Crossfire issues in MoP HD7970+7950

[Jinto]

Again misuse words all you want it does NOT make them true. Again in order to be a "BOTTLENECK" it would have to be trying to force more through a thin pipeline, where as that is not even close to whats happening. It is not the definition at all, lets say you have a 900 Horsepower dodge charger everything ready to race but you have square tires you going to call that a bottleneck? cuz it isnt. Once again if anything is a bottleneck it is the software NOT the cpu, if your walking down a wide hallway singlefile hugging the left most wall thats your fault not the hallways.

1.
a narrow entrance or passageway.
2.
a place or stage in a process at which progress is impeded. even if u take this worded as technology its pointing to software
3.
Also called slide guitar. a method of guitar playing that produces a gliding sound by pressing a metal bar or glass tube against the strings.

It is not the cpu causing this issue, it is the software therefor your bottleneck is the software, similar to a speed limit on a highway just cuz you can do 150mph doesnt mean you are allowed too.

Should read the first sentence in my post before you quote it... What can you do about the software on your end? Nothing. You are arguing over a useless point anyway because no software on a large scale is ever 100% optimized so you can always say software is the bottleneck...duh. Which is why in computer engineering bottleneck is used to describe hardware limitations as it is an accepted fact of life that hardware often needs to run bad code. So what do you do about it? Add more computing power. Sure there are bottlenecks in computer science as well but those are used to describe issues in the code path which is a whole different ballgame.

p.s. Please find a more...appropriate...site for technical lingo than dictionary.com lol

[Yohassakura]

It is not the cpu causing this issue, it is the software therefor your bottleneck is the software, similar to a speed limit on a highway just cuz you can do 150mph doesnt mean you are allowed too.

It is the software at fault, but you can still get more frames from having a higher-clocked CPU due to the way that WoW utilizes your CPU.

[c0rnel]

Have you tried Win 7 with the latest non-beta amd drivers instead?

If you still have issues with Crossfire then there's not much you can do. I'd just disable crossfire and just run wow on your 7970 and enable CF for all other games.

[Milkshake86]

It is the software at fault, but you can still get more frames from having a higher-clocked CPU due to the way that WoW utilizes your CPU.

This is not the CPU's problem again if the software is at all fault it is not the fault of the CPU, therefor making no such bottleneck exist on the pc but rather the bottleneck is the software. Take for instance that BF3 runs much better on much more intense graphics obviously, then wow on the same system is running like your machine is 10 years old would you really say your PC has a bottleneck or the software has a limitation, even if another cpu does better the software still "bottlenecks" that cpu as well so indefinitely saying CPU is your bottleneck is false when it is 100% the damn software causing the issue.

[Nightgloom]

Have you tried Win 7 with the latest non-beta amd drivers instead?

If you still have issues with Crossfire then there's not much you can do. I'd just disable crossfire and just run wow on your 7970 and enable CF for all other games.

I had an awfully busy evening and didn't get a chance to test the non-beta drivers. I'll try to test that today, but if that doesn't work I'll just run it on the 7970 and not bother with crossfire :-)

[Faithh]

This is not the CPU's problem again if the software is at all fault it is not the fault of the CPU, therefor making no such bottleneck exist on the pc but rather the bottleneck is the software. Take for instance that BF3 runs much better on much more intense graphics obviously, then wow on the same system is running like your machine is 10 years old would you really say your PC has a bottleneck or the software has a limitation, even if another cpu does better the software still "bottlenecks" that cpu as well so indefinitely saying CPU is your bottleneck is false when it is 100% the damn software causing the issue.

I have to complety agree with you :>

If you have low fps or the GPU not reaching 99% (turning Vsync off to analyze better) you indeed have a cpu bottleneck. But it could be that the game is the issue.

A cpu bottlenecking your GPU just means that the GPU is waiting for the CPU delivering it's job. An e7200 C2D is never going to fill a gtx 690 to 99%.

Situation 1 with Vsync disabled with 160FPS and cpu usage at 47% - http://i.imgur.com/YCK3d.jpg
Situation 2 with Vsync enabled (to have "a virtual less performing card") with 60FPS and cpu usage at 25% - http://i.imgur.com/vgruz.jpg

Once the GPU is running at 99%, the CPU usage won't do anything more for your GPU but if the CPU's _own_ task would get intensiver the cpu usage will get higher.

If this game is only making use of 2 cores effectively, OC would help. If this game is making use of all threads on a 3930k for example, OC won't help because there are more than enough threads available.

Another thing which can have a point:

As far as I noticed the GPU usage was always at 99% EXCEPT when there were 650000 people swirling around you and the GPU's usage dropping down to 50% as results of 30fps >.<

Took a quote from http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=360942

As far as I noticed the GPU usage was always at 99% EXCEPT when there were 650000 people swirling around you.

