Benchmarks
I think it’s pretty clear what the performance results are going to be here so there isn’t a lot of purpose on piling on the bad news. Our updated custom performance scripts make a couple of assumptions now for the all-important Observed FPS data:
- A dropped frame is noted and considered a 0ms result.
- An interleaved frame is added to the successive color for frame time. This means that we don’t count a dropped frame but instead consider it “runt” like in terms of how it affects the gaming experience.
Battlefield 3 sees a very similar drop in FRAPS to Observed frame rates for the CrossFire setup as we saw with our non Eyefinity testing; a pair of dual HD 7970s GHz Edition looks very similar to a single card. The Frame Times data indicates we are seeing nearly every other frame dropped from our testing resulting in half the perceived frame rate as reported by other performance metrics.
GRID 2 was a game that heavily witnessed the frame interleaving problem and because of it the frame times graph shows a combination of that anomaly with dropped frames as well. There is basically no observed scaling with CrossFire at 5760×1080.
Clearly for both AMD's Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770, single GPU results are right where you expect them to be – no frame pacing issues or other hiccups to be found. NVIDIA's SLI does have some issues with GRID 2 maintaining a consistent frame rate though AMD's CrossFire is obviously the outlier in both games.
Keep the faith, Ryan and co.
Keep the faith, Ryan and co. Just continue to call it like you see it and let the chips fall where they may.
Hopefully AMD will get its stuff together otherwise they are going to lose a few folks.
I sincerely admire your
I sincerely admire your journalistic integrity Ryan… as well everyone else at the PCper team!
-Stewart Graham
what a difference in AMD
what a difference in AMD graft, they improved on there driver.
Is this so with an APU + Graphic card. Good job Ryan.
Well currently rolling with
Well currently rolling with 2×7970’s on a 1920×1200 triple display setup. Can’t say I ever really been personally bothered the various issues raised in the article in regards to the frame interlieaving and stepped tearing enough to stop playing, though I trust the guys over at PCPer to give it to me straight. I noticed the stuttering with crossfire more than anything else you guys brought up with your new testing methodology. I think most of us gamers at least gained a better understanding about the various issues involved. Sometimes my benchmarking applcation(be it FRAPS or Dxtory) would say I was getting a certain frame amount but the game just felt too jittery, whereas if I disabled crossfire the game felt more smooth even with a lower framerate.
That is not to say I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed my 7970’s/Eyefinity setup. When I’ve been been able to play at Eyefinity resolutions I’ve done so, when I haven’t I’ve just adjusted my quality or resolution settings until I could get a smooth enough playing experience.
Do I hope that AMD is able to smooth out those circumstances where I can’t play at a give resolution/quality due to micro-stuttering with crossfire, yeah that would be awesome. I think a lot of us out here still don’t have a full appreciation for the phenomena due to not having been able to test multi-GPU solutions side by side, so it just comes down to “the game doesn’t feel fluid enough at my current settings so I’ll dial them down until it does”, which I’m sure people have different sensitivities to. Keep up the good work PCPer crew.
what about this
what about this ryan?
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2013/9/18/nvidia-launches-amd-has-issues-marketing-offensive-ahead-of-hawaii-launch.aspx#.Ujo-ScnFMsU.twitter
why use 2 hdmi cables when
why use 2 hdmi cables when you can use a single displayport cable and the problem does not exist with displayport ?
At first I thought this
At first I thought this article may have been over egging the problem with eyefinity + crossfire. Having now disconnected my second HD 7970 and played a few games in eyefinity I have seen that I is not. Radeon Pro may tell me that I’m getting half the FPS that I was but my eyes see the same low FPS experience.
Not impressed AMD, I feel like a chump for spending £300 on a card whose only additional effect to my system has been extra heat and noise.
Still at least I can go back and play Farcry 3 now with out the giant oversized HUD problem.
Thanks For the good article and thanks for bending AMD’s ear.
A damned good read thanks
A damned good read thanks Ryan. AMD owners should be pleased that these issues are highlighted and making sure AMD keep on their toes. Like the FCAT article, it was good to see AMD address the issue and get it fixed and again, it was PCper who made AMD aware of the issues (like they didn’t already know!)and forced them into sorting that out for their users.
I think a lot of hardware
I think a lot of hardware maker define CPU differently then Microsoft.you can ask I wrote a bug report to and today 13.10 beta.if I recall message signal interrupt and its extended variant were implemented in vista for consumer?ROFL we know how vista was received so this might be one overlooked good thing.my case?in regedit MSI was enabled (sad was not for some reason ,can’t enable it)but no amount of MSI set!(if it isn’t set isn’t it defaulting to one msi / socket?but I have 4 CPU in my i5 2500k(ya only physical CPU ms say)so imagine amd 8 core fx lol stuck with 1 MSI / msix.I think this is the cause.sadly on my system none were set . I normally tweak but from what I saw on ms it isn’t a case of 0 or 1.and ms recommend hex value.Rolf a bit too complex for my knowledge.but you guys know a lot of hardcore tweaker . if I’m right ? I would be like what the eck am I the only one that used vista ?
PS:what I wrote is for w8 64
PS:what I wrote is for w8 64 bit!But I suspect a lot of hardware maker default to 1 (probably easier to implement)since socket come fro 2 to 12) detecting might be entertaining.
2.1.4.1. Resolution,
2.1.4.1. Resolution, Granularity, and Accuracy of System Time
http://www.windowstimestamp.com/description
Bottom line?I hate compromise!