7970 x2 Crossfire Microstutter unbrearable

[BrightCandle]

Maybe its just me but I find playing with crossfire disabled significantly better in every single game. Microstutter is absolutely aweful with the 7970's, its worse even than the 5970 I had before, and I hated that card because of its stuttering.

I see MS in every single game, its not some minor effect, it makes the frame rate about as bad as ~20 fps regardless of the actual FPS achieved. Just now I was playing the ME3 demo and I couldn't believe just how bad it was, despite the game maintaining (according to fraps) a perfect 62 fps it was almost unplayable. It even stuttered in the 30 fps cut scenes.

I get the problem in Arma 2 eyefinity as well, I need game 60 fps to be happy with dual cards, 50 is too low but with a single card I only notice a problem when it goes below 35. Its just smoother with a single card.

In F1 2011 in eyefinity resolution if it ever drops below is basic 62 FPS (with vsync or frame limiting on) then its very jerky. I also think this game negatively scales as its not playable on ultra and with 4x AA like with a single card! But with a single card it maintains around 50 fps with ultra and 4x AA and its smooth.

I have tried using MSI afterburner and setting an FPS limit to 60 and 40 and I have tried with vsync on and off. What I find is that vsync off is considerably better than on, but I get a lot of significant tearing as which really reduces the IQ a lot.

Is it just my setup, as in something is wrong? Because I am seriously beginning to doubt my ability to setup a working crossfire system here as so few people seem to have a problem. Or is this something everyone else is noticing as well? That crossfire is just painful to play with.

It all benchmarks OK. I get near on 100% scaling in the 3d mark and heaven and the scores are all perfectly normal but all the games I play seem to have a problem with MS, some (ME3) are worse than others.

My current drivers are 12-2_pre-certified_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc from yesterday, and I also have CAP 12.1 CAP 3 installed.

I even seem to have problems in Windows 2D mode as well. When I have too many Windows open (>6 or so depending on the program) dragging a window over them will be very slow, it'll lag behind the cursor by 200-400ms. Something has got to be wrong.

 

[Tempered81]

dxtory or Afterburner. Use the frame limiter. set a few frames above or below your displays refresh rate, ie 58, or 62 FPS. If still stuttery, try lower or higher.. 45 or 70 FPS

Edit: nevermind i see you already tried this.

 

[RavenSEAL]

IMHO:

7970 xFire is absolutely unnecessary this early in the game, I would personally sell that second card.

 

[BrightCandle]

IMHO:

7970 xFire is absolutely unnecessary this early in the game, I would personally sell that second card.

Playing top end PC FPS's in eyefinity needs a lot of graphics horse power, especially to achieve playable frame rates especially at the level I play at. Many people are stuck on single monitors (no idea why!) but I have been eyefinity gaming for nearly 3 years now and I don't want to go back. Of course if this is an AMD problem and no one can help solve it I may just sell both my 7970's and get some nice NVidia cards instead.

 

[Tempered81]

Could you put a video up of what the stuttering looks like?

is it like this vid?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOtre2f4qZs&hd=1&t=1m20s

I was thinking you might try old programs to force differnt types of AFR SFR - maybe radeon pro or ATT. Also the stutter is more noticable at 30 fps than a synced or limited 60fps

 

[RavenSEAL]

Playing top end PC FPS's in eyefinity needs a lot of graphics horse power, especially to achieve playable frame rates especially at the level I play at. Many people are stuck on single monitors (no idea why!) but I have been eyefinity gaming for nearly 3 years now and I don't want to go back. Of course if this is an AMD problem and no one can help solve it I may just sell both my 7970's and get some nice NVidia cards instead.

OH! I didn't notice you were doing Eyefinity

 

[BrightCandle]

Yes its something like the video. Lets imagine the world ran at 120 fps and we only had the graphics capability to show 30 of those frames. For a nice smooth motion we would choose every 4th frame from the world, ie 1, 5, 9....etc. With crossfire enabled its more like I see 1,2, 9,10 - ie the second frame is distinct but much closer to the first one than it should be. But because we used a refresh on that one we have to wait until the 2rd (9th) frame before we can draw again. That is what that video appears to show happening.

I tried DXTory on 58 and 45 incase MSI afterburner wasn't doing a good job somehow in ME3 but it suffers just the same and no messing with the limit has changed the stutter. What I don't understand is why ME3 is stuck at 60 fps when its got so much tearing, it presumably is using Vsync to achieve the fixed FPS but at the same time it can't possibly be because its tearing regularly. That often happens when the game is achieving 100's of FPS and only able to render 60 fps, but I don't see this much tearing normally.

I think I may have found the cause of the problem, at least in ME3. The first GPU is going up to its correct speed and showing a whopping 15% usage! The second card is still sleeping, the clock is stuck at 300 Mhz according to GPU-Z. My guess is crossfire is not working but still having an impact on the frames render. I'll try some profile messing about and see if I can get it to work.

 

[Chiropteran]

Playing top end PC FPS's in eyefinity needs a lot of graphics horse power, especially to achieve playable frame rates especially at the level I play at.

You have been eyefinity gaming for 3 years now.