"playing MMORPG's like RIFT, requires CPU power to "predict" their movement through the game's engine.

It goes hand in hand with your network chip (whether its on-board or dedicated) because when 20 players are on your screen at once, the CPU needs to keep telling your network adapter to keep sending out data to request the other players/clients movements in real-time.

So if your CPU is at the same time, being held up by sending high quality graphic data to the GPU and continuously reading other players' moves, your going to get low graphics utilization since its waiting for the CPU.

Could also be RIFT's engine, but im not sure since i've never played it."

Well, I'm out of ideas which is causing the problem now. The Network card bottlenecking? That sounds for the first time a strange problem. Getting a better NIC with a lot more IOPS, regardless of the bandwidth speed which is pointless.

As far as I noticed the FPS drops were only happening with loads of people swirling around you.

@OP did you try renaming wow.exe to wow-64.exe and wow-64.exe to wow.exe? As far as I know the crossfire profiles were only recognizing Wow.exe (which is by default the 32bit client in the installation folder)

[Yohassakura]

This is not the CPU's problem again if the software is at all fault it is not the fault of the CPU, therefor making no such bottleneck exist on the pc but rather the bottleneck is the software.

I never said that it was the processors fault.
I also never strictly said that the processor is being a bottleneck.
Like I said, it is the softwares fault, and due to this fault you can overclock and get more performance.

Please read correctly.

[Jinto]

I never said that it was the processors fault.
I also never strictly said that the processor is being a bottleneck.
Like I said, it is the softwares fault, and due to this fault you can overclock and get more performance.

Please read correctly.

Reading can be hard People just can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact that even bad code can be made to run fast by a fast processor. Is the code inefficient? Sure. However unless you have the ability to improve the code directly what can you do about it...

Btw this is essentially a chicken and egg problem. Software can be optimized for hardware and vice versa. In other words, the debate is absolutely worthless.

[Lathais]

This is not the CPU's problem again if the software is at all fault it is not the fault of the CPU, therefor making no such bottleneck exist on the pc but rather the bottleneck is the software. Take for instance that BF3 runs much better on much more intense graphics obviously, then wow on the same system is running like your machine is 10 years old would you really say your PC has a bottleneck or the software has a limitation, even if another cpu does better the software still "bottlenecks" that cpu as well so indefinitely saying CPU is your bottleneck is false when it is 100% the damn software causing the issue.

Yes, the software is causing the bottleneck, I don't think that is the point being argued, however, you cannot change the software.

Let's look at it like atraffic jam on the highway. What caused the bottleneck? The fact that there are too many cars(software) or the fact that there are not enough lanes(hardware)? You can't change the amount of traffic(software) therefore the bottleneck is caused by the lack of lanes. Make the highway bigger(increase CPU) and more traffic gets through(higher FPS).

[Demoness]

The code and CPU can both be made to improve performance. The simple fact is that the old engine code is out of the control of the user, but the user can overclock or upgrade the CPU in order to lessen the impact of the bottleneck. On the client side, the processor is the bottleneck. This is not up for discussion. It is a fact. When you upgrade your video card, and you see next to no improvement, but then you upgrade your processor and see almost double the performance for changing brands or generations, then you have an obvious bottleneck. You are arguing semantics and forgive me, but you sound like squabbling idiots for arguing the same side to each other.

Until Blizzard fixes the game engine(likely will not happen, so wait for titan) the fact remains that the PC component that will always yield the highest improvement to performance will be the processor, because it is -wait for it... a motherfucking bottleneck.

[Moinaldo]

Again misuse words all you want it does NOT make them true. Again in order to be a "BOTTLENECK" it would have to be trying to force more through a thin pipeline, where as that is not even close to whats happening. It is not the definition at all, lets say you have a 900 Horsepower dodge charger everything ready to race but you have square tires you going to call that a bottleneck? cuz it isnt. Once again if anything is a bottleneck it is the software NOT the cpu, if your walking down a wide hallway singlefile hugging the left most wall thats your fault not the hallways.

1.
a narrow entrance or passageway.
2.
a place or stage in a process at which progress is impeded. even if u take this worded as technology its pointing to software
3.
Also called slide guitar. a method of guitar playing that produces a gliding sound by pressing a metal bar or glass tube against the strings.

It is not the cpu causing this issue, it is the software therefor your bottleneck is the software, similar to a speed limit on a highway just cuz you can do 150mph doesnt mean you are allowed too.

Dude chill out... you have been replying about "cpu cap" "gpu cap" "bottleneck" just trying to correct people because they misused a word... we all get the idea they tried to post, even if their posts were not technically correct... so cut the wiseacre attitude.

