New Alienware M17x R2 with 5870x2 in CF and World of Warcraft.

Hey guys,

I haven't posted often on this forum, but I am a long time reader and fan.
I'm in dire need, of some help.

I mostly play only one game, and that's Wow (World of Warcraft: WoTLK). My new Alienware m17x just arrived this afternoon. It has the Intel core i7 820qm processor, 4 gb of 1333 ram, a 256 gb SSD and 2x ati radeon mobility 5870 in Crossfire.

When first starting Wow today, I cranked up all the settings to MAX, ULTRA. I had some flickering, which got resolved by running the game in windowed mode maximized. Everything was really fine until I hit dalaran. I'm playing on one of the busiest server out there and my frames droped to around 20 on average (16min - 25max). Then I kinda suspected something was wrong. So I felt with my hand at the back, and the left back exhaust for gpu card nr 1 was blowing out hot air; But the second gpu card on the right, wasn't. It was just cool air (room temp appr).

Because feeling with my hand isn't a scientific proven concept, I downloaded GPU-Z. That backed up my suspicions. It told me that CrossFire was and is enabled (just as the catalyst control center also stated). But when I took next tab " Sensors ", I could clearly see that one gpu was around 75°C and under 75% load, with high Core and Memory clock speeds (700Mhz and 1000Mhz respectively). When I selected the second graphics card; He was still cool around 35°C and under 0% load, plus the memory and core clock speeds were very low.

This actually proves to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that the second one isn't working at all, at least not in Wow game.

THE question now is, who here with a lot of knowlegde and expertese on these matters can actually help me out. How do I get them to actually work in CF (although they supposedly are WINK WINK). And is there no way to be certain when they are actually working and when they are not ?

Plz, I can beg, your help is greatly appreciated !!

 

afaik XF does NOT work in windowed mode

 

Thx fuzzyhead for your reply, but it ain't the problem.
I tried it both ways (in windowed mode and in normal mode). Only one Gpu get's warm and under load, the other one doesn't.

 

I run in full screen, in crossfire. The flickering got reduced after I reinstalled the drivers and stopped ALT+TABBING in the game...

 

WoW doesn't support SLI/Crossfire and it looks like it might be a long time before they do, if they do. They've stated that they are not doing anything major to the graphics engine when Cata hits at the end of the year.

 

Hey again,

Thx again for reply guys, but i'll repeat myself, I am currently running in FULL SCREEN, doesn't change SQUAD, still only one gpu ON FULL SCREEN (NOT WINDOWED MODE).

Any other suggestions ?

 

Reinstall all your GPU drivers and update your Bios it prob not up to date since u just got it. ALso wow dont support xfire atm so disable it i assume for wow and try out another game or benchmark to make sure both cards are working in xfire

 

Not sure what "SQUAD" is but, WoW does NOT support crossfire.

 

100% this. there is nothing that's wrong with your machine. just install the latest drivers you can, make sure power play is enabled, and play. it will be nice when blizzard catches up to the rest of the world, but then again, gross numbers in the millions per day, wouldn't motivate me to change anything either =)

 

Just as an FYI, I use crossfire to play WOW on my R1 and I have never experienced flickering.

 

i would post screen shots of hwinfo32 showing use of the 2nd card since Blizzard themselves claim that WoW doesnt support x-fire or SLI

 

Ok, I'll check that for you. What I mean though is that I do not turn off crossfire when I play WOW and I don't think the system turns it off automatically.

 

Well I play WOW everyday as Iam a GM and both my fans on the gpu's and cpu run load and all blow hot air..FPS are about 60 and 30 in Dalaran. Check device manager and see if both are there.

 

So I checked and you are right it does not use crossfire. What I don't understand is that the second GPU is under load. Why is that?

 

because its not disabled and im sure that while x-fire is enabled it is used by the other card at times for other processes. the issue is that blizzards arcane software doesnt support it, meaning that it wont utilize the other cards capabilities. pretty dumb IMO.

 

So would you recommend turn XF off for WOW?

 

Beg to differ as posted by blue back in Feb 2010 WOW does use CF and Sli .. and has been working to take advantage of it more. It relies much more on cpu's yes and you will not see a huge difference but you will see it. Can be found on the WOW forums.

 

So that explains why my second GPU is under load while playing WOW.

 

I didn't have flickering either on my 4870 R2. I turned down shaders to ~ half to keep dal happy, max everything else.

 

Yeah same here which is starting to scare me about the 5870... I wonder if it happens to other people also and if so it could be again that the power adapter is just not adequate for the PC.

We need a 300w PSU on this machine.

 

I'd say the i7 to cd2 difference is more than the difference In power consumption of the 4870 and 5870, the ram runs hotter for sure, but memory isn't a real power hog. the cores run cooler, so power draw should be only slightly higher . wish somone had an accurate wall meter

 

I think that maybe when we can utilize the ATI drivers or when DELL comes out with some new ones for the 5870x2 a lot of these problems should go away.

 

I agree, or at least some of them . the 10.6 beta thread has people with lots of problems being fixed already.

