Powercolor 5970 St-St-St-Stutter

E

evileye

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Can someone explain this stutter phenomena to me:

Aion
Crysis

Happens whenever I turn on Crossfire with this damn card. My 4870x2 was smooth as silk compared to this. The game doesn't really matter, I can load up MW2 and capture that as well if you want =\ It's not limited to eyefinity either.

i7 920 @ 3.80 ghz (and everything between down to stock)
12GB DDR3
Powercolor 5970
Fresh Win7
MSI x58 Platinum SLI

Catalyst 10.2 and 10.3 (haven't tried much else)

Normally I'd figure it out via the great google, but I've spent 3 days trying to characterize it and I'm still pretty much at a loss. On top of that my 3rd monitor just went kaput and I'm feeling like shit about this whole tri-30" thing =\

Might cross-post this to powercolor's forums, see what I get..
 
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always saw eyefinity as a waste personally.

multi-gpu cards tend to have this problem.
 
evileye said:
Can someone explain this stutter phenomena to me:

Aion
Crysis

Happens whenever I turn on Crossfire with this damn card. My 4870x2 was smooth as silk compared to this. The game doesn't really matter, I can load up MW2 and capture that as well if you want =\ It's not limited to eyefinity either.

i7 920 @ 3.80 ghz (and everything between down to stock)
12GB DDR3
Powercolor 5970
Fresh Win7
MSI x58 Platinum SLI

Catalyst 10.2 and 10.3 (haven't tried much else)

Normally I'd figure it out via the great google, but I've spent 3 days trying to characterize it and I'm still pretty much at a loss. On top of that my 3rd monitor just went kaput and I'm feeling like shit about this whole tri-30" thing =\

Might cross-post this to powercolor's forums, see what I get..
Click to expand...

I currently don't have multi-monitor display setup on my 5970. But there is no stuttering in AION for me on my 5970 with crossfire enabled ( I stopped playing a month ago). What are your temps during gameplay?

This stuttering that I am seeing happened to me when I first got my Quad Core and used the default intel CPU cooler. The stuttering went away once I got my aftermarket CPU cooler.
 
There has been a few games where I got weird stuttering with VSync enabled. It seems like it's some odd interaction between how crossfire works and the FPS limitations imposed by using VSync. Other than that I don't usually notice much stuttering.
 
Isn't it annoying. I got the impression that it was something to do with onboard memory use as it's much, much worse in Eyefinity resolutions and unbearably worse in Eyefinity with vsync on and triple buffering.

Try dropping AA levels, or dropping to an intermediate resolution and see if that clears up the stuttering a bit.

I found Dirt2 unplayable but then with their latest patch they actually mentioned improving framerate fluidity and doing something to improve triple buffering. Voila, Crossfinity stuttering was suddenly much better.

I've never noticed it in MW2.

Source engine games are really bad stutterers as well. In fact I have to play L4D2 and TF2 with half a 5970 as I can't bear the stuttering.
 
Clean out the drivers and install the new ones.Sometimes it can be left overs from the old drivers causing problems.
 
First off, thanks everyone for their input. This has been driving me nuts.

My temps are ok, the GPU's are <90C and the i7 is around 75C during game load. Vsync didn't seem to make a difference. I am installing Dirt2 as a better benchmark. Also, I noticed a barely audible cap whine on the GPU itself. I'm assuming this might be an indication of dirty power? Think a newer/larger PSU will have a chance?

Edit: Just ordered the third 3008wfp to replace my (now green, in pieces, and on the floor) gateway.
 
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I know I fussed with Crysis in crossfinity and just chalked it up to poor coding on Crytek's end for this game. Everything can be turned on to very high, but as soon as you bring up post processing, the frame rate flucuates to craptastic levels (60 down to 4 and back to 60fps).
Running on one monitor at 1920x1200 and crossfire runs like a dream (constant 100fps). I think its just limited to the 1 gig ram per GPU that is limiting the 5970 in Eyefinity crossfire. I'm curious to try the new 5970 (2 gig ram per GPU) but I don't know if I want to plop another grand down just to play a game that I probably wont play again. All other games play fine. Just both Crysis games play like ass, which is a shame if you want all eye candy turned to "11" and eyefinity running.

