5770 vs 6870 vs 6970 for eyefinity/xfire, help needed...

[4pack]

Ok so here is the situation I have(had) my hackintosh running 2x sapphire 5770's set up with crossfire bridge and running 3 monitors (for eyfinity in windows). On the mac I use 2 dvi ports on one card and 1 on the other so all monitors work with graphics enabler on. It works well and no issues.

In windows it works well to as when crossfire loads all 3 monitors run off one card and I can then enable eyfinity.

As I like to play quite a bit of bf3 I figured I'd upgrade a bit as the 6870's can be found fairly cheap now and give a good bang for the buck, and crossfire performance promised to be pretty sweet.

So have now installed 2x XFX 6870 cards running in crossfire, same setup as with the 5770's. I can get all the ports on a single card to work it seems using the mangabey frame buffer, although the mini dvi socket only actually seems to come on after you go to sleep or something, but its no issue.

Now he problem I'm having is actually over in the winblows camp. The performance in bf3 is actually quite terrible. I was expecting great things but these things stutter, pause and crash and i have tried every setting under the sun and different drivers to no avail. The performance is worse than my old cards.

Thus I'm considering putting the 5770's back in and sending the 6 series cards back. But Would or should I go for a 6970? is one of those going to work and are there any that will support 3 monitors in os x and if so by which connectors (dvi/mdp/hdmi etc). My budget can stretch to 1x6970 but thats my limit really.

Is it worth it or should I wait it out for 7 series support??

Any advice at this point is much appreciated...

 

[Juggernaut1987]

Since your problems are in Windows I can be of assistance. Try this:

Remove the 2 6870 cards, put one back.
Remove all Ati Catalyst packages and drivers from your system.
Reboot and make sure your running stock VGA crappy windows drivers.
Download the latest Catalyst package and install those.
See if BF3 has a patch, install it if possible and try the game with 1 card.
If it runs fine add another with the crossfire bridge, enable crossfire in Catalyst Control panel and try BF3 again.

If this doesn't help its probably a drivers issue and it will be fixed in the next version of Catalyst. Be sure to check other games with 1 card and then with 2.
Run 3D mark with one card and then with 2. No higher scores there means something wrong in the crossfire setup. If other games and 3d mark are fine its BF3 that is the problem and you can only wait for a patch or new driver version.

I see no gain in getting a single 6970. Your performance will be worse too. An update from the 5770 for that matter was a good one.

 

[4pack]

Spent another whole day pretty much on this. Uninstalled catalyst suite, run driver sweeper to clear out all the old muck. Run the widows updates, then the updates for the updates, then the service pack, then the updates for the service pack

Installed the catalyst suite again and the application profiles.

Running on a singe card, great no problems and 50-60 fps @1920x1080
Running in crossfire, single screen, great no problems there either 100-120 fps @1920x1080
Enable eyefinity, and it tanks. Even if on eyefinity but only using single screen 30-40 fps.

But the real problem seems to be some kind of weird sync issue, it starts out fine and after a 30 secs or so you start to get stutters, then he stutters get longer and more and more frequent until its unplayable, then eventually it will crash. But fraps still says its doing 30-50 fps!!

Have put the 5770's back in and done the same level / settings and they just keep going no stutters or problems but lower frame rate 20-30 fps. But at the moment they wipe the floor with the 6870's

Think this must be some strange hw conflict. I'll go back to xfx see what they have to say... otherwise they can have them back.

Thanks for the advise

 

[Juggernaut1987]

Have you tried any other game? Have you tested your 3d mark scores to see if crossfire is working all together?
Saying this is a hardware problem based on a single game is a long stretch imo. Xfx will probably say the same.


Edit: Google crossfire eyefinity bf3. A ton of hits of people that describe the exact same. I've pasted 1 link for you.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1648784

 

[4pack]

At the moment not tried any other game, as BF3 is the most demanding from the graphics and specifically thats what I bought these cards for...

I could well see it being written off to a software / driver bug, except that the only thing is that with everything else set up identically the lesser slower 5770's which should be 1/2 the performance of the 6870's are able to perform much better and more consistently!

With exactly the same crossfire and eyefinity setup and settings!

There are issues with eyfinity and BF3 many of which have been patched, but not many issues with show stoppers like this. But again have already run it in eyefinity for months on the 57's

The issue seems to be in enabling the eyfinity on the 68's and my beef here is it says eyfinity on the box, and in the blub and so far they don't deliver and thus are not fit for purpose.

For now xfx are stumped I have to go try these in another rig. See if it all falls over in that too... more days of testing to come

 

[Juggernaut1987]

Testing the cards in another rig wont help a thing. Stop wasting your time on it.
The problems are with the game: BF3 which isnt optimised for running 3x Eyefinity on Crossfire 6870's. I would email AMD on this demanding a hotfix for the catalyst package. Dont bother XFX with it, they just made the cards. Which run fine in other games, eventhough you still havent tested that yet..

On another note what your eyefinity resolution? Compare your FPS's to that of other people's by using threads like these: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1647415

I would also suggest posting a topic on BF3 dedicated boards. This has nothing to do with OSX, XFX or hardware anymore. Its a specific problem with BF3 on HD6970's in Crossfire with eyefinity.