 bit with custom config that seems to exaggerate the issue 10 – 15 FPS difference with the custom config. Built in GPU Benchmark. CPU Benchmark 2 (Ice) the difference is 4-6 FPS.

If I run at Very High with 0AA or 4xAA, the performance difference is ~ 5 FPS, but it is too slow to play at those settings.
Click to expand...

Did you try changing settings in ccc e.g. Tessellation Controll = application controlled, morphological AA = Off (unchedked) Antialiasing filter = default (not edge detect) etc...

Also if your only using one crossfire bridge, have you tried using the 2nd bridge that came with the other card instead?
 
I left everything default except I did try disabling the crossfireX power settings.

I'm not to worried about it now. After the demo, Crysis 2 doesn't seem to need anything special. It ran fine on single and Crossfire. the sad thing is the game is not too good and I think I wasted a bunch of money for high end games that will never appear. I guess I can try to run older / better games in eyefinity, or sell my second card.

Thanks for all your input.
 
In Windows 7 I'm having the same problem with Crysis, Warhead, both about 10% slower with Crossfire enabled with dual 6970s.

3dMark11 and Vantage are giving me correct scores.

What's really weird is, in Windows Vista my Crossfire performance is scaling correctly and Crysis is almost twice as fast with Crossfire. This is a brand new install of Vista.

I've reinstalled Windows 7 and I still get the same performance.

ASS! :mad:
 
What frames are you getting? Crysis, in my experience, is overwhelmingly demanding on the CPU past certain frames per second. For example, with two GPUs i hit a plateau at 70 fps at 4.2 GHz on my old i7-875k. Subsequently, adding a 3rd GPU only illicit higher FPS indoors, where it will diminish to negative scaling (relative to a dual GPU scenario) under certain gameplay conditions. Utilizing Afterburner's OSD for tracking relevant variables, I'd watch chip usage fluxuate between 50-70%. However, with a 5.2 GHz overclock pushing my newer 2600K, GPU activity skyrockets into the low 90s - 99% across the board & frame-rates concurrently deliver between 94-104 Everything maxed out with 8x AA (16x EQ throuigh driver, although uncertain if the engine implements it) & resolution 1920x1080,

In Eyefinity, though, a lower CPU frequency provides similar performance in FPS between these systems. With 2x (4x EQ) anti-aliasing I'll see 45 frames on the old rig, & slightly higher (47) compliments of my 2nd generation i7 I'm all but certain you aren't bottlenecked via CPU 99% of the time, & perhaps not even under the circumstances.. but testing with faster clocks could, at least, narrow down one such potential cause.

Edit: I see now, you're registering 50 frames with two cards & 60 with one. Your 6970s are competing for a finite capacity of resources that is, at some point, exceeding what your CPU is capable of servicing; even besides the setup work the CPU is responsible for, there's a shit-ton of processing work exceeding the typical form factor in Crysis. Setting up 60 screens to render is surely pushing a single card to 99% usage. I'd bet, with a crossfire consfiguration and backed up with the weight of Cryengine 2, each GPU is starving 40% of the time waiting for more instruction from the proccessor...killing your scaling. Remember the scope of Crysis levels, quality of textures, intensity of explosions, complexity of phsyics, details of particle/particle behavior, shadows, motion blur, etc. It seems possible there is some manner of CPU limitation here.
 
Last edited:
I'm getting 45-50fps on one card in Crysis.

I'm getting 35-40 fps with two cards in Crysis.

This is Windows 7.

In Vista, I'm getting 45-50 with one card, and 70-80 with two cards.

I can't seem to get the "Crossfire icon" when I'm gaming in Windows 7, but other games do.
 
try 10.12a if you can. They work well for me in both Cryses (Is that the plural? :D) at 2560x1600.
 
Those are very interesting findings.

I have no advice for Crysis, but I certainly think it is good to seee such excellent scaling in everything else.

I think Crysis is just a unique animal. I used to get good scaling with nvidia cards in SLi but when I had two 4870X2 cards in Crossfire, the performance was not all that great. Even one of those cards had stinky numbers.
 
Crysis is such ass :D

It's gonna be 2014 before they come out a single card that can max this POS. While the 6970 and GTX 580 are decent there are still a fair number of areas where it gets choppy in the 20s.
 
Depends what res. On a single display at 2560x1600 it'll be 2012-2013, which is a 5-6 year gap after release, about what's expected. Metro 2033 will be worse though. That won't be maxable on a single card at that res until almost 2020 by my calculations. Add 3D and eyefinity, and more like 2025-2026.
 
I haven't tried Metro 2033. Does it even look any good?

And I see my problem in Windows 7, in both Crysis and Crysis Warhead my first 6970 is running at full speed but the second card is at 2d mode, 250MHz core. So Crysis is saying MGPU in the console info but I can see why Crossfire is slower than one card now.

For some reason in Windows 7 I can't get the 2nd card to throttle up in Crossfire.
 
