Should i crossfire my card ?

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aaksheytalwar

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2012
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willomz said:
Because the 7870 is a mid range card I would suggest selling it and buying a 7970 instead. Since 7870s aren't that old you should have little trouble selling it, whereas it might be harder selling 2 of them in say 3 years time.

There's just no need to go for the hassle/risk of CF.
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This. I wouldn't mind sli provided I could afford Titan sli, otherwise won't.
 
W

willomz

Senior member
Sep 12, 2012
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Actually I think for Nvidia SLI is slightly more attractive, but mainly because their high end cards are so much more expensive than AMD, especially the Titan!
 
K

Keromyaou

Member
Sep 14, 2012
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willomz said:
Because the 7870 is a mid range card I would suggest selling it and buying a 7970 instead. Since 7870s aren't that old you should have little trouble selling it, whereas it might be harder selling 2 of them in say 3 years time.

There's just no need to go for the hassle/risk of CF.
Click to expand...

+1

You play at 1080p. One gtx670 or HD7950 is pretty enough for running most of games at 1080p. When there is a way to run games with one card, it is better off by not going to multi-gpu setup. You should consider multi-gpu setup only when one high-end gpu is not enough (such as 1080p/120Hz, 1440p, 1600p, or mutli-display setups). In addition at this moment crossfire seems to have issues as many pointed out already. Unless your point about video cards as a hobby is tweaking many things about software/hardware, there is no point going to crossfire at this moment (I feel that your point is to run the newest game titles comfortably).
 
Durvelle27

Durvelle27

Diamond Member
Jun 3, 2012
4,102
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willomz said:
Because the 7870 is a mid range card I would suggest selling it and buying a 7970 instead. Since 7870s aren't that old you should have little trouble selling it, whereas it might be harder selling 2 of them in say 3 years time.

There's just no need to go for the hassle/risk of CF.
Click to expand...

do you have experience with HD 7000 series CFX or are you just going off what you read
 
Durvelle27

Durvelle27

Diamond Member
Jun 3, 2012
4,102
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Keromyaou said:
+1

You play at 1080p. One gtx670 or HD7950 is pretty enough for running most of games at 1080p. When there is a way to run games with one card, it is better off by not going to multi-gpu setup. You should consider multi-gpu setup only when one high-end gpu is not enough (such as 1080p/120Hz, 1440p, 1600p, or mutli-display setups). In addition at this moment crossfire seems to have issues as many pointed out already. Unless your point about video cards as a hobby is tweaking many things about software/hardware, there is no point going to crossfire at this moment (I feel that your point is to run the newest game titles comfortably).
Click to expand...

My monitor is 1080P 120Hz and i also sometimes game at 2560x1080P but mostly 1920x1080.

I want to max all games out. Don't mind tweaking anything
 
nightspydk

nightspydk

Senior member
Sep 7, 2012
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I think there are a few guys who hit the nail, if I may say. It depends on what you want to do. You just want to max out most games on 60hz you need not look further. You can determine that best. If you want 120 hz on Crysis 3 highest settings and your current does not allow that to your satisfaction, like I said and others, you might just gain 100% gpu utilization on a proper setup, motherboard and all and drivers. If you game surround and even 3d surround it's a given.

It all depends. :)
 
K

Keromyaou

Member
Sep 14, 2012
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Durvelle27 said:
My monitor is 1080P 120Hz and i also sometimes game at 2560x1080P but mostly 1920x1080.

I want to max all games out. Don't mind tweaking anything
Click to expand...

If this is the case, you had better off waiting until HD7990 is released. I feel that ATI will fix crossfire issues for this particular card (Kepler has a chip for SLI. I feel that ATI might add a similar chip for crossfire for this particular card since ATI probably wants to claim the fastest single PCI-E card). I think that HD7990 will be released in several months. I feel that the price will be $800-1000. For running games comfortably at 1600p, you had better have a Titan, gtx690, gtx680x2, or HD7990 (HD7970x2). Since you don't want Nvidia gpus, your only choice is HD7990. I wouldn't go to HD7970x2 at this moment until I see what ATI will do about crossfire issues in July. It is not a small expense. You had better get the one which doesn't have obvious issues such as this crossfire problem. This round ATI has had many issues such as HD7870's hardware problems and flicker issues of DX9 games. DX9 game issues were finally fixed in the latest drivers but it took over one year to fix this issue since the release of HD7970. I hope that ATI can quickly fix the crossfire issue satisfactory only by driver updates since I have HD5970 myself too.
 
L

lavaheadache

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2005
6,893
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should have just gotten a beefier card to start. You have been through a ton of cards as of late. Why do you keep wasting time and money on bargain cards if they never seen to be powerful enough for you? Just go BIG and stop messing around with lesser cards. It's more fun to have the big dog on campus anyway..
 