 

Found a Blue response a few days old:

Source:
World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Alienware Crossfire duel graphic problems

So I stand corrected, but it still sounds like you're not going to see any real big improvement from having it on. Remember that low FR and heavy lag in Dalaran is dependent on how many people are in that zone at a given time. The reason the devs gave for not really doing much with Crystalsong Forrest is because of the sheer amount of lag from Dal throughout that zone.

 

Where are the crossfire profiles?

 

I know there's no way either one of you guys can check this, but i'm just gonna say it any way. Wow doesn't support SLI and crossfire, but what about Lucid Logix's Hydra implementation ?
There's no laptop with dual cards and lucid logix chip in existance, but there there are desktop motherboards, even desktop cards with this chip (powercolor 5770 with lucid logix chip directly on the video card)

What this chip does it that it kinda emulates a "single" video card, the system sees the dual triple quadruple video cards as a single card, and the chip splits in real time the frame and assigns portions of it to different gpus, and the split is based on the capability of each gpu. A powerfull gpu gets more work, and less capable gpu gets less work, because the chip "senses" which gpu is more capable and wich is less capable.
The scaling is said to be linear, and as long as both card support same features, Ex both support dx 11, cards from different manufacturers can be combined (nvidia + ati)

What it would be intresting to see is a "triple" gpu laptop.
One low power GPU, for windows related stuff, and 2 powerfull GPU (ex 2x5870), all 3 binded togther by a lucid logix hydra chip.
When you are in windows, the 5870s are deactivated and lucid works with the low power gpu. Wehn you are in a not so power hungry game, the chip work with the low power gpu+one 5870. When you need maximum performance, you can activate the second 5870.
So for maximum performance you have Low Power Gpu+5870+5870.When you are doing windows stuff, there's no reason to power both 5870.
It is essential that the low power gpu support all the features of the 5870 (dx 11)

Maybe, when fusion from AMD starts to hit the laptop market (Fusion is essentialy a quad core CPU which has a GPU on the CPU die - GPU that is actualy powerfull enough to run AVP 2 on medium resolution and details, but no where near power hungry as the 5870), someone smart enough would implement lucid logix chip in a laptop, and maybe then we'll be able to play wow with all the video cards full load.
Because if wow sees the lucid chip as a single video card, there's no reason it won't work, because wow won't see the multiple GPUs past the chip.

I think this is a better solution than crossfire or sli. Because what you have is essentialy a "single" GPU, and singles allways worked beeter than multiples. Even if sli and crossfire works , lets say most of the time, it doesn't work all the time, and optimizations are required for every game, and scaling is nowhere near liniar.
When the splliting algorithms are gonna be further optimized, ever bit of muscle on every video card would be put to work through the assignment process.

It is a well know fact that for instance, in a triple sli solution, first card works 100% load, second works lets say 70 75 % and the third 50% load, fact which can be clearly observed by the power draw of each card in a GPU intensive application.

With hidra chip, each card work full load.

And i think this is the future of our laptops. A smart laptop that is able to power down components wehn it doesn't need them, but that can power them all up, and make full use of all the components installed, when is needed.
And by full use i mean full use, as in NOT the situation that is in the present. Like you sepnd a lot of money on TWO 5870 and the second one doesn't work all the time.

 

I know I am late to this thread but here are my 2cents.
I play wow all the time on my R2 with dual 4870s with 10.3 preview along with the profiles that were released at that time. Both cards show load and both stay around the same temperature when playing. When raiding ect thy both heat up equally as well. Granted the game isnt optimized to fully utilize it as there really isnt much of a bump in performance. I have run it in single card mode and seen comparable results.

@OP when you maxed out all your settings did you max out shadows. If so, that will definitely decrease frame rate in Dal and some other areas. I have mine 1-2 notches from the left and it is fine. Every other thing is maxed and enabled. I even put spell detail by using the /console command up to 100 and omg its amazing.... I tried 10k once and yea in a five man it almost dced me lol... I like running it at 100 imo and I still get awesome frame rates.

When there is light traffic in dal I get 50-60 frams per second.(vsync enabled). On the weekend or raid heavy nights when there isnt one free spot in Dal and everyone is running around ect I get 27-45 frames per second with avg 34 ish..

As it was stated before do not play the game in windows mode or the 3d capabilities will not be utilized to its fullest. I will have to find the post but someone posted a great explanation on how the card switches modes to be full 3d and full capability in full screen vs windowed where it doesnt.. This would also prevent and SLI XF from kicking in.

I dont have any flickering so you may have a driver/power consumption issue or you may have a faulty XF cable/2nd GPU and it needs to be replaced. Have you tried any other games just to see if they flicker as well?

 

I'm sick of the flickering it's possible I'm just going to settle for a single 5870 and not even worry about trying to crossfire it or maybe even go with a single 480 once thats released. Crossfire has me thinking that it's not even worth it once you consider $$$ you're putting up front for it and the return just isn't there in my eyes atm at least with the games I'm playing.

 

Keep in mind it shouldnt be flickering. You need to get that resolved.

 

If i play my games on DX 9 there is no flickering but as soon as I move to DX 10 it flickers. And I'm not playing a crazy game or anything, just Company of heros.