Crossfire questions / Help

Grimspoon

Grimspoon

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Hi chaps,

Need some gurus input here.

I just put in another 5850 running 2 24" monitors and was wondering the following:

I tried to plug in both DVI connections and my 2nd monitor wouldn't come on, so I used my DVI - Display port converter and that got it working.

Do you have to plug both monitors into the top card? Or 1 into each card?

Also, when playing games does the fact that you are using 2 monitors effect anything? Obviously I am only running the game on the one monitor but I assume that both cards are running that 1 display? Reason I ask this is that in ccc, if you say identify GPU it shows a 1 on the one screen and a 2 on the other indicating that it is 1 GPU per monitor, if that makes any sense.

Anything else I need to know to make sure it is running ok? I found running MW3 that it was laggy and sluggish, would have expected running 2 5850's it would be smooth.
 
Top card both monitors. If your gaming on 2 monitors that means 2 x the resolution so you need more gpu Oemf. 1 card will have a hard time depends but two will do it better depending on the resolution your on.
 
I plug both into the the top card, no display signal seems to come from the 2nd/bottom card.
Make sure crossfire is enabled in ccc and the game (if it supports multi-gpu), and make sure you have the latest drivers and cf profiles.
Install msi afterburner to see how much gpu usage you getting.
Running two monitors while playing games doesnt seem to affect performance.
 
shovenose said:
Top card both monitors. If your gaming on 2 monitors that means 2 x the resolution so you need more gpu Oemf. 1 card will have a hard time depends but two will do it better depending on the resolution your on.
Click to expand...

reactor_sa said:
I plug both into the the top card, no display signal seems to come from the 2nd/bottom card.
Make sure crossfire is enabled in ccc and the game (if it supports multi-gpu), and make sure you have the latest drivers and cf profiles.
Install msi afterburner to see how much gpu usage you getting.
Running two monitors while playing games doesnt seem to affect performance.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

I am just running games on the 1 monitor. I have both displays plugged into the top card.

Will try out the MSI after burner. Latest drivers are installed. I dl the CF profiles and installed but nothing showed up in CCC, will check that.

I know CF is enabled, just dunno if its working lol.
 
You can plug the monitors into either card. Don't know if it has to be the same one but I've had both in the top and both in the bottom card. Crossfire profiles are part of the drivers, you can't choose which one you want to use unfortunately, or customise them (this pisses me off too sometimes). The separate CAP download is only those profiles too new to be included in the big driver download package as yet. The only thing you will see in CCC is the option to enable CrossfireX, it's just a tick box. And yes, you will need to turn it off for some games because they aren't compatible. Mostly older games (and frustratingly, new EA stuff like NFS Shift 2).
 
TJ99 said:
You can plug the monitors into either card. Don't know if it has to be the same one but I've had both in the top and both in the bottom card. Crossfire profiles are part of the drivers, you can't choose which one you want to use unfortunately, or customise them (this pisses me off too sometimes). The separate CAP download is only those profiles too new to be included in the big driver download package as yet. The only thing you will see in CCC is the option to enable CrossfireX, it's just a tick box. And yes, you will need to turn it off for some games because they aren't compatible. Mostly older games (and frustratingly, new EA stuff like NFS Shift 2).
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info bud.

Do you know straight away if a game is not comparable with crossfire? Or will it just run terribly?
 
Grimspoon said:
Thanks.

I am just running games on the 1 monitor. I have both displays plugged into the top card.

Will try out the MSI after burner. Latest drivers are installed. I dl the CF profiles and installed but nothing showed up in CCC, will check that.

I know CF is enabled, just dunno if its working lol.
Click to expand...
There's a nice video on setting up eyefinity here:
http://hardocp.com/article/2009/09/2...nology_review/
 
shovenose said:
There's a nice video on setting up eyefinity here:
http://hardocp.com/article/2009/09/2...nology_review/
Click to expand...

I don't think he's is interested in Eyefinity, he doesn't mention it.. Sounds more like 2 independent displays like most people use.