[Milkshake86]

The code and CPU can both be made to improve performance. The simple fact is that the old engine code is out of the control of the user, but the user can overclock or upgrade the CPU in order to lessen the impact of the bottleneck. On the client side, the processor is the bottleneck. This is not up for discussion. It is a fact. When you upgrade your video card, and you see next to no improvement, but then you upgrade your processor and see almost double the performance for changing brands or generations, then you have an obvious bottleneck. You are arguing semantics and forgive me, but you sound like squabbling idiots for arguing the same side to each other.

Until Blizzard fixes the game engine(likely will not happen, so wait for titan) the fact remains that the PC component that will always yield the highest improvement to performance will be the processor, because it is -wait for it... a motherfucking bottleneck.

Except even in WoW's case a faster gpu can produce higher maximum frames which in comparison will net a higher average frame, maybe not a higher lowest frame but the average would only increase along w/ a max frame increase, even if it is marginal.

[Demoness]

Milkshake you are just arguing for the sake of arguing. Stop it. Getting the last word does not make you right. You are not necessarily wrong, but you are not totally right either. Stop blowing smoke.

[Milkshake86]

Milkshake you are just arguing for the sake of arguing. Stop it. Getting the last word does not make you right. You are not necessarily wrong, but you are not totally right either. Stop blowing smoke.

The fact is the word is wrong, and should not be thrown around as if it is even remotely correct. I'd also mention coming in with zero input to the conversation saying not to try and get the final word is in fact trying to get the final word where as my input was on topic and correct.

[Cyanotical]

<skipping the whole thread

OP:
xfire has many issues, and is not as refined as SLI, because of this you need to jump through a bunch of hoops to get it to work, such as downloading extra profiles and only running in full screen, and in many cases, it causes many more problems than it helps, even Tek syndicate showed this recently with the 7870x7870 vs 7970 vs 680 video

because of this, i would suggest dropping your cards and getting on powerful one like the 7970, or switching to nvidia, you can keep your cards, but knowing from experience, you will have nothing but headache and heartburn from xfire

[Jinto]

The fact is the word is wrong, and should not be thrown around as if it is even remotely correct. I'd also mention coming in with zero input to the conversation saying not to try and get the final word is in fact trying to get the final word where as my input was on topic and correct.

It is just hilarious when you are bringing in definitions from dictionary.com and telling other people they are wrong.

[Nightgloom]

<skipping the whole thread

OP:
xfire has many issues, and is not as refined as SLI, because of this you need to jump through a bunch of hoops to get it to work, such as downloading extra profiles and only running in full screen, and in many cases, it causes many more problems than it helps, even Tek syndicate showed this recently with the 7870x7870 vs 7970 vs 680 video

because of this, i would suggest dropping your cards and getting on powerful one like the 7970, or switching to nvidia, you can keep your cards, but knowing from experience, you will have nothing but headache and heartburn from xfire

Yeah I'm running WoW with the single 7970 for now because I can't be bothered to fiddle more with it...yet at least :-)
In a way I am not that bothered about fiddling with it, because I am crazy enough to enjoy fiddling around such things. But for now I'm just happy it runs fine in the other games that I play than MoP.

I used to have an SLI setup as well, but even that was somewhat problematic and didnt work very well either in some situations.

This whole thread was made simply because I got an extra 7950 for free, and I figured I'd just post and ask if people had experience in setting up crossfire to work in MoP :-)

[Demoness]

Yeah I'm running WoW with the single 7970 for now because I can't be bothered to fiddle more with it...yet at least :-)
In a way I am not that bothered about fiddling with it, because I am crazy enough to enjoy fiddling around such things. But for now I'm just happy it runs fine in the other games that I play than MoP.

I used to have an SLI setup as well, but even that was somewhat problematic and didnt work very well either in some situations.

This whole thread was made simply because I got an extra 7950 for free, and I figured I'd just post and ask if people had experience in setting up crossfire to work in MoP :-)

Glad you stopped wasting time with it. I used to have two GTX 570s and didnt notice a difference in wow. I didn't notice a detriment either, which you seemed to get with crossfire, but I am sure other games that are slightly less CPU-limited such as bf3 or metro or the sort would show you an improvement. Those titles also tend to scale really well with multiple GPUs. Sadly WoW lacks solid support with multi-GPU setups and does not perform past a certain point in terms of processors either.

[Elgand]

Kinda as an option for you, I just run WoW with crossfire enabled all the time. Running with windowed fullscreen because the game does NOT support eyefinity otherwise. This basically means I don't run it using crossfire, therefore i don't have to dick with changing the settings between different games.

[Nightgloom]

A bit of a necro, but I'm posting it anyway if it should ever help someone in the future:

I managed to solve my problem by removing my (age old) affinity mask setting in the config:
SET processAffinityMask "85"

After I removed that all the stutter with crossfire enabled is gone. I'm not really sure why it helped, but it appears to have completely fixed my stutter issues in MoP with crossfire enabled.

Hopefully its useful info for anyone in the future :-)