It's quite a good looking game, but like crysis that came before it, it's a good looking game that is more demanding than even its decent graphics should be.
 
Crysis runs better than most RPG engines though. RPG companies never seem to know how to build a decent engine.

Neverwinter Nights 2 still chugs at ~30fps in heavily detailed zones.

The Witcher still has areas that drop down to 18-20fps.

Dragon Age 2 demo is total ass with smoke, it drops down to 19fps when there's a lot of fire & smoke.

Crossfire 6970 can't even brute force that sh!t -_-

Maybe that Quad GTX580 setup in this forum has a shot with those games, lol.
 
dragonhawke said:
I haven't tried Metro 2033. Does it even look any good?

And I see my problem in Windows 7, in both Crysis and Crysis Warhead my first 6970 is running at full speed but the second card is at 2d mode, 250MHz core. So Crysis is saying MGPU in the console info but I can see why Crossfire is slower than one card now.

For some reason in Windows 7 I can't get the 2nd card to throttle up in Crossfire.
Click to expand...

Metro 2033 is so demanding that turning on Morph AA brought my FPS to 0 in the menu screens on a 5970. I had to reinstall just to get it working again. I had to pretty much run it on medium settings with very low AA/AF to get 30-40 FPS across 5760x1080.

It's a beast and it looked pretty good
 
Just adding to my experience...

I have the same problems in Crysis and Crysis Warhead. Im not sure why I got better playable framerates the other day, nothing has changed in my setup...

Metro 2033 runs very good, resolution at 6066x1080 (eyefinity) on three 23" samsungs..
I do not have the 6970 though, just crossfire 6950s.. and I have not unlocked the shaders yet...
Im now getting the flickering and checkerboard / horizontal screen tearing in fullscreen with vsync off.


I loaded the 11.4 beta drivers and then I installed Crysis Warhead. I got impressive framerates (70+) the other day, then for some reason tonight, I started to get the artifacting and sluggishness.
 
I get the Tearing Checkerboard also with Crossfire and eyefinity in Crysis, Crysis Warhead, and BC2 with Vsync enabled. Vsysnc disabled seems to be better. If I drop back to 1080P or Single monitor the Checkerboard goes away with Vsync on. Performance with Eyefinity in Crysis is about the same as without, very strange.
 
Here's a strange problem.

6950 flashed to 6960 Crossfire

Crysis FPS are through the roof with my 5ghz sandybridge 2600k, but even though I never dip below 55-60FPS at 1920x1200 it FEELS like I'm getting 20 at times. So choppy and laggy, but FPS are 60-80. Tried with all kinds of AA and no AA, makes no difference.

Ideas?
 
computerpro3 said:
Here's a strange problem.

6950 flashed to 6960 Crossfire

Crysis FPS are through the roof with my 5ghz sandybridge 2600k, but even though I never dip below 55-60FPS at 1920x1200 it FEELS like I'm getting 20 at times. So choppy and laggy, but FPS are 60-80. Tried with all kinds of AA and no AA, makes no difference.

Ideas?
Click to expand...

It's called microstuttering...enjoy.
 
I am having similar issues with sub-par crossfire scaling using two MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III's.

I am in the process of building a new system and this is the first gpu issue i've come across. The System specs and build progress are outlined in this thread. (which i posted at Anandtech).

have any of you figured out a fix? is windows 7 the issue?

I benchmarked using CrysisBenchmarkTool v1.05
AMD/ATI Catalyst 11.3
3 runs on the ASSAULT_HARBOR level
64Bit, DX10, all settings @ VERY HIGH, 1920x1200, 8xAA

With Crossfire DISABLED (only 1 GPU)
Pass 1: 25.27 MIN - 45.47 MAX - 34.57 AVG
Pass 2: 25.27 MIN - 46.23 MAX - 35.95 AVG
Pass 3: 25.27 MIN - 46.23 MAX - 35.69 AVG

GPU1 temp at end of test, 54C

With Crossfire ENABLED
Pass 1: 23.33 MIN - 59.92 MAX - 44.95 AVG
Pass 2: 23.33 MIN - 59.92 MAX - 40.18 AVG
Pass 3: 23.33 MIN - 60.97 MAX - 45.36 AVG

GPU1 temp at end of test, 52C
GPU2 temp at end of test, 47C

As you can see, the minimum framerate is actually lower in crossfire, and my average framerate has only improved around 30%. I've seen reviews where Crossfire 6950's achieve 80-90% scaling in Crysis.

So here i am scratching my head. I've read about the r_multigpu command... but haven't attempted to change this from whatever the default is.

I am also a bit unclear on how to use CCC application profiles. I installed the driver for profiles but don't understand how to use it, or if i need to use it on Crysis.

Any insight or help is greatly appreciated
Cheers
 
just a heads up, i figured out the issue (at least on my end). basically, even if you are running 64bit Windows 7, you should run the 32bit version of Crysis.

Benchmark results are HERE
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top