Multi-GPU Management on the HD5870 (with Beta VBIOS)

Hey Guys, I found some very very interesting thing, with Furmark concerning the Catalyst AI, which i seem is the major culprit for some people seeing good or bad performance independantly.

The 2 States concerning Multi-GPU-Management. Check out the pictures, upon changing the entry Catalyst AI from Advanced to Standard in Command Center (CCC) the system goes from State1 into State2. When the system is in state1, the system performance nicely. With the state2, not so much anymore.

State 1 - Catalyst AI Advanced (Note Average 124fps)



State 2 -Catalyst AI Standard (Note Average 100fps)



Now, the funny part, restoring back to state 1 It's not as easy as just set it back to Advanced again, and it works right away again, nono, that would be way too easy, right ati?

So here's how to get back to state1, and to max. system performance again.
Go into CCC, set back the entry in Catalyst AI to Advanced, Accept the setting. Go to CrossFireX Options, Disable Crossfire, Accept, Enable Crossfire, Accept.

(If you can only Disable CrossFire and not Enable it again, upon Catalyst removing the CrossFireX entry, restart, go back into CC, enable it again and now you should be in State 1 again.)

AI should be restored again to Advanced, verify with Furmark running faster again.

When i am in State 1 all games seem to work like a charm on application controlled settings in CCC.

Cheers!

PS: I did this on the ATI Reference Drivers 10.8 8.762.0 and new Beta VBIOS. Should apply to other Catalyst versions aswell.

 

interesting discovery i'll test on my friend's m17x -r2 as soon as i can

 

Well, Advanced AI will put on some advanced tweaks for each application to improve performance while possibly reducing image quality. That's the whole idea behind it. So the performance/visual quality may vary between Standard and Advanced Catalyst AI. I've found that some applications perform better with Catalyst AI set to Standard and others to Advanced. The RadeonPro utility is really helpful, as it can set the Catalyst AI level (as well as individual image quality options) per application.

 

Yes, exactly that's what i use aswell. But sometimes it interfers with Catalyst Command Center. Do you think we should just uninstall CCC and do everything solely with RadeonPro, would that work?

 

@Grimfan I've read around about new Dell ATI driver and the new beta Vbios, I have a question, if I want update them for my R2 later, how can I do, I need to update the Bios version to A07 first or not? Thanks in advance!
My specs

i7 720qm
Xfire 5870

 

note on a 48XX equiped system it will stick your system in state 2 requiring an reboot

 

According to Brian it is recommended to update the System Bios to A07 first, but someone else said he was still on A05 Updated to the Beta Display Drivers and flashed then the VBIOS, might work aswell, but most people updated to A07 anyhow by now, so you shouldn't be left out with all the issues that might occur with the system bios, VBIOS looks stable so far.

NEW BETA VBIOS for HD5870 Mirrors and Installation Guide

So you have to do the whole procedure including disabling CrossFire, or just set AI back to Advance, then reboot to get to State 1 again?

 

The vbios isn't dependent on any system bios. It will run with them all just fine.

 

it does not changes much you have to reboot after you changed the catalyst AI from standar to advanced or the change won't take place but it seem to have to do with the 10.8 driver cause befor i never had issue with catalyst ai

 

Make sure, Furmark is closed, so the settings get applied, or restart Furmark, should have the same effect, atleast on the 5870 i noticed.

 

manage in this way is puzzling

 

Thank you for the conseil, I try and report the result later!