What were you using 3 years ago, and how could a single 7970 possibly be worse or slower than your 3 year old setup? Just curious.

Or a related question, what were you using immediately before you bought the 2 7970s?

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

There are rumors that three cards in crossfire have much less microstutter then two cards.

Might be worth trying out as you have an LGA 2011 motherboard with plenty of bandwith to support the cards.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

ME3 demo had horrible skipping issues even on single 7970.

 

[blackened23]

Ensure that you are:

1) using the latest cap dated 2/15
2) using the RC11 driver or the other newer one
3) use the MSI aftberburner framerate limiter
4) turn vsync on
5) see #3, use the OSD fps limiter
6) If you're basing everything on a just released demo..uh....?

Everyone that has done #3 reports it removed all stutter

 

[wahdangun]

according user below he solved his problem by updating his windows.

Finally no more stuttering, and the solution is Windows Update. I didn't update my Windows Update quite some time now, so I just updated all the updates available and then stuttering is gone. Blame myself for not updating too often lol.

Although less stuttering, but both cards still run at 50-70%. I opened the video option, noticed that I haven't using any MSAA yet, so decided to try 4XMSAA. Surprisingly now I can run roughly 80% all of the time, it looks like I need to max everything in order to solve this scaling problem, at least for my case.

And I do think CPU bottlenecks my crossfire scaling. I know it because when the round starts with nothing much happens for all the players, both cards run almost 99%. But once the battle begins, it slowly scales down to 90%, then pretty much 70-80% for whole round.

Well at least I can play it without stuttering problem, I'm going to WC my system soon and hope my 2500k can get somewhere around 5Ghz, crossfire scaling problem should be fixed I believe.

 

[BrightCandle]

Ensure that you are:

1) using the latest cap dated 2/15
2) using the RC11 driver or the other newer one
3) use the MSI aftberburner framerate limiter
4) turn vsync on
5) see #3, use the OSD fps limiter
6) If you're basing everything on a just released demo..uh....?

Everyone that has done #3 reports it removed all stutter

1) Using latest from yesterday
2) Ditto
3) Tried that and DXTory
4) ME3 doesn't have the option, I'll try forcing it in the drivers
6) The demo has the second to worst Microstutter I have seen anywhere. The worst is the Heaven benchmark first scene on the pebble road. In heaven setting vsync on makes it run smoother.

But I have tried this in a few games now. Yesterday I tested F1 2011, Arma 2, ME2 and BF3 all with crossfire off and found in all cases they ran better than with it on. Sure the frame rates might have been higher with crossfire, but even the slightest drop from 60 when using it caused severe stuttering. With a single card it had to get to 35 or below before I started to notice a problem.

VSync and frame rate limiting just doesn't seem to be working for me so far, but I was never convinced that MSI Afterburner was working right (couldn't get the OSD to come up though frame rate was limited according to fraps).

I'll try with DXTory and force Vsync in the drivers for ME3 demo and see if that solves it.

 

[Jacky60]

Maybe its just me but I find playing with crossfire disabled significantly better in every single game. Microstutter is absolutely awful with the 7970's, its worse even than the 5970 I had before, and I hated that card because of its stuttering.

I see MS in every single game, its not some minor effect, it makes the frame rate about as bad as ~20 fps regardless of the actual FPS achieved. Just now I was playing the ME3 demo and I couldn't believe just how bad it was, despite the game maintaining (according to fraps) a perfect 62 fps it was almost unplayable. It even stuttered in the 30 fps cut scenes.

I get the problem in Arma 2 eyefinity as well, I need game 60 fps to be happy with dual cards, 50 is too low but with a single card I only notice a problem when it goes below 35. Its just smoother with a single card.

In F1 2011 in eyefinity resolution if it ever drops below is basic 62 FPS (with vsync or frame limiting on) then its very jerky. I also think this game negatively scales as its not playable on ultra and with 4x AA like with a single card! But with a single card it maintains around 50 fps with ultra and 4x AA and its smooth.

I have tried using MSI afterburner and setting an FPS limit to 60 and 40 and I have tried with vsync on and off. What I find is that vsync off is considerably better than on, but I get a lot of significant tearing as which really reduces the IQ a lot.

Is it just my setup, as in something is wrong? Because I am seriously beginning to doubt my ability to setup a working crossfire system here as so few people seem to have a problem. Or is this something everyone else is noticing as well? That crossfire is just painful to play with.

It all benchmarks OK. I get near on 100% scaling in the 3d mark and heaven and the scores are all perfectly normal but all the games I play seem to have a problem with MS, some (ME3) are worse than others.

My current drivers are 12-2_pre-certified_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc from yesterday, and I also have CAP 12.1 CAP 3 installed.

I even seem to have problems in Windows 2D mode as well. When I have too many Windows open (>6 or so depending on the program) dragging a window over them will be very slow, it'll lag behind the cursor by 200-400ms. Something has got to be wrong.

