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2x 6870 Xfire but crap BF3 FPs/Useage

Associate
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195
Location
S.Wales
Hi Guys, I Finally came to upgrading my pc as graphics card blew.... 6 mths lol and I swapped my xfire 3870 for 2x HIS X Turbo X 6870 from here on week only special. They are both up and running and enabled in cross fire with latest 12.1a ATI driver and cat Driver.

However Im getting Crap FPS in BF3 (main motivation for pc upgrade/fix etc) Using MSI afterburner im only getting avg 25-35fps in 'High' Not even using uptra in 1680x1050 which I believe should be simple for this graphics setup. However GPU useage is only 50% max on each card....... Doesnt make sense would expect them to max out given crap fps????

Other Spec FYI
E8200 Duo running 3.8ghz
6gb Reaper Ram
Velociraptor HDD
700W OCZ PSU
System Temps 30-35Deg (load)
Cpu Temps 55-65 Deg (load)
GPU Temps 5-55deg (load)
All prime/memtest stable

plz help cause this game has cost me a fortune as a result lol

Thanls
 
Soldato
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I had two 6950s in crossfire and due to a driver bug/beta BF3 sometimes they only managed 70% usage on either card. That said when the came out fully and even with the 12.1 drivers I was getting both cards at 99% usage.

Make sure your running in full mode and not window mode as well as Crossfire doesn't work in a window.

I suspect your issue lies with your CPU, what's your CPU usage at? BF3 loves more than 2 cores and even though your E8200 is overclocked, the fact it's only a dual core CPU might mean you have a bottleneck there.
 
Soldato
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If both cards are at 50% max, that means your xfire isn't working. Have you got the crossfire bridge on the cards? Also, make sure you haven't disabled CAT AI in the drivers as that disables xfire.
 
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hi Guys thanks for quick response

I installed 12.1a no change
Was running full screen anyway
Not disabled cat ai
xfire is working both gpu's have useage & have seen higher in other games.

Checked my cpu log in core temp and you were right it 100% both cores.

IU was hoping that running at 3.8ghz per core and two cards with take the extra load.... ovo not lol

Anything I can do as a cheap alernative?? Already spent 000's£ just to get it up running in respectable spec it is now lol
 
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Your CPU limited... Time to move to Sandy bridge, Don't bother pumping cash into the dead 775.

I know it's the cheapest upgrade path but best sell up while you can still get decent'ish cash for 775 parts.
 
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yea just contemplating this cause a q6600-q6700 are retailing for £50-£75
Im guessing I can get a Mboard/CPU/Ram for £300 (£150 CPU, £50 mem, £100 Mb) Save myself £60 on q6600 and maybe get £90 my bundle, so its a £150 upgrade........
 
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My 6870 was bottle necked by an amd athlon quad core. My i5 upgrade has given me about 10fps. Not massive but enough.

You're due an upgarde. I wouldnt waste money on old tech. But you have to figure the budget.
 
Soldato
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A 775 socket quad core at the right price is a cheap fix until you decide to spend more on a CPU , ram , motherboard upgrade. This will give a reasonable enough performance boost in the mean time.
 
Soldato
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2,597
Just go with the CPU upgrade. You can have a quad for around £50 and your old chip may get you £30ish but I'm not that sure, have a look on the bay or post in the price check forum if you have access.

A C2Q is still a very viable machine, and from EVERY review I have seen comparing low end quads to high end quads the fps difference has been less than 5 top to bottom. The Bulldozer "quads" being some of the worse (I myself don't see these as true quad cores and view them as more like duel cores with an awfully complex version of Intels hyper threading or some kind of strange halfway point) I'm still a little surprised however that your fps are falling so low even on a dual, they are generally reported in the 40s on high end dual tests, but it clearly looks like this is your problem with usage being so high over both cores.
 
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yea just contemplating this cause a q6600-q6700 are retailing for £50-£75
Im guessing I can get a Mboard/CPU/Ram for £300 (£150 CPU, £50 mem, £100 Mb) Save myself £60 on q6600 and maybe get £90 my bundle, so its a £150 upgrade........

Exactly dude, If you do the same upgrade later on you'll get less for your existing hardware so the upgrade will end up costing you even more.

Just check this out, You have a ~£40 low end Sandy Bridge pentium Dual core besting or matching a 4Ghz Core 2 Duo E8400!!

http://en.inpai.com.cn/doc/enshowcont.asp?id=7977&pageid=8046

kind of puts it into perceptive just how slow the Core 2 series is now.
 
Last edited:
Soldato
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I'm the same mate, QUAD 6600 at 3.44ghz on a 430FSB, and I get around 50-60% tops on all three cards in BF3, yet in Heaven Benchmark all three cards max out from 97%+... so annoying really and in my opinion nadly coded rather than bottlenecks... I mean, coders should be using GPU's... what is the CPU realllyyyy doing in BF3? I'd love to see Dise give their breakdown..

I'm also in the same boat, don't want to spend more cash and now wondering what i7 to get now as there seems that many damn boards, chipsets and chips... all I want is something running artound 4.8gb and able to run 16gb or more ram... **** knows, need to start reading up me thinks...

Sorry to see your in the same boat as me mate!
 
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I'm the same mate, QUAD 6600 at 3.44ghz on a 430FSB, and I get around 50-60% tops on all three cards in BF3, yet in Heaven Benchmark all three cards max out from 97%+... so annoying really and in my opinion nadly coded rather than bottlenecks... I mean, coders should be using GPU's... what is the CPU realllyyyy doing in BF3? I'd love to see Dise give their breakdown..

I'm also in the same boat, don't want to spend more cash and now wondering what i7 to get now as there seems that many damn boards, chipsets and chips... all I want is something running artound 4.8gb and able to run 16gb or more ram... **** knows, need to start reading up me thinks...

Sorry to see your in the same boat as me mate!

1. It's running Windows and all associated tasks in the back ground
2. It's doing dynamic memory management for the game
3. Lighting calculations
4. Physics
5. Sound
6. Managing the draws calls
7. Managing directX and it's com's to the GPU driver
8. Enemy ai

There's loads more as well.....

There's no such thing as a badly coded game, Just a game that requires a lot of CPU power.

Heaven is very GPU power hungry because of tessellation, If you turn off tessellation your GPU usage should drop

If you swap out your Q6600 for a 2500k you'll find that all 3 of your cards will jump to 99% use in BF3 and pretty much evey other game.

Sandy Bridges memory controller can also handle 16Gb RAM with EASE...
 
Soldato
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1. It's running Windows and all associated tasks in the back ground
2. It's doing dynamic memory management for the game
3. Lighting calculations
4. Physics
5. Sound
6. Managing the draws calls
7. Managing directX and it's com's to the GPU driver
8. Enemy ai

There's loads more as well.....

There's no such thing as a badly coded game, Just a game that requires a lot of CPU power.

Heaven is very GPU power hungry because of tessellation, If you turn off tessellation your GPU usage should drop

If you swap out your Q6600 for a 2500k you'll find that all 3 of your cards will jump to 99% use in BF3 and pretty much evey other game.

Sandy Bridges memory controller can also handle 16Gb RAM with EASE...

Lucky that in bold is a matter of opinion.
 
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