Durvelle27

Durvelle27

Diamond Member
Jun 3, 2012
4,102
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lavaheadache said:
should have just gotten a beefier card to start. You have been through a ton of cards as of late. Why do you keep wasting time and money on bargain cards if they never seen to be powerful enough for you? Just go BIG and stop messing around with lesser cards. It's more fun to have the big dog on campus anyway..
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lol true i wanted a HD 7970 but non fit my case and the HD 7950 was a hit & miss
 
K

Keromyaou

Member
Sep 14, 2012
49
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66
lavaheadache said:
You are letting your case bottleneck you?
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lol!! Seriously you had better update your case first. To run games at 1080p/120Hz or 1600p, you really need good cards. I updated my cards when I changed my monitor from 1080p to 1440p. I know that you don't want Nvidia cards. But as far as I know, Titan and gtx 680 is shorter than HD7970???
 
Fastx

Fastx

Senior member
Dec 18, 2008
780
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Durvelle27 said:
really wanna here from ppl who have used it them selves
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Durvelle the below quotes from some different members from this thread at OCN who are running a 7000 series CF setups with positive experiences and with tweaking and using RP. Of course there are people with negative experiences but with tweaking it seems there are positive experiences running 7K CF for a number of guys in quite a few games. Bottom line is I agree you can't go by what the reviewers say all the time end user experience is what matters and depends on your sensitivity to MS. For 7K CF for some they are happy with a good experience for others they are not happy and have a negative experience. :)



"have not played tomb but c3 with my hybrid crossfire (7950/7970) was smooth. first time to try crossfire and played bf3 as soon as the second card got installed. smooth as butter. also, those 7870s are pretty fast and should be supported by an equally fast cpu."


"Look at my rigs. I have no problems with microstutter, and my brothers who are much more aware, don't see any microstutter in my rigs. I have had no problems with ms whatsoever. I would say go Xfire. This is coming from my own personal experience, as RavageTheEarth has also said. Maybe all three pairs of our eyes are just not as sensitive as others"


"No microstutter here either."



"Honestly, the only game I've had issues with since going CrossFire is Far Cry 3, and I managed to fix that using RadeonPro. Smooth sailing everywhere else, including new games like Crysis 3 and BioShock Infinite. Previously I had a 560 Ti SLI setup, and didn't experience issues with that either. So it could be that I'm just not sensitive to micro-stutter...either way, I'm loving my 7950s."

"k guys i bought second 7870 and installed. Everything seems fine fps skyrocketed at benchmarks. No microstutter either. I want to oc them a little without playing with voltage cause of power consumption."


"my crossfire is working just fine. I've been trying very hard to notice micro stutter, and i cant. Didnt have any reall issues with it either, once i built the system i just enabled crossfire and it was smooth sailing" from there.

"I use 7970 CrossFire.
it performs very well in most games"


"Excellent post. I'm a very happy 7870 LE Myst in crossfire owner. Never had a problem. OC's nice, no microstutter, no overheating, excellent performance in both games and benchmarking. So we are definitely out here, just don't have problems and hope we never do"


"Exactly. When I first added my 7950 I had a lot of problems. I was so aggravated. Well it turns out that crossfire wasn't at fault. My windows OS was corrupted and the second card added in crossfire made the problems show. After I re-installed windows a couple times (I guess I had to completely wipe the SSD multiple times to get the bug out) everything worked perfectly fine. It's so nice to be able to play Crysis 3 with everthing maxed out and 4x MSAA with 60FPS on my two 7950's"




"Crossfire works fine for most people including myself. One of the reasons it has such a bad reputation is because all we hear about is it not working. We see a ton of posts every other day saying, "Help! Crossfire not working right. Microstutter!" We don't see any posts that say, "Hey! Crossfire is working perfectly!! Just came here to brag!." For the majority of people that crossfire is working for, we don't see them at all. What reason do they have to come on here when they don't need help? The only time we hear about it is when something goes wrong. That being said the only game I have a problem with is Far Cry 3 and there is a very simple solution for it. Go into CCC and uncheck crossfire and play it with a single card. Every other game runs perfectly. Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite, Metro 2033, BF3, etc. Nvidia has the same issues with their drivers. They both do."


Link
http://www.overclock.net/t/1378551/to-do-or-not-to-do-cf
 
M

Madpacket

Platinum Member
Nov 15, 2005
2,068
326
126
If you're on a single display go ahead and get another card to xfire, just make sure you're using vsync to smooth out the microstutter issues. If you're on an eyefinity setup don't bother, it's a mess.
 
Termie

Termie

Diamond Member
Aug 17, 2005
7,949
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www.techbuyersguru.com
psolord said:
I am using 7950 crossfire (as well as two other dual gpu systems) and I was always happy with their performance. I always use vsync when gaming though and set my games in such a way that I always have 60fps.

Since I am pretty new to the 7950 CFX, I have only seen stuttering in Tomb Raider, even with vsync enabled, but that went away when I enabled MSI Afterburner's framerate limiter. Played the game from start to finish and it was great. It only stuttered in very few occasions and I am thinking it was due to cpu limits.

