Framerate went down after 3 days.

Hi guys!
About three days ago, i installed two HD5870s in crossfire-mode to my R1, and ever since, the framerate has been going down when playing Battlefield 3.

How wierd it seems, i can't find an explanation to why it is like that, when i just started the game for the first time, i had about 50 fps, and now its gone down to about 30-40 fps. I'm having a hard time understanding why it is like that, since i've edited / changed absoloutely nothing on the system. The temps on the cards never go over 60 c* aswell.
(Done about 12 hrs of playing.)

Does anyone have a tip / clue of why it could possibly this way?

Edit:
I also experience that when disabling xFire and running on one card, i get almost identical framerate. (5 -10 or so less FPS). That's wierd, because when running the game with xFire, the other GFX cards heats up just as much as the primary.



Thanks guys!

- Scott.

 

Did you install the catalyst application profiles? Cap4?

 

I did install Cap3, before i did any gaming at all.
I'll go ahead and download the Cap4 now,
ill post an feedback when i've tried.

I can only find Cap4 for 11.9, whilst i am running 11.10.
Is that ok to use, or is there a newer one?


- Scott.

 

i think cap4 is the newest one available.

There will be official 11.10 drivers and caps released on Halloween, so you'll just have to wait another day

 

Ok, so i tried the cap 4. Still no difference, not even back to the FPS's that i was originally having.

Is it worth OCing theese cards? Will it make any difference?

- Scott.

Edit:
also, is there any app i can use to monitor load on both graphics cards?

 

Hi Scott,

you can use HWinfo for monitoring many sensors.

 

Doctor Magneto;
HwInfo would not let me see the load on the Graphics card cores.

But, i discovered something else;

I looked in HWinfo for te graphics cards, and it seems like theyre values are jumping up and down?
On #0 (Card nr.1) i saw that the Clocks where not constant, It could go from 700 to 500, aswell as the 1000 one decreasing. It was kind of jumping up and down?

http://i44.tinypic.com/140au7o.jpg

On #1 (Card nr.2) i saw a Constant Value for tHe Clocks, but STILL, its WAY lower than what the card is supposed to be!
http://i43.tinypic.com/rrl5zm.jpg



What is Causing this? Shouldn't they BotH be 700 And 1000? Please see the Screenshots! Is it somekind of trhottling?

This was during Playing BF3.



- SCott. (Sorry, my keyboard is Bugged).

 

Click button "sensors", it will open the window with many parameters, where you can see GPU utilization as well. Yoy can set to show graphs for any value. Then play the game and check the readings

 

Ok, so here is the readings that the sensors gave out;
http://i44.tinypic.com/34zzkno.png

Shows that Core 0 (Card 1) had 96,6% maximal load during the game-session, while Core 1 (Card2) only had 62,3% load.
Also, its shown in the earlier screenshots that the cores don't have the correct speeds.

Is there something wrong? My bet would be that the cards aren't getting enough power, but i'm known for being wrong.


Any suggestions?
- Scott.

 

the behaviour in previous screenshots is normal I guess. The clocks vary depending from the task, and change on the fly. Under such load as game the core and memory clocks stay at max. In sensors window rigt click on the value and click "show graph" then you can see in graph how the clock changes, just to check that it is constant under the load. But I think the clocks are OK. Not normal is that secondary GPU is not utilized properly. How did you install the driver?

 

I installed the original 5870 Driver from Dell's website to get the xFire functionallity, and then the 11.10 on top of that. To finish it all off, i added the Cap3, and then the Cap4 Catalyst profile packs.

- Scott.

 

my suggestion is to reinstall the driver. I would wipe the current driver and install the latest official 11.9

 

before you do all that work, just wait till tomorrow when the offical 11.10s are released

 

Yeah, think i'm staying with SlickDude's suggestion. I'll reinstall Windows 7 aswell, the system seems a tiny bit laggy from time to time (when just using it normally, surfing, listening to music.)


Any opinions about overclocking by the way? Would it give any noticeable performance boost?

- Scott.

 

I game and bench at stock clocks can't help much here

 

the only way i know how to overclock your CPU is with an app called setFSB. 2.3-2.4ghz isn't out of the question

 

I was mainly thinking about the GPUs (xFire HDm 5870), since i've never had the CPU on maximum load, causing FPS drop yet..

- Scott.

 

I would reinstall the drivers. Overclocking May help, but i don't think its necessary. The cards jump clocks because the have power play in action. If you open a vbios with be you'll see that there are various clocks which engage when needed. What are your vantage scores and 3dmark11 scores?

 

Don't worry, inzelux, what DR650 said is true and this is normal, nothing to worry about.

If you are still worried try running furmark and you'll see your clocks stable at max if temps are fine and cards are ok

Cheers

 

I tried the new drivers today. And the FPS keep dropping, now i'm down to 33-38.

Whats happening?

Edit: No difference at all when running one and two Graphics cards either.
Ill do an FurMark - ASAP!


Edit:
Furmark Screenshot;
http://i41.tinypic.com/20uyfj6.png

Is it me, or is the cores running a bit hot?

Edit2:
Disassembeled and repasted the GPUs, the cooling paste on them were completely dry. Ill post an update when i've benchmarked again.
- Scott.

Re-Edit 3, problem solved;
Heat is killing the cards.
After repaste, cards are running fine with 70 fps.

Thanks for the help!

- Scott.

 

great...its usually something like this. Its good that you are handy enough to open up the machine and solve it

 

Just ordered the ***** biggest notebook cooler that i found on the web, here in Norway

Thanks guys,
muchly appriciated!

 

haha...maybe you should try these first...its only $2 and i bet they will work just as good as your notebook cooler

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