Improving Framerates with Crossfire 5870

So after experiencing framerate problems on many games, and getting frustrated as heck, I got down to buisness and tried finding out what was wrong.

I feel stupid at how easy it was.
I know that a few of you, namely Unreal and Sifu, were complaining about WoW and SC2 respectively.
WoW fps jumped from 17 to 100+ on the login screen(windowed mode, fullscreen), and 200+ in regular fullscreen.
Starcraft 2 jumped from 7 fps, to 55+fps(windowed, fullscreen) and 60+fps(Fullscreen)
All settings are on Ultra with all goodies enabled(excluding VS)


1. Open CCC
2. Click on Graphics and go to 3D
3. Drag the sliders all the way down to "performance".
4. ????
5. Improved framerates

Heres a video shot with my phone. Pardon the fan in the background.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkbUHPSXZTY

Stupidly simple, yet helps a ton.

 

And that doesn't affect any in-game graphics? If so, you sir, are a genius!

 

Nope, everything still looks impeccable.

 

Awesome, mine should be arriving on June 8th, I can't wait!

 

I never seen CCC settings have that big of an affect on FPS.

 

Since i'm expecting this system as well I would love to know if anyone else has tested this?

 

When you get more your machine you should try it. It's pretty shocking.

 

How do you take a desktop video? I know frasps does games but I want a video taker to show what I mean

 

Hypercam works I think.

 

camstudio, technismith camstasia studio . . go ahead with them

 

Okay i just took a video with my phone. Now I just to find where it was stored and upload it to youtube...

 

Added the video

 

Can you link it to us or tell us what you named the video under?

 

I'm not sure why your CCC settings came with the quality option as the default. The default is actually supposed to be in the middle at balanced not quality. Moving the slider all the way to performance will actually sacrifice image quality for frame rate, where as the balanced option is a good blend of image quality and performance.

You should test the game with balanced settings and see how it performs. You may actually be able to keep the great frame rate and some of the image quality.

 

Whats CCC stand for?

 

Catalyst Control Center.

 

Catalyst Control Center

 

Beat me too it

 

Is there anything similar to this on the m15x?

 

You really should ask these kinds of questions in the M15x threads. It's not nice to hijack someone else's thread.

 

What graphics card do you have? Is it ATI 5850? If so, then you have it

 

I agree! Lets keep this discussion on track

 

I'm hoping others with crossfire 5870's can try this out tommorow. I don't want to be the only one
I'm gonna run vantage now and see if there's any significant difference in score.

 

Did you read my post about the CCC settings? and have you tried WoW with the balanced setting yet? Keep in mind when you use that slider to select balanced or performance and click apply, it automatically changes all those individual settings like AA, AAA, AF, AI and Mipmap for you.

 

I just tried .... putting everything on performance indeed makes it go much smoother, but the graphics looks quite a bit worse.

I think the problem is that the textures that are relatively close to me are blurred - it had to do with the fact that I moved MipMap settings to High Performance instead of Performance. Now it's on performance and I get occasional stuttering in Dalaran.

 

Can you try moving the Standard Settings slider to Balanced and hit apply, then go into the game and tell me how it looks and what kind of frame rates you are getting, thanks.

 

Yeah I just did that. The thing is if you look at the frame rate indicator, it shows ~60 fps. But if you look at the screen say when you're moving through a forest you see occasional "stutter" randomly. It's noted by a rapid drop to 40 FPS, which doesn't look bad in theory - but in reality it's really annoying. (More than if it had say ~20 FPS constantly).

I then tried moving that slide to High performance (1 bar towards performance) and still the same.

In short, it works a bit worse than on GT 335M (lol).

 

where were you having 17fps? The only place I would drop below say, 30FPS @ full resolution and half shaders is dal, and that was with CF 4870s

 

It doesn't show up as 17 FPS or anything like that. It's just random stutters and between each it runs very smoothly. It doesn't show up as low FPS if you try to record it (like FRAPS).

For example, I was just running through empty Dalaran and had it happening all the time. Let me try recording a video with the external webcam.

 

Does it do that little stutter only in Crossfire? or does it do it also in single card?

 

I'm going to test that, along with many other setting combos tomorrow.

I also noticed that it flickers like hell with even just x2 aa on.

 

Only when I am on single card. On crossfire it works very smoothly, but... the screen flickers. It looks as if someone is messing with screen brightness all the time - like changing it up and down by 1-2 bar. Also annoying... lol

 

Are you playing in windowed mode?

 

Fullscreen. Native res 1920x1200.

 

Sounds like people should start bugging Dell about the cards. If enough people complain, they'll have to take action. I'm still waiting on mine though.

 

Thanks for the tip. Tried out your suggestion. It did improve the frame rate of Starcraft 2 Beta on ultra from 10-20fps to about 25-30. Textures scaling up close doesn't look as good, but the frame increase is worth it to me.

 

I assume you've installed the ATI CrossFireX™ Application Profiles?

Drivers & Support | GAME.AMD.COM

The first download listed.

 

I Installed them but I don't see where I can select them.

In CCC, profiles is empty. Maybe it's only for 10.5?

 

I know this is going off topic for this thread, but since i'm getting a m17x soon I figured join in.
I did the exact same thing with my M15x and saw similar increases in FPS, however not as high (obviously).

My question to the OP is can you post a video with everything in the middle (balanced as one user said)? I'd like to see how much you get up to. However I'm surprised WOW was sitting at 10-15 fps before.. I thought it would be higher at least.

 

Of course they do. Switching the preset under "Standard Settings" in the Catalyst Control Center to Performance will turn off FSAA, Adaptive Anti-Aliasing and set the lowest levels for Anisotropic Filtering, Mip Map Detail, etc.. This of course will cause the image quality to take a huge hit while improving performance.

 

Yeah sure one sec

 

YouTube - VIDEO0003
Heres the closest to half settings I could get.
I've uploaded another one with the same settings on Sim3. HUGE difference.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVK5AMWp0wk

 

Wait a second. Isn't there an option to disable Nvidia Management of this and allow it to be application controlled? wouldn't that allow the game to determine the necessary graphical enhancements and optimize your system?

Correct me if i'm wrong here. I can't even check because i'm using an nvidia 260m right now

 

you can either
1) disable application controlled functions of specific GPU functions through the 3d panel
ie, force performance textures for all 3d applications regardless of requested quality levels.
-or-
2) individually manage GPU functions of 3D quality aspects on a application level, meaning assigning specific forced fuctions for specific applications.
ie
performance texture resolution for wow
quality texture resolution for dead space..ect for all other controls.


adjusting & turning off 'features' is an old trick from waaaaaay back in the Geforce 256 days.

 

I think I can see your PJ's reflected in the screen. Gotta be careful!

 

Sweet, I'll give this a try later tonight

 

Wow is more cpu bound. I went from a desktop C2D to a i7 and framerates in dalaran basically went from 30 to 60 fps while still using the same video card (4870x2)

 

That doesn't explain then how come it works flawlessly on SU4100 1.7 GHz on Ultra details.

 

uh resolution? I play at 1920x1200. Either way I saw a huge jump when I changed cpus.

 

those are my curtains. why buy new ones when those work just fun