And OP, yes you'll just see strange things, like flickering etc, or the game will run poorly. Or micro-stutter. Examples of games that don't work with Crossfire are Alice Madness Returns or Shift 2. They will run, but they're slower than when using only 1 card, and NFS has some flickering. Test Drive Unlimited 2 had MASSIVE micro-stuttering, but it seems to be resolved with newer drivers.
 
Thanks. Not looking to setup eyefinity, I have already been there done that, complete waste of money. Gaming on 3 monitors is really not great.

I will try disable it for games and see how they perform. Bf3 seems to do very nicely in cf.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Grimspoon said:
Thanks. Not looking to setup eyefinity, I have already been there done that, complete waste of money. Gaming on 3 monitors is really not great.

I will try disable it for games and see how they perform. Bf3 seems to do very nicely in cf.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

the driver issues have been sorted out
 
Grimspoon said:
Thanks. Not looking to setup eyefinity, I have already been there done that, complete waste of money. Gaming on 3 monitors is really not great.

I will try disable it for games and see how they perform. Bf3 seems to do very nicely in cf.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Yes, Battlefield 3 has a nice profile included in the latest CAP so it should be working fine. Still, it's not too demanding in the first place anyways, one 5850 should easily run it in max settings. Try Crysis. Or Crysis 2 with all the DX11 tack-on patches.
 
Ok, so I disabled CF and MW3 did a complete turn around, it is now running smoothly. So the CF was definitely screwing with something.

Left it off and noticed my BF3 is also running better, so now I am scratching my head thinking wtf?

Whats the point of cf then :p
 
Grimspoon said:
Ok, so I disabled CF and MW3 did a complete turn around, it is now running smoothly. So the CF was definitely screwing with something.

Left it off and noticed my BF3 is also running better, so now I am scratching my head thinking wtf?

Whats the point of cf then :p
Click to expand...
11.9 + CAP 3 = Bad
11.10 Rev 3 + CAP 3 = Bad
11.10 Rev 3 = Good
11.10 Rev 3 + CAP 2 = Good
11.10 Rev 3 + CAP 4 = Best performance
11.10 Official Release + CAP 4 Official Release = Best and most recommended

CAP 4 released and 11.10 officially released, download and enjoy!
http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon_win7-64.aspx Official CAP 4 link for W7 64 Bit.
http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon_win7-64.aspx Official 11.10 Link for W7/Vista 64 Bit.

Still having bad performance? Want to squeeze extra juice out of your system? Please try the following methods to reduce stutter and possibly increase FPS, or lower vram usage.


Tweak one; Let's focus on setting up the compatibility for the .exe

1. Right click on your Battlefield 3 exe on your desktop, and click properties

2. Click the "Compatibility" tab, make sure these boxes are checked, Disable Visual Themes, Disable Desktop Composition, and Run this programs as an administrator

3. Click OK, and launch the .exe, your windows theme should turn into basic. This can result in roughly 200mb free.

----

Tweak two; Once you've done that, we can work on the pagefile.

Click your windows start button and pull up control panel.

Once you have the control panel up we're going to want to go to System and Security, and from there System. On the left side of the system tab you should have "Control Panel Home" with 4 options. Device Manager, Remote Settings, System Protection, Advanced System Settings.

Click on Advanced System Settings. This should pull up a system properties box, if not already there, make sure you're on the Advanced tab, and under Performance, click settings. Click the advanced tab and "Change..." on virtual memory.

Once here, it should tell you at the bottom the minimum, recommended, and currently allocated virtual memory. Click the "Custom size" bullet, and in the Initial Size, and Maximum size enter the Recommended page file size, and click set, and then OK.

Your PC may ask you to restart, be sure to restart and try it out and report back.


----
Tweak 3; I also recommend disabling ULPS via Regedit.

To do so follow these steps

1. Open the Regedit program, this can be done by using the start button search function

2. Once you have regedit opened, click edit, and then "Find"

3. Type Enableulps in the search bar

4. Double click enableulps and change the 1 to a 0, hit F3 to find all instances of enableulps, don't bother with enableulps_na

5. Exit regedit and restart
 
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