Well I play Arma 2 at 1920/1200 and yes my 5970 used to be a bit stuttery until I got SSD. My 6990's are as smooth as butter or at least very smooth-I bet AMD haven't spent much time or effort sorting the CAP for Arma2 , F1 2012 etc. I say this because it took months before my 6990's worked as well as they do now in Arma2. Having said that be advised the hardware probs isn't at fault as Arma 2 looks good from 35 fps upwards with fast camera turns etc included. I don't think any CPU will give you good fps in eyefinity in Arma 2 -too many pixels I think.

 

[Jacky60]

IMHO:

7970 xFire is absolutely unnecessary this early in the game, I would personally sell that second card.

That's wonderfully ignorant nonsense-I get up to 84% usage from all 4 gpus in Arma 2 at 1920/1200. 4x84=336 therefore ALL gpus are working harder than 3 could possibly do. \QFT.

 

[BrightCandle]

So ME3 tested in the following-
CF + Forced VSync + Dxtory 60 = stutter
CF + Forced VSync + Dxtory 58 = stutter
CF + Forced VSync + Dxtory 45 = stutter
Disabled CF = fine

Can't get the stutter to go away no matter what I do. Vsync on or off, frame rate limiter on or off its stuttering all the time. Now admittedly ME3 with CF off runs lovely at 60 fps at about 30% of the GPU so I don't need crossfire, but when I am seeing this stutter in every game and in every case a single core is a better experience in my testing this can't be right?

I can see that the frame rate limit is being applied in the OSD for dxtory, the fps matches the limit. I am either turning vsync on in the game else forcing it in the driver via an application profile.

So I am back to where I was before. Since these solutions work for everyone else what am I doing wrong?

 

[Jacky60]

OP how much memory do you have? My gaming experience improved a lot going from 6Gb to 16Gb despite Arma2 'not' using more than 3-4 gb? You're trying to feed two very hungry cards from 1 not very fast ssd as well-that could be the problem! Also I think you should OC your cpu, Arma 2 fps drops by 15-20fps for me at stock-so much so I can immediately tell if I've dropped back to stock when gaming.

 

[BrightCandle]

OP how much memory do you have? My gaming experience improved a lot going from 6Gb to 16Gb despite Arma2 'not' using more than 3-4 gb? You're trying to feed two very hungry cards from 1 not very fast ssd as well-that could be the problem! Also I think you should OC your cpu, Arma 2 fps drops by 15-20fps for me at stock-so much so I can immediately tell if I've dropped back to stock when gaming.

16 GB in 4x4 sticks.

I intend to get the CPU overclocked as soon as my watercooling kit arrives for the motherboard. The VRMs and X79 are getting quite hot even with directed air cooling and the board isn't IMO up to being overclocked until there is some better cooling in place. Arma 2 does indeed run better overclocked, at least it did on the 5970 with a 920 in there (my previous machine) but I am noticing that the 7970's are much better in this game already, allowing quite a lot more eye candy (gone from low/medium to high/very high in all but shadows and HDR and the average FPS is better as well).

In A2 I haven't seen a world item pop ever since I got my first Intel X25 80GB. Arma 2 benefits a lot from an SSD but it doesn't saturate even one of the original ones let alone an M4. That isn't the source of the microstutter in all these games, it can't be surely?

 

[BrightCandle]

Just doing yet further tests. In Windows when moving the DXTory window around it would stutter a little bit. Eclipse stutters quite a lot when dragged around, has been for weeks and as I said above everything stutters when there are too many windows onscreen. I have turned crossfire off globally and all that stuttering in Windows is gone, my web browser is finally running like its meant to.

Something is badly wrong with my crossfire and I need to know how to fix it. I have already uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers and profiles, on the assumption that this has gone really wrong at some point how do I clean that up completely?

Anything else that could cause this, a bad crossfire bridge perhaps or a poor connection?

I need other things to try as this is getting silly the more I dig and the more I test without crossfire the more problems related to crossfire I find, even when it shouldn't be doing anything.

 

[Vesku]

Sensitivity to micro-stuttering varies, I tried Crossfire and could just not get past the stutter even though other people who tried it were fine.

 

[lavaheadache]

Sensitivity to micro-stuttering varies, I tried Crossfire and could just not get past the stutter even though other people who tried it were fine.

this

 

[Via]

I'd love to see a video. I'm really curious what you consider "unbearable".

 

[Silverforce11]

Maybe I'm too old but I've been staring at CF and SLI rigs since the early days and never notice microstutter. When things run at constant 60+ fps its so smooth i can't tell...

Its like mouse lag with CF/SLI, some ppl i know claim they notice it..

Since you notice it in every game, i guess you are just more sensitive to it and thus multi cards are not for you.

 

[lehtv]

When things run at constant 60+ fps its so smooth i can't tell...

Indeed. It becomes more noticeable at fps that is significantly less than the refresh rate. Crossfire/SLI usually makes sense only if is noticeably faster than any single GPU available (because then it will always achieve smooth FPS)

 

[boxleitnerb]

You need to set the limit of the fps limiter lower than your min fps. If you get at least 40fps, you have to set the limit to 39 or below.

Everyone I know has been able to eliminate stuttering with the limiter. Weird that it's not working on your rig. Please give an example where you used the limiter, what fps you got without it (you can disable it on the fly) and what you set your limit to.