Overclocking, Xfire, and Crysis.

[Just2stoned]

This may belong in the overcocking section but I'll ask here anyway.

I have 2 HIS IceQ Turbo 3 512mb X1950pro Cards running in Xfire. I have been trying to tweak Crysis to run at a respectable framerate on High settings. Right now I am running All High settings @ 1280x1024 with no AA. I get about 10-15fps. I was quite dissapointed in this. I quit the game and made sure Xfire was on and it was. I searched the web for any information on IF crysis even supports dual gfx cards and it supposedly does. My problem is that the game runs the same with just 1 card. I disabled Xfire and ran the game and it actually had a 3-5fps gain in performance!

There is an option you can check in the dev console, which is r_MultiGPU (0,1,2, 0=1 card, 1=2 cards, 2=auto detect) You first have to use r_restricted 0 to unrestrict it of course. I changed this option to 1, to make it use 2 cards but there was absolutely NO CHANGE!!!

Now the question is about the overclocking I have done. I have taken my X2 3800+ from it's stock 2.0ghz to 2.55ghz while reducing my mem speed from 400mhz to 133mhz. I'm wondering if I set my CPU and MEM back to stock speeds if it'll improve anything. I doubt it because I gain about 1000 points in 3dm06(8343 top score) with the CPU O/C'd.

I've also tried various config files from around the net. Is anyone getting better performance than me with a similar setup? SLi may be working in Crysis, but I really don't think Xfire works at all. If someone can confirm it is working please let me know.

 

[Just2stoned]

Forgot to mention that I'll be upgrading to the 3870's soon, but I still think I should have some sort of improvement with Crysis in Xfire.

Forgot to mention that with Xfire enabled, the Loading screen actually loads twice as fast than with 1 card, but thats it....

 

[-=PESTILENCE=-]

Crossfire doesn't work in the game right now. They are making a patch that will enable it soon. I have 2 1950xtx's in crossfire at the moment and i'm upgrading to 2 3870's this week in a brand new rig.

 

[rennyf77]

running 3870cf in xp now. previous poster is correct, cf does not work right in crysis. actually, cf is kind of wonky in a lot of recently released games. poor performance in gow and inconsistent performance in cod4, but i haven't tried the new patches for either game yet.

 

[Croak]

Are you folks using the Crysis hotfix drivers? If not, there's your problem. The WHQL 7.11 drivers don't have the hotfix code in them.

But with the Crysis hotfix drivers in DX9 mode, Crossfire works just fine.

 

[rennyf77]

not talking about the artifacting. talking about the inconsistent frame rate. currently playing at 1280x800 with the very high hack, turning shadows to low and post processing to medium. sometimes the frame rate spikes into the 80's and at other times it dips into the 10's. on a single card, the frame rate doesn't go as high but it doesn't drop as low either. [H] wrote a little blurb about this very same problem a few days ago, stating that it was the reason they hadn't published a crysis eval yet.

 

[Croak]

The hotfix drivers do more than stop artifacting and shimmering, they substantially improve Crossfire performance.

I played the entire game using the hotfix drivers with a pair of 256mb 3850's in DX9 Crossfire, at 1920x1080 with a custom system.cfg file...and never saw less than 25fps except at initial map start.

I've got 512mb 3870's now, but have no desire to actually play the game again, evar. The only reason it's still installed is so I can shit out benchmark numbers.

Here's the system.cfg, if you're interested:

con_restricted=0
r_displayinfo=1
sys_preload = 1


r_VSync=0
d3d9_TripleBuffering=0
r_ssao_quality=1
r_ssao_amount=1
r_SSAO_darkening=0.7
r_TerrainAO_FadeDist=1
r_HDRlevel=0.75
r_TexturesStreaming=0
r_ColorGradingDOF=0
r_ShadowJittering=1
r_ShadowBlur=0
e_gsm_lods_num=4
e_shadows_from_terrain_in_all_lods=0
r_UseEdgeAA=0
r_depthoffield = 1
e_shadows_max_texture_size=256
e_view_dist_ratio=45
e_particles_lod=0.7
e_vegetation_min_size=1.5
e_view_dist_ratio_vegetation=50

r_SSAO_radius=1
r_sunshafts=1
r_Beams = 3
r_BeamsMaxSlices=100
e_particles_thread = 1
g_blood = 1

q_ShaderShadow=1
r_EyeAdaptationBase=0.2

e_vegetation_sprites_distance_ratio = .7
e_lod_ratio = 4
e_vegetation_sprites_distance_ratio = .7
e_detail_materials_view_dist_xy = 1024
e_terrain_texture_lod_ratio = 1.5
e_terrain_lod_ratio = 1.5

e_view_dist_ratio_vegetation=20 ;20 for performance
r_TexturesStreaming = 0
r_MultiGPU = 1

 

[rennyf77]

thats nice but it doesn't look like you're running the very high cfg hack in xp so it doesn't matter to me.

 

[Just2stoned]

I have not gotten the Hotfix yet because it didn't look like I needed it. I read somewhere else that the only thing the hotfix did was upgrade your driver to 7.11's (which I have). I will get it tonight and test it but I'm pretty sure it will not make a damn bit of difference. Heres what AMD puts on their site:
*
DirectX 10: Fixes texture flickering in bushes, clouds, trees
*
DirectX 10: Performance improvements
*
DirectX 9: Fixes Anti-Aliasing corruption seen on the ATI Radeon 2900 Series
*
DirectX 9: Anti-Aliasing performance enhancements
*
DirectX 9: Crossfire performance improvements
*
DirectX 9: Fixes random graphics corruption during game play

1. Don't have DX10
2. Don't have any corruption at all, + I don't have 2900 series.
3. AA enhancements.. HAHAH.. I can never run AA so I don't care. It looks just fabulous on High everything. I too am using a custom config so it doesn't matter.
4. Xfire performance improvements..... um... What improvements. It isn't working period(yes I have it on). If they enabled xfire than thats different, but you can't improve performance on something that just simply doesn't work at this time.
5. Still, I have no gfx corruptions.

My game looks beautiful with the custom config I am using. Running at 1280x1024 with no AA and settings set damn near close to high or very high, getting 10-15fps is just unacceptable. I get 10-20fps with 1 card. Trust me i've checked and rechecked and turning xfire on has zero zilch nada none no zip nil notta negative nope effect in game. NONE.

I'm not saying anyone is lying here, I'm just re-emphasizing the fact that xfire needs to "work" before they can improve on it. I'm still going to try the hotfix, even though 54mb is a hefty 'hotfix'.... we'll see.

 

[The Pharaoh]

I too can confirm that with the hotfix and the r_multigpu setting there is a loss of 3-5fps performance when crossfire is on. I run 2 x1900 series cards.