Are both GPUs being used on my Radeon 5970?

[Whitestar127]

Hi all,

Is there a way to verify that both GPUs on my 5970 are active when in a game? Is MSI Afterburner a good tool for that?

I'm playing Skyrim at the moment, but I would like to check other games as well.

In Skyrim I didn't really notice a difference in framerate when standing in a certain place in Markath looking up at the mountain with waterfalls and watermills. I get 27 fps with both 11.11a, b and c there.

So the only thing I can think of is:
1. My CPU is maxed out. It's an i7 - 860, socket 1156.
2. Both GPUs are not being used.

 

[boxleitnerb]

Skyrim can be very CPU bottlenecked. Afterburner is a great tool. If usage is being reported as 40%/40% for example, it means that crossfire is not scaling properly or that your CPU is not fast enough.

I would suggest:
Overclock your CPU by 15% and look at the fps. My guess is, they will increase by said 15% -> CPU bottleneck.
If you're hesitant with overclocking, this thing goes the other way around, too. Underclock your CPU and check how much your fps have decreased. If your CPU is running at stock speed, I would bet a hundred bucks that you're CPU bottlenecked quite often in Skyrim.

 

[Termie]

Skyrim can be very CPU bottlenecked. Afterburner is a great tool. If usage is being reported as 40%/40% for example, it means that crossfire is not scaling properly or that your CPU is not fast enough.

I would suggest:
Overclock your CPU by 15% and look at the fps. My guess is, they will increase by said 15% -> CPU bottleneck.
If you're hesitant with overclocking, this thing goes the other way around, too. Underclock your CPU and check how much your fps have decreased. If your CPU is running at stock speed, I would bet a hundred bucks that you're CPU bottlenecked quite often in Skyrim.

Let me add just one thing to that - if GPU usage is reported in Afterburner as 40%/40%, that means crossfire is working perfectly and you are either CPU-limited or the game doesn't scale well with crossfire. If your GPU usage is reported in Afterburner as 100%/0%, then your second GPU is not being used. Crossfire on Skyrim didn't work on the 5000-series until yesterday with 11.11c: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/Catalyst1111cperformance.aspx. Is that what you have installed right now? Might try reinstalling it.

Without more information, it's impossible to know whether this is an issue particular to crossfire in Skyrim or an issue of crossfire not being enabled. The first thing to do, of course, is install Afterburner and enable GPU usage monitoring.

 

[Whitestar127]

Ok, thanks guys. I will test it and see.

Oh and I am using 11.11c. The reason I'm posting is that I didn't notice any difference from 11.11a or b in Skyrim.

 

[Termie]

Ok, thanks guys. I will test it and see.

Oh and I am using 11.11c. The reason I'm posting is that I didn't notice any difference from 11.11a or b in Skyrim.

Do you have any other games to test? Skyrim is honestly a terrible game to use to make sure crossfire is working correctly. How about just running 3dmark11? If you get 100% gpu usage on both gpus, then this really isn't a video card question, it's a Skyrim question.

 

[Whitestar127]

Good point. I'll try that as well. Thanks

 

[Whitestar127]

I tried with Skyrim and when standing at the most demanding place in Markath, both GPUs show about 22% and the framerate is 25. Just poor GPU scaling then I guess.

Thanks for helping out guys.

 

[Termie]

I tried with Skyrim and when standing at the most demanding place in Markath, both GPUs show about 22% and the framerate is 25. Just poor GPU scaling then I guess.

Thanks for helping out guys.

Hmmm, that's pretty bad. How about another game or 3dMark11? That would be just to make sure the 5970 can actually perform where drivers aren't holding it back.

 

[dsa44]

I tried with Skyrim and when standing at the most demanding place in Markath, both GPUs show about 22% and the framerate is 25. Just poor GPU scaling then I guess.

Thanks for helping out guys.

Holy cow, I don't know why I am so lucky with my HD 5970! With the 11.10 amd driver, I get a firm 60 fps in all areas of Skyrim. (I think the game is capped at 60 fps internally) Both gpu's are active as reported by MSI afterburner and radeonpro and each gets up to 99% utilization at the same time. When I "upgraded" to 11.11c, performance plummeted and I could barely get 15-25 fps. I did a system restore to get back to the 11.10 driver and I am now happily at 60 fps again, seemingly using both gpu's. Maybe try the older driver...do a backup first. Maybe xfire is already working with a dual-gpu/single card as opposed to a true dual-card xfire setup. I know lots of folks are having a problem with the xfire scaling and Skyrim, but the 5970 seems to be fine.