M18x-R1 with 7970M CrossFire

Wow, is the 80fps consistent on the Xfire 7970m?

 

quit standing around point guns and go find some enemies to fight. then get to snapping pictures.
that reminds me of that guy standing around looking at the sky talking about 150 fps...

 

no is not consistent they drop to 50 sometimes and they go up to 90 too

lol how can i focus on the same scene shoot and take a screenshoot

 

That's good. I mean even Modern Warfare does not keep a lock 60fps anyway.

But the dual cards 7970m make Crysis 2 feel like Modern Warfare speed.

 

easy....

 

So I don't know if DumbDumb or Speedy have tried the new version of fraps (updated to work with 7970m) but it's giving me about half the fps that MSI or the in-game fps counter in BF3 were giving me?

 

Fraps lowers your frame rate count.

 

You are hurt get to cover

Lol.......

 

Fraps doesn't lower your framerate count, unless you're recording. I was just using it to monitor fps.

 

hmmm.... if you don't use FRAPS, does your framerate improve or is it still the same?

How many FPS do you get in BF3?

 

Just using fraps to monitor your frames won't have a negative impact on your fps. Using fraps to record video is what slows things down. In terms of frames in BF3 I am getting anywhere from 80-110 although I do have some weird issues where it will drop down to the mid 50's then jump back up to 80+. I don't know if it's just an issue with crossfire right now because of the ty driver support or if it's an issue with my second card overheating and throttling causing occasional slow-down.

 

Any screen recording software slows down game framerates quite a bit. Using MSI Afterburner for recording does the same thing. As far as I know that is unavoidable.

 

and that's ultra maxed out,right?

If that is the case......

WOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

ok well i have figured a few things out for the r1 owners out there, I have a few modded bios's and the best setting are stock voltage and an over clock of 950 at 1400 and higher really and the cards dont seem to like it..
over volts work but it drops fps badly.. under volting is out of the question as far as i can see.. driver crashes.. now this was all done cf so on a single card who knows.. same goes for the R2.. i dont own one so i dont know..

lastly.. ive over clocked the cards as high as 1.5ghrz and it holds and the memory was at 1.7 and it held.. on a over volt.. but it only will get threw the jane nash test on vantage.. then driver crashes.. temp on any setting seem to be universal.. between 50C-76c un bench.. idle for me is between 36c and 52 c depending on the time of day..

 

1.5ghz core? I don't think that's even possible, even on a desktop 7870. Are you sure? Highest I have seen with an overvolted VBIOS was about 1030mhz.

 

sorry let me correct this i was tired when i wrote it..

1150.00 for cpu and 1560 for the memory.. although it holds for me it crashes the driver when i try to bench..

the sweet spot i found for fps is between 950 cpu and 1350 memory - 965 cpu and 1420 memory.. higher does not get you any more frames per second but actually loses them if that makes sense.. fps seems to go down the higher you go..

 

I was going to say 1.5GHZ core ? but..........

 

Strange that the memory cannot run any faster than what it does. I wonder why that is? I would think it could handle at least 1800. Maybe with better drivers, it will.

 

Maybe overclocking the memory has the same effect as desktop 7870 the memory is already at 4800MHZ

AnandTech - Capsule Review: Sapphire's Radeon HD 7870 Overclock Edition

 

well thats the highest i can go with msi after burner lol..

still cant work out a working over clock tho for my 2960xm tho.. i get the level 1-3 but higher and constant.. i dont know how to do..

 

So, is it a stability and crashing problem, or simply a limitation to how far the sliders can move with Afterburner? I thought you were saying the cards were unable to operate at higher memory clocks because of crashing, but if it is only a software limitation with Afterburner, there will be workarounds for that.
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Edit: Speedy and DumbDumb... have you guys already tried this old AMD tweak? Maybe you can accomplish manually what the Catalyst drivers are not doing effectively on their own.

 

Like you said disabling AA fixes the crossfire issue on the benchmark now if some one wants to compare with Nvidia they can turn that off

 

Glad you got it working . It might not be what people want to see without AA on but this is all for comparisons sake, so AA on or off does not matter and until AMD fixes it which will probably be never since the tool is not official plus i think the tool developer ended support then this will have to do.

Ill be very happy with a single 7970 and 45 fps thats for sure. The card is an absolute monster.