The other game I have used crossfire so far, is Crysis 3.


To show the performance benefit of crossfire, I even made two videos of the scene in Only Human level, where Prophet rides the Vtol. I chose this scene because it's automated up to the point I recorded, so it would be the same for both recordings. Also there's a lot of camera panning, which is the worse motion for the viewer, if there's stuttering.


Here's the video of the 7950 crossfire. This is how I play and this is what I see. 60fps vsynced. Actually it's better in real life because Crysis 3 is very cpu heavy and Fraps needs a lot of cpu as well, but still it's good enough.

This is the video of the single 7950 at the same settings. I only disabled vsync for this one, otherwise I would be getting a steady 30fps, thus artificially making my point even stronger on a difference that is already huge.

What people seem to forget, is that dual gpu solutions almost double the available gpu processing pool capabilities of the system and this coupled with vsync, gives a great end result for the user. I totally get that the beauty or not of vsync on or off, lies at the eye of the beholder, but personally I never enjoyed disabled vsync. On my Nvidia SLI system it was jerky as well (crossfire is more jerky but that's beyond the point-jerky is jerky). Single gpu with no vsync is jerkly/teary for my taste as well.

Normally I would be the first to jump on a single gpu solution that offers the performance of two gpus, but this comes with an increased cost. Now if the buyer can tolerate this cost, sure go for it. For example I'd never buy a Titan @1000€ in order to get 7950 CFX performance though which I can have for 600€ (plus 100€ in games bundle), but I would buy a 7950 GHz in order to get 570 sli performance, which I did.
Click to expand...

This is exactly right.

Yes, Crossfire has some problems.

Yes, vsync or a frame limiter eliminates these problems, and allows you to fully tap into having double the processing power to use settings well beyond what would otherwise be possible.
 
B

bluesquare07

Member
Mar 10, 2013
135
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0
Durvelle27 said:
do you have experience with HD 7000 series CFX or are you just going off what you read
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lol so you trust reviews where AMD is positive, but when its negative you say 'are you just going off what you read' lmao. yeah.. lets hear it from amd fanboys who need to justify spending their money on crossfire. what a joke, how can this thread be taken seriously?
 
B

bystander36

Diamond Member
Apr 1, 2013
5,154
132
106
bluesquare07 said:
SO if there are no problems with crossfire, can someone explain to me this ? http://www.anandtech.com/show/6857/amd-stuttering-issues-driver-roadmap-fraps

Can someone explain to me all the reviews that point out that crossfire is essentially useless at times. Must be NV fanboyism. Or maybe its the pro AMD here on this forum.
Click to expand...

It has been stated many times already. Without v-sync or FPS limiters, crossfire often gets out of sync and causes frames to be displayed at random intervals. This often leads to large amounts of one frame followed by a tiny amount of another. This makes those tiny frames, or runt frames rather suspect in value and degrading the value of crossfire.

With v-sync or a FPS limiter (used at a limit that will slow the cards down, or it doesn't work), the problem can be fixed, or at least minimized.

So, as I asked before, do you use v-sync or FPS limiters?

If I recall you said "sometimes". You'll likely want to change that sometimes to always if you go with crossfire.
 
B

bluesquare07

Member
Mar 10, 2013
135
0
0
bystander36 said:
It has been stated many times already. Without v-sync or FPS limiters, crossfire often gets out of sync and causes frames to be displayed at random intervals. This often leads to large amounts of one frame followed by a tiny amount of another. This makes those tiny frames, or runt frames rather suspect in value and degrading the value of crossfire.

With v-sync or a FPS limiter (used at a limit that will slow the cards down, or it doesn't work), the problem can be fixed, or at least minimized.

So, as I asked before, do you use v-sync or FPS limiters?

If I recall you said "sometimes". You'll likely want to change that sometimes to always if you go with crossfire.
Click to expand...

v-sync or fps limiters doesnt fix the problem. The benefit of multi gpu is that your fps skyrockets, whats the point of it when 60fps can be achieved with a single card? crossfire is broken, stop making excuses.

What are you going to choose, nvidia with no or minimal stuttering at 90+ fps or radeons that are capped at 60 to supposedly fix the problem even though it doesnt.
 
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B

bystander36

Diamond Member
Apr 1, 2013
5,154
132
106
bluesquare07 said:
v-sync or fps limiters doesnt fix the problem. The benefit of multi gpu is that your fps skyrockets, whats the point of it when 60fps can be achieved with a single card? crossfire is broken, stop making excuses.
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I'm not making excuses, just giving you facts and letting you decide. I stopped using crossfire with the 6950's. I use 680's now.

Not everyone uses their cards the same, and not everyone has a 60hz monitor. I personally use a 120hz monitor with 3D. 3D is another reason I use Nvidia now.
 
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