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7970 Quad-Crossfire Scaling Issue
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12-13-2012
10:29 AM
- last edited on
03-06-2024
06:34 PM
by
ROGBot
Hi guys, first of all I realize this might not be the best place to write this problem but it might be a motherboard issue as well that's why I'll be directing this problem to this place of the forum, I suppose.
I have four Sapphire 7970 reference cards all in quadfire configuration, along with an 3930k and a RIVE. The bios I am at is the default factory one, 1103 I believe that one was. The problem I'm having is that the scaling of crossfire is at some games, is negative, and by that I mean I'm getting a better performance with a single card than in 3-way or 4 way cf. 2-way cf seems to be fine for the most part though. None of my equipment is overclocked. (You could say that might be the issue of this low performance maybe)
Thing is, there's a guy over youtube who benchmarks some games with quadfire 7970s, and a 3930k I believe, and he plays some games with his pc and shows us the graphics configuration and his fps. Problem is my performance is way way worse than his. Like, for instance, in Max Payne 3 he gets like 150+ fps average with everything maxed with 8x MSAA, I get a measly 30-45. When I turn it down to 4x MSAA for instance, I get a much better playability. But the thing is, neither 8x MSAA nor 4x MSAA stresses my cards hard enough, yet I get low GPU usage and low fps along with it. So basically what I'm trying to tell you is I can't utilize my cards as effective enough. But the thing is his CPU is overclocked to like 4,5 or 4,8 ghz. Mine is at default, 3,8 with turbo atm. Other than that I am using a dual kit ram 4+4 Kingston HyperX kits, I don't think they would be making any problems so... yeah. This might just be a driver issue or a bios update issue or I don't know. Before I forget my AMD drivers are 12.11 beta with CAP2 so all is up to date. I'm out of ideas and I need your help. Please advise!
Thanks for reading.
I have four Sapphire 7970 reference cards all in quadfire configuration, along with an 3930k and a RIVE. The bios I am at is the default factory one, 1103 I believe that one was. The problem I'm having is that the scaling of crossfire is at some games, is negative, and by that I mean I'm getting a better performance with a single card than in 3-way or 4 way cf. 2-way cf seems to be fine for the most part though. None of my equipment is overclocked. (You could say that might be the issue of this low performance maybe)
Thing is, there's a guy over youtube who benchmarks some games with quadfire 7970s, and a 3930k I believe, and he plays some games with his pc and shows us the graphics configuration and his fps. Problem is my performance is way way worse than his. Like, for instance, in Max Payne 3 he gets like 150+ fps average with everything maxed with 8x MSAA, I get a measly 30-45. When I turn it down to 4x MSAA for instance, I get a much better playability. But the thing is, neither 8x MSAA nor 4x MSAA stresses my cards hard enough, yet I get low GPU usage and low fps along with it. So basically what I'm trying to tell you is I can't utilize my cards as effective enough. But the thing is his CPU is overclocked to like 4,5 or 4,8 ghz. Mine is at default, 3,8 with turbo atm. Other than that I am using a dual kit ram 4+4 Kingston HyperX kits, I don't think they would be making any problems so... yeah. This might just be a driver issue or a bios update issue or I don't know. Before I forget my AMD drivers are 12.11 beta with CAP2 so all is up to date. I'm out of ideas and I need your help. Please advise!
Thanks for reading.
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12-13-2012 10:36 AM
The difference in performance you are seeing is due to his CPU overclock. Video cards are not the only thing important when it comes to game graphics performance. Specially when you have 2+ cards, you are most likely limited by your CPU. 3+ won't scale unless you are using BIG resolutions (Eyefinity). Still the CPU will always be your bottleneck when you utilize 2+ cards.
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12-13-2012 11:06 AM
CPU overclock is key with multicards as Nodens has suggested. But equally important is screen resolution. What resolution is this person you are comparing too play at, and what do you use.
To help us help you - please provide as much information about your system and the problem as possible.
