HD 5970 no dual GPU?

(xtl) #1

Hi,

I’ve a HD 5970 but the second GPU is literally idle, verified with GPU-Z as well as AMD System Monitor. Here are my detailed specs:

CPU: i7-980X, RAM: 12GB Kingston HyperX, GFX: XFX Radeon HD 5970 Black Edition, MOBO: GA-X58A-UD7 X58, POWER: be quiet P8 1200W ATX 2.3, HDD: 2x Intel X25-M G2 160GB, 2.5", OS: W7Pro 64bit, Drivers: Catalyst: 11.6, 2D: 8.01.01.1162, D3D: 7.14.10.0841, OGL: 6.14.10.10834, CCC: 2011.0524.2352.41027

Google wasn’t very helpful yet. Any idea if I’m missing something?

thx

(sdGjoel) #2

Brink does support dual-gpu / Crossfire. The gain is most noticable at very high resolutions though (1920x1200+), and with full detail on the game.

(Mustang) #3

Isn’t the 5970 a single GPU card?

(xtl) #4

Nope, it was their flagship of the 5xxx series.

Btw, I also tried the usual suspects to e.g. rename brink.exe to fear.exe in hope to activate another profile, didn’t work out yet.

(Mustang) #5

Ah yes of course, I was thinking of the 5870

I guess for the same reason Crossfire isn’t supported
Think you’ve have to wait for ATI to create a profile for it
Last I read they were looking into it for inclusion with the 11.7 drivers

(xtl) #6

Alright, thank you!

Edit:
No, wait, I just found this http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst115ahotfix.aspx :

Enables AMD CrossFire™ scaling for Brink

Wait, I’ve 11.6 . Wtf, but I thought those things “carry over” to next version naturally?

(Mustang) #7

Sorry not sure then
Perhaps another high end ATI user can offer some enlightenment

(Nail) #8

there is a separate CAP1 for crossfire

(xtl) #9

Do you know where? I’m looking at http://www.rage3d.com/cap/ and can’t find anything.

http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/crossfirex-app-profiles.aspx only contains the latest ones.

(xtl) #10

Ok, so I can confirm that the 11.5b drivers enable crossfire for me, but the 11.6 do not.

Edit:
Interesting observation: when I installed 11.5b, I made the system clean. Now I’ve installed 11.6 over 11.5b and still get crossfire support in Brink.

(Mustang) #11

Awesome, good info
How has this effected your ingame performance?

(xtl) #12

Constant 85 FPS (frequency of my monitor).

However I had to enable vsync otherwise I’m having flickering all over the place with crossfire. Given that with crosssfire + vsync enabled I’ve GPU usage about 70 to 80% on both I see that there’s still room which is good to absorb the moments when it gets heated (in-game; but outside, too).

Before with single GPU I’d “only” get 60 to 70; nothing big, but hey; I didn’t pay for it to lay around lazy.

(Nail) #13

11.6 CAP1
http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon_win7-64.aspx

(xtl) #14

Yes I read this, but it doesn’t mention Brink. How do these CAPs work?

Do I also have to install one so I get all previous CAPs? I though CAPs provided in addition to the monthly driver package to save the burden to install whole drivers again, kind of an incremental update which gets stuffed into the next monthly release.

Am I wrong?

thx

(Je T´aime) #15

Crossfire in brink makes no diference, you even loose like 5 to 10 framerates using 2 graphic cards, if you screen isn´t huge.

(Smoochy) #16

[QUOTE=xtl;342485]Yes I read this, but it doesn’t mention Brink. How do these CAPs work?

Do I also have to install one so I get all previous CAPs? I though CAPs provided in addition to the monthly driver package to save the burden to install whole drivers again, kind of an incremental update which gets stuffed into the next monthly release.

Am I wrong?

thx[/QUOTE]

IIRC a cap is just an ATI ‘driver’ (ish) that contains optimised profiles for specific games and crossfire profiles for them. i found 11.6 CAP1 made 11.6 more stable