As for Dirt 2 before the patch, it ran good for me in crossfinity. It stuttered for me until I discovered that running MSI afterburner in the background was the issue. I think this was also the issue with my GSOD. When I o/c the card with afterburner and close the program, I have not seen a GSOD since. I may experiment further, but why play with fire...if it works, don't fuck with it.

I found running Everest in the background when I first got my now sold 5870, it would freeze and crash all the time. It was a pain to find out that initial drivers worked fine, but install the beta's or new releases kept craping out the card when playing a game. With evererst off the system....no problems of freezing after that.
 
I suspected the 1gb RAM of texture memory @ eyefinity resolutions as well, but doesn't the fact a single GPU doesn't stutter reduce that possibility? Unless there's significant overhead in duplicating the data across both GPU's. Hmm..

I'm not familiar with the details of crossfire implementation.
 
Crysis on max setting with AA will be out of memory easily on high resolution.

even 1680*1050 ....

also there is one place that will stutter like crazy in Crysis is at the harbor, its engine issue dealing with multi-GPU. Warhead will stutter like crazy in the beach part, but that is memory issue...

about Aion, I haven't have any stutter at all.
 
I had a very similar problem...it was gpuz running in the backround...make sure you have nothing like that running while playing.
 
evileye said:
I suspected the 1gb RAM of texture memory @ eyefinity resolutions as well, but doesn't the fact a single GPU doesn't stutter reduce that possibility? Unless there's significant overhead in duplicating the data across both GPU's. Hmm..

I'm not familiar with the details of crossfire implementation.
Click to expand...

Yes, it doesn't make sense. Also you would expect Source engine games to have fewer problems as they barely stress the memory at all. You can whack up the AA levels in eyefinity resolutions in TF2 and L4D2 and it the framerate is still through the roof.

It varies wildly per game engine. I bet you're right that it's something to do with how game engines manage cloned memory storage in crossfire, or something like that. It doesn't happen at all with only one GPU.
 
I pretty much gave up for now. Got a third monitor coming in that I'm just going to sit on for some games until a new driver release.

Maybe when some of the 2gb/GPU cards to come out (like Asus Ares) this resolution will be more manageable. I'll wait on some benchmarks though...
 
So I was having a hard time explaining this to people. So while I'm sitting around waiting for my new third monitor to come in, I decided to grab some more hardened data.

I ran the Unigine Heaven benchmark 3 times w/ the following settings:

API: DirectX 11
Shader: High
Tessellation: Enabled
Anisotropy: 4
Anti-Aliasing: 2x
Full Screen: Yes
Vsync: OFF
Everything else is default.

Brand new install of windows 7 and 10.2 drivers.
i7 @ 3.8ghz
5970 is all stock speeds

This benchmark was one of my stutteriffic games (read: Not BFBC2). So I opened up some graphs and fired it off (note: the stuttering/frame drops were the same without afterburner running as well).

Below are my results:
4421913702_1fcb8ae9f4_o.jpg


What's not shown here is that a drop in GPU usage correlates with a stutter/frame drop in the game. As you can see, as we scale up in resolution, the usage spikes become more pronounced (as do the stutters). Notice the one with CF turned off? Yeah, smooth as butter in game as well. I actually get (what I feel) are better ave. frame rates, although I forgot to write down the results =\

I monitored CPU usage during this as well: no big rises or anything that matched with the dips. For each run it was a flat 20-40% utilization on the main thread. Also, a CPU bottleneck doesn't make sense given the way the usage is scaling.

Because it scales with resolution (>not with AA<) it becomes a huge problem at 7680x1600.