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12-13-2012 11:19 AM
What games?
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Asus Theta 7.1 Headset
Asus Crosshair VIII Dark Hero / AMD 5800x / 32GB Corsair Dominator Platinum RBG (CMT32GX4M4C3600C18) @ 3800 /2x Sabrent 1TB Rocket NVMe 4.0 (Raid 0)/ 1x Samsung 860 Evo SSD / Corsair AX1200 PSU / ASUS Strix Helios Case / Corsair HydroX Custom Loop D5, CX7, XG7 420+280 Rad/ Asus Strix 3090 / Asus PG35VQ Ultrawide Monitor / Corsair Commander PRO 3x ql120, 4x ql140 fans / Edifier 1850DB Speakers + T5 Sub /
Asus Theta 7.1 Headset
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12-13-2012 11:29 AM
The games are Max Payne 3, Crysis 2, Crysis, Battlefield 3 SP, and Metro 2033, pretty much all gfx intensive games on the market. If you are curious about the issue, the guy's youtube name is FasterBenchmarker, though he speaks Portugese I guess. I don't understand anything from his videos but the MSI Afterburner graphics, hehe. His resolution is 1920x1080x120hz and mine currently is 1920x1200x60hz (it is to change sooner or later but, thing is I should be able to utilize my GPUs like he does in some way.) One thing I wonder is that if we have a specific performance fix for 7970 in between 1103 to 3301 versions or crossfire specific performance improvements or something. I do know that 12xx bios fixes an unrelated 7970 issue (the card not being visible if below a certain degrees of temperature) but as I said that's unrelated, I think.
Lastly I did try after reading your replies, to increase my cpu quickly to 4200ish mhz and I fear I still didn't see any sort of scaling or any fps increase for that matter in Max Payne 3. Thing is no game fully uses my 4 CPU cores or even comes close to using for that matter. I don't understand how increasing cpu from 3,8 to 4,5 ghz will magically give me 150ish fps in the same game where I once got 30-45. It's like the pc does not even care trying to utilize all four.
Lastly I did try after reading your replies, to increase my cpu quickly to 4200ish mhz and I fear I still didn't see any sort of scaling or any fps increase for that matter in Max Payne 3. Thing is no game fully uses my 4 CPU cores or even comes close to using for that matter. I don't understand how increasing cpu from 3,8 to 4,5 ghz will magically give me 150ish fps in the same game where I once got 30-45. It's like the pc does not even care trying to utilize all four.
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12-13-2012 11:56 AM
At that resolution there is no gain what so ever with 4 cards. You will get better results with one to be brutally blunt.
Link me to his video that has got you all hot and bothered. 😄 😄
To help us help you - please provide as much information about your system and the problem as possible.
Link me to his video that has got you all hot and bothered. 😄 😄
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12-13-2012 12:01 PM
Alright 😃
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=7970+quad+gameplay&oq=7970+quad+gameplay&gs_l=youtube.3....
this search query for most of the games in question.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ4VUzmjBA8
His Max Payne 3 is here.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=7970+quad+gameplay&oq=7970+quad+gameplay&gs_l=youtube.3....
this search query for most of the games in question.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ4VUzmjBA8
His Max Payne 3 is here.
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12-13-2012 12:04 PM
First of all you are using a slightly higher resolution. That means you will always be slower even if everything else is the same.
Secondly you have to understand that at 1920x1080 or 1920x1080 you are not utilizing much of the third and fourth cards NO MATTER what you do.
And performance difference you are seeing (assuming all game related settings are exactly the same) comes only from the CPU, RAM and storage subsystems.
CPU cores are somewhat irrelevant (they are relevant but not in the way you think or that I can easily explain right now) unless the game is multithreaded.
