Crossfire in windowed mode?

SaiyanZ

SaiyanZ

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Hi All

I purchased a 2nd HD7870 yesterday to crossfire with my year old one. It works great, tested for a few hours.

Something I didn't know though was that crossfire does not work in windowed mode. I'm used to playing some games in full screen windowed mode so that I can have the game running in part of the background whilst I multi-task. I can deal with it by changing how I use my PC but of course it is ideal if there is some possible tweak to get it working in full screen windowed mode.


PC specs:
FX8350 4ghz
2x4GB RAM
HD7870 Crossfire
 
It works just fine in windowed mode, I used to play Star Trek Online in windowed mode on one screen and have my browser open on the other.
 
Rickster said:
Why not alt-Tab to switch?
Click to expand...

I mostly play an online game (Path of Exile) so I need to always see if someone messages me or if someone is selling something I need or if someone is hosting a leveling party, or if a friend comes online etc. In windowed mode I can watch some series, browse the net etc., whilst having a portion of the screen visible to check for those sorts of things.
 
SaiyanZ said:
I mostly play an online game (Path of Exile) so I need to always see if someone messages me or if someone is selling something I need or if someone is hosting a leveling party, or if a friend comes online etc. In windowed mode I can watch some series, browse the net etc., whilst having a portion of the screen visible to check for those sorts of things.
Click to expand...

But why is X-Fire needed for a low end game like that?
 
TJ99 said:
It works just fine in windowed mode, I used to play Star Trek Online in windowed mode on one screen and have my browser open on the other.
Click to expand...

What GPU and when was this? I can't find any source on the net that says it works. All says it only works in fullscreen and has always done so.

If you use windowed mode then the 2nd GPU's clocks go down to 0mhz and are not utilized. I tested this as well using GPU-Z. Several people on the net didn't realize this and thus haven't been utilizing their 2nd card at all.
 
Rickster said:
But why is X-Fire needed for a low end game like that?
Click to expand...

There are builds in the game that are very graphics intensive. Discharge, cast on crit etc. where the screen is full of spells and effects. Also some map mods have effects that drop fps: chaos degen, burning/frozen/shocked ground etc. So when in parties, you can drop to as low as 10 fps. There is a definite improvement with the crossfire setup.
 
SaiyanZ said:
There are builds in the game that are very graphics intensive. Discharge, cast on crit etc. where the screen is full of spells and effects. Also some map mods have effects that drop fps: chaos degen, burning/frozen/shocked ground etc. So when in parties, you can drop to as low as 10 fps. There is a definite improvement with the crossfire setup.
Click to expand...

Dual screen is probably the best option.
 
SaiyanZ said:
What GPU and when was this? I can't find any source on the net that says it works. All says it only works in fullscreen and has always done so.

If you use windowed mode then the 2nd GPU's clocks go down to 0mhz and are not utilized. I tested this as well using GPU-Z. Several people on the net didn't realize this and thus haven't been utilizing their 2nd card at all.
Click to expand...

I know it used to be the case in the old days, but it's worked fine in 2014 on STO. I had 2 HD6870's. Only ever used it in that one game though, it's the only online thing I played.

Although I used "fullscreen windowed" or "borderless" mode, not a small little window, don't know if that had anything to do with it.
 
Rickster said:
Cant you have fullscreen on both screens?
Click to expand...

No, you can only ever have one fullscreen game, ever. Crossfire or not. This is how Direct3D works.

You can have a game running in fullscreen and other stuff on other monitors (browser, movies, whatever), but as soon as you click on something outside the game it will minimize or automatically switch to a window.

The only way to multitask while running a game is windowed mode.
 
Have you tried using one of those apps (DxWnd etc) that change fullscreen to windowed maybe?
 
Did a bit more reading. It is possible to multi-task with crossfire if you have two screens. The primary screen with the game must be full screen (not windowed nor windowed full screen nor borderless full screen) and crossfire will be enabled on it. Other programs can be running on the 2nd screen but in order to click do anything on it you'll need to alt-tab out of the full screen game. Still no use for my purposes as I can't have the game visible on the 1st screen whilst doing other stuff on a 2nd screen.

On a single monitor, crossfire will only work in full screen.


Latest response I could find from AMD support from a few months ago:

As you know, AMD graphics driver cannot support Windowed/fullscreen Windowed Games in Crossfire. It is the rules of Crossfire technology that determines the optimizations only work in full screen mode. As such, there is no workaround for this Windowed mode support. We have not seen our competitor indicating related support in Windowed mode as well and we cannot compare our Crossfire technology with other technology from other manufacturer. But you can report this to our related team via the driver report form so our related team can hear the feedback from our customers directly and consider the strategy in future product development at www.amd.com/betareport.

Your support and feedback is really appreciated.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Buy a cheap tablet to watch series, browse the net etc, or even a rubbish laptop.


I dont see any other solutions.
 
I do have a laptop where I can do other stuff. It's nowhere near as fast as my PC though and only has a 1360x768 15" screen.

Guess I'll just use full screen windowed mode on my PC and switch to proper full screen for Crossfire whenever I plan on playing for more than 5 mins.
 
SaiyanZ said:
Did a bit more reading. It is possible to multi-task with crossfire if you have two screens. The primary screen with the game must be full screen (not windowed nor windowed full screen nor borderless full screen) and crossfire will be enabled on it. Other programs can be running on the 2nd screen but in order to click do anything on it you'll need to alt-tab out of the full screen game. Still no use for my purposes as I can't have the game visible on the 1st screen whilst doing other stuff on a 2nd screen.

On a single monitor, crossfire will only work in full screen.


Latest response I could find from AMD support from a few months ago:
Click to expand...
So, you just ignored my post 13 then? Ok then...
 
TJ99 said:
So, you just ignored my post 13 then? Ok then...
Click to expand...

Yeah, I did the research for myself since you earlier mentioned you used "fullscreen windowed" or "borderless" mode which does not use both cards as per every resource on the net (whilst you had 2xHD6870). Hard to take your word as fact after that.
 
SaiyanZ said:
Yeah, I did the research for myself since you earlier mentioned you used "fullscreen windowed" or "borderless" mode which does not use both cards as per every resource on the net (whilst you had 2xHD6870). Hard to take your word as fact after that.
Click to expand...

Ah, good, old-fashioned sass. You just don't see sass like that anymore.

Your "research" consisted of reading some AMD tech support forums. While they'd (presumably) know their own products better than I do, they are wrong about the competition not supporting SLI in windowed mode. You find plenty of support that nVidia cards do work in windowed mode SLI.

As for what I had, the only explanation I could think of, is that STO switches to fullscreen-window mode when you use another monitor and back to actual fullscreen when you click on it. Because I'd have the CCC open on one monitor while playing the game and it definitely showed activity on both HD6870's. I'd post screenshots if I still had that PC.
 
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