Some Q's:

Could this be PCIe bus bandwidth related? Could higher resolutions combined with the relatively smaller 1GB VRAM be causing a bottleneck due to the multiplexed x16 bus? Is there anything I can use to monitor bus utilization?

Or can it be CPU related? I was noticing input lag which I normally correlate to a bottlenecked CPU. Utilization doesn't always correlate with a bottleneck, however i am very hesistent to pin this on my i7 given the performance scaling I've seen.

I was thinking about purchasing a 5970 4GB version, but now I might as well just pick up a single 5870 2GB and wait on crossfinity drivers before grabbing a second. My 4870x2 was never this bad with CF on =\

I really implore anyone with a similar 5870x2 or 5970x1 setup thats experiencing stuttering (or not!) to do something similar and post the results; you will save my wallet much grief.
 
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That's interesting, and also suggests that adding more Ram to the cards isn't necessarily going to help. It might not be the total Ram size that's important but transfer speeds. In fact, you can tell when you've run out of Ram by increasing AA at Eyefinity resolutions. You suddenly hit a wall (different in each game) where your framerate sinks to single figures. Source games stutter the worst and they are not taking up lots of memory on the card.

So maybe 2GB cards might have more capacity to increase AA at extreme resolutions but might still stutter like a 1GB card.

Also, the fact that Dirt2's stuttering was almost all fixed with a patch to the game, coupled with the fact that it differs between game engines, suggest that it's not a hardware issue anyway.
 
oh btw crossfire eyefinity has been working since january so if you want to do dual 5870's then its not holding you back.

9.12 HF and any 10.x drivers support it.

:)
 
So. I disabled HyperThreading on the tought that it may have been a QPI->IOH bottleneck and behold:

4425657933_bfb05078da_o.jpg


Stuttering is still there, but it's not NEARLY as severe. Very similar to the micro-stutter I saw on my 48070x2 from time to time.

Googling this solution shows several threads of people "fixing" stuttering on i7's by doing this. I highly doubt the QPI is being saturated, but this is interesting none-the-less.

Thoughts?

From Intel:

Extremely high memory bandwidth applications. Intel HT Technology increases the demand placed on the memory subsystem when running two threads. If an application is capable of utilizing all the memory bandwidth with Intel HT Technology disabled, then the performance will not increase when Intel HT Technology is enabled. It is possible in some circumstances that performance will degrade, due to increased memory demands and/or data caching effects in these instances. The good news is that systems based on the Nehalem core with integrated memory controllers and Intel® QuickPath Interconnects greatly increase available memory bandwidth compared to older Intel CPUs with Intel HT technology. The result is that the number of applications that will experience a degradation using Intel HT Technology on the Nehalem core due to lack of memory bandwidth is greatly reduced.
Click to expand...

http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/performance-insights-to-intel-hyper-threading-technology/
 
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I have been having these baby stutters especially on bfbc2, and its driving me completely crazy!!!! man i was planning on keeping this card for a very long time i cant go on like this. I have dual monitors, but one is only used for gaming.
 
evileye said:
Some Q's:

Could this be PCIe bus bandwidth related? Could higher resolutions combined with the relatively smaller 1GB VRAM be causing a bottleneck due to the multiplexed x16 bus? Is there anything I can use to monitor bus utilization?

Or can it be CPU related? I was noticing input lag which I normally correlate to a bottlenecked CPU. Utilization doesn't always correlate with a bottleneck, however i am very hesistent to pin this on my i7 given the performance scaling I've seen.

I was thinking about purchasing a 5970 4GB version, but now I might as well just pick up a single 5870 2GB and wait on crossfinity drivers before grabbing a second. My 4870x2 was never this bad with CF on =\

I really implore anyone with a similar 5870x2 or 5970x1 setup thats experiencing stuttering (or not!) to do something similar and post the results; you will save my wallet much grief.
Click to expand...

Wished I'd seen this earlier... (my first post here and it's late lol!)