Contrary to what you may believe the game can not go faster because you have quad crossfire when other things are holding it back:
1) CPU is the greatest factor. A great many deal of things just depend on the CPU (eg geometry). I can not explain it better if you do not have a programming background.:(
2) Disk thrashing. Game files (models, textures etc) have to be get loaded from disk. Any amount of cards can't draw what it has to wait to get from disk. SSDs provide an insane boost for the majority of games.
3) Memory subsystem. How much ram is available? Pagefile usage will make you crawl no matter what.
4) Operating System condition. How many processes are running? What processes? etc etc
5) Driver versions or bad drivers. Some driver versions may offer performance tweaks for specific games or game engines. Bad drivers (even unrelated to graphics) can cause timeouts etc etc.
Bottomline is just having quad crossfire means nothing. Also even if you eliminate whatever bottleneck you may have, unless you use high resolutions 3rd and 4th card will barely ever be utilized.
Secondly you have to understand that at 1920x1080 or 1920x1080 you are not utilizing much of the third and fourth cards NO MATTER what you do.
And performance difference you are seeing (assuming all game related settings are exactly the same) comes only from the CPU, RAM and storage subsystems.
CPU cores are somewhat irrelevant (they are relevant but not in the way you think or that I can easily explain right now) unless the game is multithreaded.
Contrary to what you may believe the game can not go faster because you have quad crossfire when other things are holding it back:
1) CPU is the greatest factor. A great many deal of things just depend on the CPU (eg geometry). I can not explain it better if you do not have a programming background.:(
2) Disk thrashing. Game files (models, textures etc) have to be get loaded from disk. Any amount of cards can't draw what it has to wait to get from disk. SSDs provide an insane boost for the majority of games.
3) Memory subsystem. How much ram is available? Pagefile usage will make you crawl no matter what.
4) Operating System condition. How many processes are running? What processes? etc etc
5) Driver versions or bad drivers. Some driver versions may offer performance tweaks for specific games or game engines. Bad drivers (even unrelated to graphics) can cause timeouts etc etc.
Bottomline is just having quad crossfire means nothing. Also even if you eliminate whatever bottleneck you may have, unless you use high resolutions 3rd and 4th card will barely ever be utilized.
RAMPAGE Windows 8/7 UEFI Installation Guide - Patched OROM for TRIM in RAID - Patched UEFI GOP Updater Tool - ASUS OEM License Restorer
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There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't!
RealBench Developer.
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12-13-2012 12:21 PM
Simple question you don't have vsynch turned on do you? Check in the game options also in AMD CCC. Also what PCIE Spec are you seeing in GPU-Z. I know single screen with 3 cards I can get well over 120fps with max setting in BF3. As other have said wih 4 cards @ 1920x1200 your gpu usage will be low but you should still get over 100fps. Also do you have a benchmarking app like heaven or 3dmark11 that can stress all 4 cards at your resolution? Maybe that can tell if you have a problem with your setup or game settings.
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Asus Theta 7.1 Headset
Asus Crosshair VIII Dark Hero / AMD 5800x / 32GB Corsair Dominator Platinum RBG (CMT32GX4M4C3600C18) @ 3800 /2x Sabrent 1TB Rocket NVMe 4.0 (Raid 0)/ 1x Samsung 860 Evo SSD / Corsair AX1200 PSU / ASUS Strix Helios Case / Corsair HydroX Custom Loop D5, CX7, XG7 420+280 Rad/ Asus Strix 3090 / Asus PG35VQ Ultrawide Monitor / Corsair Commander PRO 3x ql120, 4x ql140 fans / Edifier 1850DB Speakers + T5 Sub /
Asus Theta 7.1 Headset
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12-13-2012 12:28 PM
This is a very good question HK-47 I assumed that Vsync was off because of the 45 number..Which could be an average if he's seeing 30 and 60 heh
RAMPAGE Windows 8/7 UEFI Installation Guide - Patched OROM for TRIM in RAID - Patched UEFI GOP Updater Tool - ASUS OEM License Restorer
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't!
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There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't!
RealBench Developer.
