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Help with Crossfire

A

Anpu

n00b
Joined
Mar 18, 2006
Messages
52
Hi all, I just installed 2 3870s in crossfire X, I was wondering how do you know if crossfire is enabled. I set it to be enabled in CCC, but I am not sure if it is detecting my second card, how do I tell? Thanks
 
GPU-Z will see both cards as long as they are plugged into the system. This does not mean that the driver is using dual GPU's to render. I had that problem on my old X1900 crossfire setup. Best thing to do is uninstall the driver and use driver cleaner. Restart the system and install new drivers.

You can also check it with 3dmark. Disable crossfire and run it. Write down your fps @ a certain point of the benchmark. Enable crossfire and run again. This works best with 3dmark 2001 as the difference is pretty big in the frames and its hard to miss.
 
Alright, well according to ATIs CCC Crossfire is enabled, and according to ATI Tray tools it is as well. GPU-Z picks up both cards and also says crossfire is enabled. Although I tested UT3 with both crossfire enabled and it disabled and the fps at high settings on 1600x1200 gave me approx the same fps with both around 62. Although I did notice that when it was disabled it tended to dip into the 50s more. I am downloading 3dMark01 right now, and will run that then 3dmark06 too.
 
Well, in UT3 i had VSinc turned off in the game settings. Now I does CCC have a place for that setting as well? If I remember correctly my old X800 I had a few years ago did.
 
If you're testing FPS you should have vsync off. Once you know crossfire is working, obviously turn vsync back on and raise in game settings and AA to the point where you don't dip below a desired average framerate.

I can't stand playing first person shooters without vsync, it's the most important setting in my opinion.
 
Ok, I am pretty sure VSinc is off. Unless there is a setting in CCC for it, it is off. Now I tried some more maps in UT3, however fps is about the same when crossfire is enabled in CCC and when it is not. Maybe UT3 is not optimized for crossfire where it just came out. I am going to try 3dmark06 when it finishes downloading so maybe that will give me a better idea. In CCC though the only time it shows that I have 2 GPUs is when I go to the Overdrive menu, other than that the drop down menu only shows the card that has my monitor plugged into it. When I right click on the ATI icon in the windows tray it shows 4 slots with ATI Radeon HD3870, so I am assuming it is recognizing my two cards and saying I have 4 slots for 4 monitors. I am also running an Asus Maximus Formula SE X38 mobo.
 
I have to say this is retarded, you spend $400 and cant even tell if they are working together. What a joke they need to add that to their new driverset.
 
Glow said:
I have to say this is retarded, you spend $400 and cant even tell if they are working together. What a joke they need to add that to their new driverset.
Click to expand...

It's pretty easy to tell with both my 1950xtxs and 2900xts crossfire setups, fire up 3DMark06 and you can tell the difference, check out the call of juarez bench as well, you should be able to see the difference there as well.
 
Anpu said:
Alright, well according to ATIs CCC Crossfire is enabled, and according to ATI Tray tools it is as well. GPU-Z picks up both cards and also says crossfire is enabled. Although I tested UT3 with both crossfire enabled and it disabled and the fps at high settings on 1600x1200 gave me approx the same fps with both around 62. Although I did notice that when it was disabled it tended to dip into the 50s more. I am downloading 3dMark01 right now, and will run that then 3dmark06 too.
Click to expand...
The demo was capped at 62 fps.
http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=578487
I haven't looked in the retail yet. Edit the ini and try again.
 
yea, I am running the full game, and could not find the stuff in any of the .ini files. Not sure if they capped it or not. Also I cannot run 3dmark06, for some reason it always gives me a "Not Responding" message in windows task manager. Its done this since I got my system a month ago and I just put a new copy of windows on yesterday So i think it must not like something in my setup.
 
Hmm...there used to be a problem with the CCC where 3dmark06 wouldn't respond, you would have to replace the Direcpll.dll file to get it working. You may want to try doing that, I think guru3d has the file available for download.
 
Glow said:
I have to say this is retarded, you spend $400 and cant even tell if they are working together. What a joke they need to add that to their new driverset.
Click to expand...

Anpu said:
Alright, well according to ATIs CCC Crossfire is enabled, and according to ATI Tray tools it is as well. GPU-Z picks up both cards and also says crossfire is enabled
Click to expand...

Nothing is retarded in this situation. I think Anpu is just having a hard time figuring out how to test his performance.

But Anpu, this really isn't hard, just use any timedemo or synthetic benchmark (any 3dmark) to test performance between crossfire disabled and enabled. Even Hardforum has a topic on this located here.

Then for individual games, just raise the settings to the highest including resolution with a very high AA and see how much better gameplay is. For UT3 don't worry about getting over 60, worry about dipping under 30 with higher settings.
 
Alright well I was finally able to get 3DMark06 to load. It says that I have 1/1 graphics adapter HD 3870. But then it says that there are 3 audio adapters: picks up the 2 3870s HD Audio adapters and then my Asus onboard sound adapter. It does show at the bottom that there are 2 cards in my pci-e slots and sees them as each an HD3870.
 