I'm running triple Dell 30's on a pair of 5870's and have had similar if not the same issues. I posted a (lengthy!) piece here http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=783670&page=637 on some of the problems - like yours - and my conclusions. (last entry on that page by Chiller).

Basically, I found the PCI-E bus was saturating badly. I believe that the vram limitations on card/s are also placing added demands on PCI-e traffic exacerbating the problem. In essence, I am experienceing the same issues as you Evileye. Though I was starting to think that the 5970 may not suffer as badly due to the internal link/lane structure on the card. Playing with PCI-e bandwidth (as I did inadvertantly and then deliberatley) it became clear just how much impact it has on crossfinity at these resolutions. I could not get over just how bad one card running at 8x was.

Your second 'Q' querying "CPU related"... In Dragon Age (everything max and AA at 4x) instead of the 'stuttering' as you call it (which is evident in a lot of titles I've been testing) it tends to 'smear' in feel. (like you stop the mouse but the screen movement lags behind) - kill crossfire and all is well again. (I should add - with one card set to 8x PCI-e, this game stuttered unplayably like a bitch too - and that was at any setting). Remember this is an ATi title as well... This 'smear' as I call it should not be new to anyone that's tried turning graphics up too high in the past - but it's not really about frames, though it usually goes hand in hand. Odd that it disappears when you cut back to one card. I'm not so sure this is CPU related though as this oddity can/will occur on lesser graphics cards but vanishes if you upgrade the card in the same machine. Anecdotally, I saw this exact same phenomenon with my sli 7800GTX's in oblivion in the day - upgraded to a single 8800GTX and ALL issues were gone - Vram was the problem and Sli scaling wasn't delivering well at the time.

You've perhaps shed a little light at the end of the tunnel though... If the 5970 is doing the same crap as a pair of 5870's, this tends to lead my concerns away from the PCI-e bus. If I recall my old crossfire lessons correctly, (and I may not! lol) ATi employ a method of communicating between GPU's on the same card that doesn't burden the host bus (well, less than a crossfired pair anyways). I mentioned the 7800 GTX's above - in benchies they nailed that 8800GTX, in say Oblivion however - not a chance... While the (256k) 7800's had the horsepower, they never had sufficient vram.

My gut feeling is that Vram is a major player here, though I guess time will tell. Like you, I am now considering my options. I've already given up on one 5870 (I'm running a single card at the moment - which in all honesty works surprisingly well pushing 8064x1600) and have been following the Sapphire 2gb/4gb Toxic cards (amongst others) that are coming shortly (Though if Nvidia would ever release their Nfinity drivers, I could be tempted back!) It'll probably be a pair of 2gb Toxic cards for me in the end, though I may hold off to see Nvidia's Nfinity in action. (I'd love to be rid of displayport and I've been pondering a personal nuclear reactor for a while now:p!).

Incidentally, killing HT did little to nothing for me... I am running at 4.2ghz+ with high bus/ram timings (6gb Dominators). Maybe the extra speed helped here for me.

I'm super keen to hear if you make any further headway Evileye and thankyou and others for the post/s.

Cheers, Tim.
 
Ya' I've found HT reduces FPS in some games. I saw reductions in Crysis and FC2.

Back when I was using GTX 260 SLi I also noticed it had a hit on FPS when I ran AA. Results from my old rig.

FC2 DX 10 Ultra settings with 8xAA enhanced to 16xAA from the nVidia CP.

Min FPS 64.28 Avg FPS 86.99 Max FPS 119.16
http://img100.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fc2dx10ultra16xaakk6.jpg

As above no HT
Min FPS 66.13 Avg FPS 92.24 Max FPS 134.38
http://img208.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fc216xnohtac4.jpg

FC2 DX 10 Ultra settings with 8xAA enhanced to 16xQ AA from the nVidia CP.