 

Agree one 7970M is enough to be happy but just looking at the numbers of what two can do is ridiculous

 

well here is with Dual 6990m X its seems like Dual 7970m X = 3 x 6990m XDD

Click Image to Enlarge Free Image Hosting

 

So I tried disabling powerplay in CCC and that literally cut my frames down to 10-15 in pretty much every game I attempted to play lmfao.

 

So, after changing Enable crossfire in regedit my fps dips have disappeared. No more going from 120 fps down to 55 then back to 120. Thanks for the link Mr.Fox

 

Yeah, I am getting a solid 915/1350. Any higher and my screen is turning black and I have to do a reset haha.

 

Very nice, Speedy. Are you able to turn on tessellation, or is that not support with current drivers?

Looks good, Peter. Below is 580M SLI with tessellation disabled. Score on the left is stock and on the right core overclocked to match similar core speed as 7970M (825MHz on GPU core). What did you have the 6990M GPU clocked at? What is your Heaven score with tessellation turned on?

 

Credits to Justcallmesteve. This may be a fixed to CF issues:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/601148-6990m-crossfire-guide.html

His Diablo 3 issues has improved to 177 FPS and Crysis 1 100FPS maxed. His Crysis 2 is getting 60 to 80fps but it shows only one card is being used.

 

LOL, never mind. Mr. Fox showed us already. I am sorry.

THank you as well, Mr. FOX.

 

ok i just ran the heaven bench mark.. first time with every thing normal.. testalation is on and set to normal. ill run it again with it off as i see your is set to off and see what i get.. so this was the first run..

Spoiler

and here is the second run with every thing on and maxed out and the results might surprise you! take a look..

Spoiler

and here with tessellation off

Spoiler

what do you think.. I think the scores are awesome! but I may be wrong lol

 

for tess to be on in benching...it needs to be set to let application decide in ccc and amd optimized is unchecked.

 

I believe all my setting are correct. I double checked after your pm.. but if there wrong feel free to posses my computer again lol..

 

Hey dumbdumb, So was you install of the your card pretty much a plug and play deal. Did you have to flash a different vbios? Are your fans working on auto? Does your audio over hdmi out work?
Thanks

 

That's looking pretty good there DumbDumb. It looks like 7970M is handling tessellation way better than the 6900M series was able to. Did you have CCC set as John described?

It looks like your system is in pretty good running order now. What drivers ended up being usable for you? I want to download them in case I need them at some point. Can you point me to the link to what you're using now? What are the unresolved issue at this point?

Did you notice the challenges he faced with the drivers? The hardware installation is plug and play, but it has been pretty rough getting usable drivers.

 

He is using catalyst 12.5 beta drivers I think Mr.Fox. Pretty much the only set of drivers that aren't causing any issues.

 

Unmodded, plane-jane 12.5 beta?

 

I thought all the driver issues we gone once the 12.5 beta was installed or is there still more issues?

 

Yup, just the plain 12.5 beta. At least that's what I am running

 

So installing 12.5 drivers fixed the CF issues on 7970m for Arkham City and other games?

 

I don't know if it fixed the issue for Arkham City, I don't own the game. I had crossfire working with a set of modded drivers before I downloaded these new ones. The performance difference for me was minimal, I just did it because they are official drivers not modded ones.

 

yep just the betta drivers, and yes on those test every thing was set like john wanyed..except the amd optimization.. so im rerunning after a re paste later today

there are still issues but for me every thing i wanted to do so far can be done with these drivers.. fans works.. audio over hdmi works.. Dont get me wrong every one with these cards is having issues..

but even with the issues these cards are stupidly fast..

 

Cool beans. Thanks for the info dumbdumb. Thats everything that i really wanted to know.That made up my mind, in picking up a pair as soon as I can. Just don't know if I should wait for dell or eurocom. Dell doesn't have any idea of delivery for the cards.

 

Did BAttlefield 3 performance improved?

 

tbh i dont know.. ive never had a problem with bf3.. and plus i really play it on console.. i play on pc only to here people rage.

 

I'll be ordering a paird of the 7970M soon, brother dumbdumb!!!

 

lol dont let me be the reason you have a ton of headaches.. you have read this entire thread right? and made an informed decision?
I love the cards.. but they are a headache.. be prepared..

 

a headache for me is when I'M playing metro 2033 and the Fps go down to 13 fps. something that never happen with my previo 6990M.Lol