OK I ran 3dMakr06 with both Crossfire enabled in CCC and with it disabled:

With Enabled: 10111
With Disabled: 10194

So I would take from that crossfire is not working. Anyone have any ideas?
 
Anpu said:
Alright well I was finally able to get 3DMark06 to load. It says that I have 1/1 graphics adapter HD 3870. But then it says that there are 3 audio adapters: picks up the 2 3870s HD Audio adapters and then my Asus onboard sound adapter. It does show at the bottom that there are 2 cards in my pci-e slots and sees them as each an HD3870.
Click to expand...

"Display Device 1/1" means pages 1 of 1. 3dmark06 will show you how many GPUs you have. CCC has already told you that Crossfire is enabled, stop obsessing if it's on or off.

Now tell us the 3dmark06 score you get with it on and with it off. From now on, when you tell us a benchmark, make sure to include the test settings. 3dmark06 is default for everyone, so there's no need to give us those test notes. But the next time you report UT3 fps make sure to tell us resolution, in-game settings, and AA/AF.

Anpu said:
OK I ran 3dMakr06 with both Crossfire enabled in CCC and with it disabled:

With Enabled: 10111
With Disabled: 10194

So I would take from that crossfire is not working. Anyone have any ideas?
Click to expand...

Yea it's not. What driver version are you using and OS?
 
My OS is XP 32-bit, my driver is packaging version 8.43-071016a-050244C-ATI
CCC version is 2007.1016.2138.36845

My Settings for UT3 are 1600x1200 with everything maxed in game.... They do not give you options to change values by increasing the AA and what not. They just give you a slider that allows you to increase or decrease world detail and so on. They are all maxed.
 
Anpu said:
My OS is XP 32-bit, my driver is packaging version 8.43-071016a-050244C-ATI
CCC version is 2007.1016.2138.36845

My Settings for UT3 are 1600x1200 with everything maxed in game.... They do not give you options to change values by increasing the AA and what not. They just give you a slider that allows you to increase or decrease world detail and so on. They are all maxed.
Click to expand...

If a game doesn't give you AA/AF options, then you do it manually through the CCC, that's what it's for.

Crossfire should be giving you 17000 points in 3dmark06. You have the latest driver, so I don't know what could be wrong.

What motherboard and cpu do you have?

Here's some silly questions: Did you plug a power cable into both video cards? Did you put the crossfire connector on top of the videocards?
 
Yea I took them out to make sure. In fact I put 1 in then installed the drivers this time. I noticed in CCC that when you do that crossfire option does not exist. Then I put the other card in and windows recognized it as a card, installed its drivers and what not. So I then uninstalled the ati drivers and reinstalled the drivers again so it would pick up the second card , again it gives me the crossfire option, but much of the same as when I first installed. It must just be that the drivers are just not at the point of supporting crossfire properly with 3870s.
 
Anpu said:
Yea I took them out to make sure. In fact I put 1 in then installed the drivers this time. I noticed in CCC that when you do that crossfire option does not exist. Then I put the other card in and windows recognized it as a card, installed its drivers and what not. So I then uninstalled the ati drivers and reinstalled the drivers again so it would pick up the second card , again it gives me the crossfire option, but much of the same as when I first installed. It must just be that the drivers are just not at the point of supporting crossfire properly with 3870s.
Click to expand...

i would say search the net for betas, we know they have have crossfire up to and beyond 2 cards with benchmarks already out that shows they work, take a look at [H]'s review of the cards to see if you cn find thier driver version and go on the hunt for that version
 
It looks like the new 7.11 drivers fixed the issues I was having. i now score 15000 in 3Dmark06 in crossfire vs 11000 in single card mode. I would like to thank everyone who helped me!
 
Yea, I realize that, but the difference between my score and theres could be a lot of things, such as CPU and how much it is oced, memory, OS environment and so on. So it works now and it runs stuff very nice with everything cranked at 1600x1200. Only exception so far is UT3, again I would imagine a hotfix for that will be released.
 
Anpu said:
Yea, I realize that, but the difference between my score and theres could be a lot of things, such as CPU and how much it is oced, memory, OS environment and so on. So it works now and it runs stuff very nice with everything cranked at 1600x1200. Only exception so far is UT3, again I would imagine a hotfix for that will be released.
Click to expand...

Didn't see that you fixed the problem. Good job.

Your scores are typical of crossfire and sli, around 50% gain. Games like fear and unreal love multigpus, so you should already be benefiting. In fact one review shows the 3850 crossfire having an 85% gain in UT3 (bottom of the page). The review mentions the game doesn't run in AA.

It may not seem like crossfire isn't working in UT3, but it should be now, it's just one 3870 is damn good at UT3 at 1600x1200. Other than vertical sync and AF, don't know what else you can put on to take advantage of crossfire, maybe getting a 30" LCD and playing at 2560x1600, haha.
 
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