Min FPS 39.84 Avg FPS 66.01 Max FPS 112.16
http://img392.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fc2ultra16qii6.jpg

As above no HT
Min FPS 46.13 Avg FPS 80.76 Max FPS 120.28
http://img78.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fc216qnohtif8.jpg

As far as stutter goes, I've noticed sometimes back ground services and even system restore can cause it. Yes, HT causes more stutter for me with both SLi and Crossfire. IMO it's not worth it unless your dealing with a game that may make use of it. In many titles it reduces FPS and makes game play more choppy with multi-gpu.

When I first got this rig up I was getting 9FPS mins in the Heaven bench @ 1920x1200 with EVGA's Eleet utility installed. When I uninstalled that my mins jumped to the 27-30FPS range. It caused a few hard hitches in that bench that murdered my min FPS.

If you've got a service or two polling your system it can wreck your min FPS and cause stutter with multi-GPU.

Yesterday I was playing Crysis all VH with 4xAA. I did run through the assault harbor level and it was smooth. As I said, I don't run HT and I've disabled a lot of back ground services. I also keep my swap file on a separate hard disk from my OS and applications.
 
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Man, this thread is scaring me. I just purchased a XFX 5970 a few days ago which is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow. I have been using Nvidia cards since I sold my RADEON X800 XT due to the crappy drivers. I always had stuttering when playing games using that videocard. I thought that it was my computer so I made every change possible but I could never resolve the problem. I finally tried my friends 6800gt and all of my games ran great. That was the last time I used an ATI card. I finally broke down and bought a 5970 a few days ago because the GTX 480 runs so hot and everyone is praising ATI cards. I hope I did not make a mistake. If so, I will be so pissed. I swear I will sell it, buy a GTX 480 and never look at an ATI card again.
 
Borocay said:
Man, this thread is scaring me. I just purchased a XFX 5970 a few days ago which is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow. I have been using Nvidia cards since I sold my RADEON X800 XT due to the crappy drivers. I always had stuttering when playing games using that videocard. I thought that it was my computer so I made every change possible but I could never resolve the problem. I finally tried my friends 6800gt and all of my games ran great. That was the last time I used an ATI card. I finally broke down and bought a 5970 a few days ago because the GTX 480 runs so hot and everyone is praising ATI cards. I hope I did not make a mistake. If so, I will be so pissed. I swear I will sell it, buy a GTX 480 and never look at an ATI card again.
Click to expand...

I highly doubt you will...

unless you are dealing with games that have high VRAM require, which stutter will take place...

like the OP did, I am not quite sure why he put the 4xAA on highest resolution on a CF for while its only 1GB vRAM and CF will take some part of VRAM for memory swap..
 
Because I'm running 7680x1600 (tri-30") and I was doing the Crysis CF test on 1 monitor @ 2560x1600 4xAA to see if the results were similar.

However, It's not purely VRAM related - although adding more VRAM would definitely help considering it's memory bottleneck.


Borocay said:
Man, this thread is scaring me. I just purchased a XFX 5970 a few days ago which is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow. I have been using Nvidia cards since I sold my RADEON X800 XT due to the crappy drivers. I always had stuttering when playing games using that videocard. I thought that it was my computer so I made every change possible but I could never resolve the problem. I finally tried my friends 6800gt and all of my games ran great. That was the last time I used an ATI card. I finally broke down and bought a 5970 a few days ago because the GTX 480 runs so hot and everyone is praising ATI cards. I hope I did not make a mistake. If so, I will be so pissed. I swear I will sell it, buy a GTX 480 and never look at an ATI card again.
Click to expand...

Unless you're looking @ 12MP+ resolutions or ridiculous AA, the 5970 is more than sufficient for any game you'll throw at it.


Thanks everyone for the extra data. I haven't looked into this much recently as I haven't run into any more problems. Although I am still waiting on a 12MP+ review of the Eyefinity 6 edition
 
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Make sure any processes that aren't required aren't running. If your overclocking it make sure it isn't too high as one gpu can be overclocked too far and cause this kind of stuttering. Check the activity level on the second gpu and see if its idling@ 0% completely when your in windows. Put catalyst AI at advanced. It could be a process though running in the background. Maybe a service in the windows services thats taking up resources running in the background.
 
