Crossfire issues (GPU2 max while GPU1 is 20-30%)

[Deleted]

So as the title says, I'm having issues with my crossfire HD6870s. Afterburner shows GPU2 maxed out while GPU1 is still around 30% max. Also, in pandaria I get stuttering. While in dungeons/Azeroth I have no issues most of the time (except GPU2 being at max and GPU1 not doing much)

I have Catalyst 2.11 and I have the AMD profiles downloaded.

[n0cturnal]

AFAIK WoW just doesn't play too well with multi-GPU solutions.

[BicycleMafioso]

Do you run in full-screen? What's your CPU, and at what PCI-E lanes do they run with? 16x/8x, 8x/8x, 8x/4x? What PCI-E version?

[Faithh]

Erz do you have your monitor cable plugged to GPU2? The drivers will take this as master gpu..

[vesseblah]

So as the title says, I'm having issues with my crossfire HD6870s. Afterburner shows GPU2 maxed out while GPU1 is still around 30% max. Also, in pandaria I get stuttering. While in dungeons/Azeroth I have no issues most of the time (except GPU2 being at max and GPU1 not doing much)

WoW has never liked Crossfire or supported it properly. Just turn it off with Blizzard games and you'll be happier, there's nothing you can do to fix it.

[BicycleMafioso]

WoW has never liked Crossfire or supported it properly. Just turn it off with Blizzard games and you'll be happier, there's nothing you can do to fix it.

Not completely, but mostly, true. Renaming the WoW.exe to BF3.exe (example used because it's what I used) enables the game to take much greater use of both graphic cards, albeit still not to their full potential.
It's as much the CAProfiles fault as Blizzards', really.

[Deleted]

Do you run in full-screen? What's your CPU, and at what PCI-E lanes do they run with? 16x/8x, 8x/8x, 8x/4x? What PCI-E version?

Yes I run in Full-screen. My CPU is an i7-2600 @3.4 GHz (non-k). I'm not sure about the PCI-E lanes, but I have a Asustek P8P67 Motherboard.

Erz do you have your monitor cable plugged to GPU2? The drivers will take this as master gpu..

Not sure how I can determine which one is GPU1. IF you could help me here, I could take a look.

Not completely, but mostly, true. Renaming the WoW.exe to BF3.exe (example used because it's what I used) enables the game to take much greater use of both graphic cards, albeit still not to their full potential.
It's as much the CAProfiles fault as Blizzards', really.

Will try this out.

[BicycleMafioso]

Yes I run in Full-screen. My CPU is an i7-2600 @3.4 GHz (non-k). I'm not sure about the PCI-E lanes, but I have a Asustek P8P67 Motherboard.

Full-screen non-windowed, yes? Windowed disabled crossfire.

[Deleted]

Full-screen non-windowed, yes? Windowed disabled crossfire.

Yep, non windowed. I did try to find a solution through googling for this, but nothing so far.

[Faithh]

Not sure how I can determine which one is GPU1. IF you could help me here, I could take a look.

Uhm just connect your monitor cable to the highest positioned graphics card -> http://imgur.com/u8Nqf

Connecting to the first card would be set to master, so your GPU1 is going to be the master like the black arrow in the picture.
Connecting to the 2nd card would be set to master according to drivers, so your GPU2 is going to be the master like the yellow arrow in the pic.

Owyeah a solution for maximizing the performance would be just renaming the 32bit client to WoW64.exe and the 64bit client to WoW.exe

There isn't a cap profile for the 64bit client only for the 32bit client, I've seen this before with the caps 12.8 orsomething when I had an AMD card.

[Deleted]

Uhm just connect your monitor cable to the highest positioned graphics card -> http://imgur.com/u8Nqf

Connecting to the first card would be set to master, so your GPU1 is going to be the master like the black arrow in the picture.
Connecting to the 2nd card would be set to master according to drivers, so your GPU2 is going to be the master like the yellow arrow in the pic.

Owyeah a solution for maximizing the performance would be just renaming the 32bit client to WoW64.exe and the 64bit client to WoW.exe

There isn't a cap profile for the 64bit client only for the 32bit client, I've seen this before with the caps 12.8 orsomething when I had an AMD card.

The monitor is already connected to the top card.

Also, I tried running both 32-bit and 64 bit WoW, also tested it on Black Ops II. Renamed the wow client to BF3.exe as well. Not working too well. I tried putting Vsync + triple buffering on after a friend recommended it. The stutter in Pandaria is gone, but ofc got fixed 30/60 fps in pandaria. GPU2 is still the 'dominant' GPU for some reason.

[vesseblah]

for some reason

Reason being that there is no proper Crossfire/SLI support for any Blizzard games like I said before. How well or poorly it works depends on your graphics cards and driver version (older might be better) and phase of the moon and few other voodoo things.

A game needs to be optimized for SLI/Crossfire and the video card drivers need to be optimized for the game before you can see even 50% gain with second card, and there needs to be serious work to get over 80% speed boost. There's a good reason why you see things like "SLI performance of game x increased by 65%" in GPU driver patch notes.

[Faithh]

Reason being that there is no proper Crossfire/SLI support for any Blizzard games like I said before. How well or poorly it works depends on your graphics cards and driver version (older might be better) and phase of the moon and few other voodoo things.

A game needs to be optimized for SLI/Crossfire and the video card drivers need to be optimized for the game before you can see even 50% gain with second card, and there needs to be serious work to get over 80% speed boost. There's a good reason why you see things like "SLI performance of game x increased by 65%" in GPU driver patch notes.

I was able to push both of my graphics card to 99% in wow with 2x 6950's.

[vesseblah]

I was able to push both of my graphics card to 99% in wow with 2x 6950's.

How do you do that? By forcing 32x AA/AF from drivers or something ridiculous like that?

Not even single R6950 will be running at 99% when you push the big slider to "ultra" on one monitor.

[Faithh]

How do you do that? By forcing 32x AA/AF from drivers or something ridiculous like that?

Not even single R6950 will be running at 99% when you push the big slider to "ultra" on one monitor.

Just posted how I did it. As far as I have experience with the amd drivers (4-5months ago), crossfire wasn't working with the 64bit client properly -> renaming like I said above helped out but still the 32bit client was better for crossfire.

A single 6950 not reaching 99% in WoW? Waw that's new. In raids, not indeed but in dungeons yes.