7970 Triple Crossfire and driver concerns

[JudgmentJay]

Hello all,

For the first time since the X800 I'm thinking about going for non-nVidia cards in my upcoming build. The primary reason for this is that I game at 2560x1600, and I'm even considering stepping it up to 7680x1600, so I don't feel that 2gb of RAM on the 680 is adequate.

Anyway, my primary concern is the infamous drivers. My question is... how bad is it really? What can I expect for newly-released games in a triple crossfire setup? Are crashes/bugs/poor scaling common, and if so, how long does it typically take for issues to be fixed?

Thanks!

[akshayt]

At least for single gpu setups there isn't anything wrong with the drivers except for lAte win 8 and hackintosh support. I don't think they are worse than nvidia drivers. As for scaling 7970 > 680 with dual setup

[MisterMagoo]

Personally I had a lot of problems with 7970 CFx, BSOD's, artifacts, etc. It all went away when I ran only one card.

[SkullCracka]

newest drivers have fulll 7k support.

[BrightCandle]

I am still getting bluescreens in Arma 2 with crossfire enabled. The 12.2 7800 drivers didn't crash but the latest 12.3's do. There are still some problems with the drivers but they aren't all that bad.

[Bestofbritish96]

Judgement Day, I started running 3 x 7970 crossfire recently. I upgraded from a single card solution.

I am lucky as I started with the 12.4 drivers, they feel solid and polished.

The only issue I have experienced in terms of "officially supported" features is poor scaling in some games e.g Batman AC with, 3 cards in single screen resolutions.

Just make sure the rest of the rig is specified accordingly. I am very happy that I went for the Silverstone Strider 1500W and not a lower quality PSU as I draw 1KW when over-clocked, I would imagine that *some* issues with 3 and 4 card setups can be attributed to poor quality PSUs but it is hard to prove this conclusively.

If you want stability I would avoid overclocking the rig in Crossfire mode unless you are willing to really soak test each card individually for their own limits and stability. When you OC, be ready to settle for lower clocks than expected. Crossfire is very sensitive to OC. I find Overclocked Crossfire as being OK in that situation as long you are also willing to water-cool it.

Games/Apps I run:

Heaven 3.0
Battlefield 3 64 Player Multi-Player
Crysis 1/2
Batman AC
Metro 2033

In terms of newly released games, its going to be hit and miss. I find it hard to point the finger at AMD in *some* of the past issues as to be fair, the Developers have been clueless e.g Skyrim, Batman AC, RAGE.

I usually don't play single-player PC games on release by habit now, I always wait for the second or third major patch, by that time it proves to be a cheaper and less frustrating experience all round.

Skyrim is in its 8th patch release now and only now does it appear to be ready to be played :>

[davidm71]

Hi,

Skyrim has NO Trifire support. I've verified it with 12.3 and three 6970s only two of three gpus work while the third just idles. Not a scaling issue. Check out hardwareheavens bench on the 7970 in trifire on Skyrim and they are experiencing the same thing. If I had to do it over I would go for two EVGA 680 4gb FTW cards in SLI. Trifire is hit and miss though most games are supported your favorite may not..

Later.

[Final8ty]

General.
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showforum=213

SLI
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showforum=207

Fill your boots.

Having way more troubles with NVIDIA 680 SLI than I did with 7970 CFX. BSODs and issues with remote desktop.

http://hardforum.com/newreply.php?do...y&p=1038591690

Actually AMD CFX has been pretty damn solid lately. Way more usable than SLI has been for me. Still working through those issues.

http://hardforum.com/newreply.php?do...y&p=1038595425


And i thought he was the one having ago at AMD for the beta release drivers and that NVIDIA had WHQL drivers.



Basically there is no guarantee on any side that you will not be the one to have issues on that side.

[BrightCandle]

SLI/Crossfire when it works is nice and it gives you decent performance, but you have to expect it wont work in quite a few games, especially on release day. I wish it worked better than it does but 3 generations of AMD crossfire now and I am used to having to turn it off to get a game to play properly.