Borocay said:
I hope I did not make a mistake. If so, I will be so pissed. I swear I will sell it, buy a GTX 480 and never look at an ATI card again.
Click to expand...

Uhh... You know NV has dual video cards that micro-stutter too right? If you had a 9800gx2 you would be saying the opposite, to never look at an NV card again. You should really say, AND NEVER LOOK AT DUAL GPU CARDS.
 
Well I had a 9800GX2 before I traded up to a GTX 280OC and I never had micro-stutter as far as I could tell. I'm not a Nvidia fan-boy but I have been a believer in their drivers ever since my negative experience with ATI. I just built a new AMD system so I want to support them by buying on of their video cards, but I don't have much patience dealing with shitty drivers. From what I have been reading, they have improved their driver support since AMD bought them. I am looking forward to modding my CM 690 II so I can fit that bad boy in it.
 
Need to clear this up... I'm well aware of micro stutter - the stuttering I've been experiencing is not micro-stutter. I can't speak for Evileye though I recognise his described symptoms from my own and the word 'stutter' fits... I described this in another thread as 'the Bionic man running on one bionic leg" (you get the idea) - I think surging and stalling might be a better way to describe it, though symptoms do vary. The issue here is certainly not the age old micro stutter. (and its not background processes, nor stability issues, nor system issues, nor power issues, nor temp issues...) There is a very real issue plaguing crossfire at extreme eyefinity resolutions. For those that may have read my other post on OCAU linked above, you'll note I have 2 Eyefinity rigs here (both markedly different, though highend) thus enabling repeatability. The permutations I have for testing here are quite broad - and yet the symptoms persist and are utterly repeatable across a range of hardware and software SPECIFICALLY at extreme eyefinity resolutions.

I responded to Evileye's thread here because I recognised his issues, though more importantly - appreciated his views and felt he was/is on the right track with his suggestions and queries relating to these problem/s. Bottom line is, while 8060x1600 works surprisingly well on one GPU... it does not work on two. It should - but it doesn't. (Unless you prefer the casual pace of a slide show :p) I'd like to figure out why - and I'm sure that in time others may benefit also.

Cheers, Tim.
 
Timbo said:
Need to clear this up... I'm well aware of micro stutter - the stuttering I've been experiencing is not micro-stutter. I can't speak for Evileye though I recognise his described symptoms from my own and the word 'stutter' fits... I described this in another thread as 'the Bionic man running on one bionic leg" (you get the idea) - I think surging and stalling might be a better way to describe it, though symptoms do vary. The issue here is certainly not the age old micro stutter. (and its not background processes, nor stability issues, nor system issues, nor power issues, nor temp issues...) There is a very real issue plaguing crossfire at extreme eyefinity resolutions. For those that may have read my other post on OCAU linked above, you'll note I have 2 Eyefinity rigs here (both markedly different, though highend) thus enabling repeatability. The permutations I have for testing here are quite broad - and yet the symptoms persist and are utterly repeatable across a range of hardware and software SPECIFICALLY at extreme eyefinity resolutions.

I responded to Evileye's thread here because I recognised his issues, though more importantly - appreciated his views and felt he was/is on the right track with his suggestions and queries relating to these problem/s. Bottom line is, while 8060x1600 works surprisingly well on one GPU... it does not work on two. It should - but it doesn't. (Unless you prefer the casual pace of a slide show :p) I'd like to figure out why - and I'm sure that in time others may benefit also.

Cheers, Tim.
Click to expand...

Yes, your description is in-line with what I'm seeing.

I have devised some more benchmarks that I would like to run later this weekend and on the 2GB cards if I could get my hands on some. I'm leaving right now for a trip though - I will update once I get the time.
 
I can run some benchmarks on tri-30" with a single 2GB E6 card... I've only been playing BC2.
 
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