Eyefinity and Bad Company 2 performance issue

[Bill Brasky]

I'm not trying to dissuade you from going CF again, but I watched one of my buddies fight a dual card setup. After that, I only buy the fastest single card I can afford. CF/SLI is certainly faster when it works, but I prefer the consistency of a single card.

 

[TheEyeDoc]

I am thinking about going the 6950-flashed-to-6970 route at this point and sell 1 5850 and put the other one at my office rig. I will update with FRAPS once I have it complete.

 

[flopper]

6850 runs flawless, so do 6950 in crossfire.
with 5760x1080 uness vram becomes an issue But I run BC2 at lowest settings.

ur numbers seems wrong somehow, might be some driver issue or such, its amazing how different cards can perform.

 

[TheEyeDoc]

The numbers are right. It's crazy. I had the 5850 crossfire'd and was getting 18-24 FPS at low settings and 5760?1080. Now still with 10.12 and app profiles, a single 5850 was running 5760X1200 at medium settings, 2 MSAA, 2 AA at 40-45 FPS. I can only imagine I should get 50 or so FPS with the flashed 6950 to a 6970 and OC'd a bit with some high settings and will be very happy.

 

[NoQuarter]

Make sure you use two Crossfire bridges and not just one. Eyefinity resolutions kill the bandwidth on the Crossfire bridge and it can make use of both if you have them.

 

[TheEyeDoc]

Would using only 1 bridge really cause the game to run less than a single card then? Seems to me it would be the issue that the 5850 has in not playing well with Crossfinity, but I would be open to the idea that using 2 bridges would fix the situation. I had not seen this anywhere.

Looking around at other posts/forums, it seems using 2 bridges can actually cause a loss of performance, so I am a bit skeptical here but again, I am willing to learn.

 

[eno]

Thanks TheEyeDoc for updating your post. I have been researching adding another 5850 for my Eyefinity setup (6040x1080) 3x23". Think I will hold off till the 6970 come down a bit in price in the next 6months or till my HTPC needs the 5850 and I can upgrade my main system. Thanks for the info. I'll stop eyeballing the sales on 5850. Hopefully drivers could fix this issue because the 5850 could get to low 100's soon and that would be nice to upgrade my performance.

 

[TheEyeDoc]

Glad this was able to help someone. I am excited to get my 6950 tomorrow and give it a whirl. This 5850 has actually been rocking BFBC2 in 5760X1200 with good settings and it is just night and day from the Crossfire setup. Again, I will update with FPS, etc., to give you an idea of how they compare with similar settings, then upping the settings to highs.

 

[TheEyeDoc]

For the record, I did some FRAPS running the single 5850 at 5760X1200, all medium settings with 2X AA and MSAA. I was running between 45-50 FPS pretty steadily and it looked great. We will see the improvement of the 6950 then 6970 in a bit. I will run both.

 

[TheEyeDoc]

Prelim findings with FRAPS, just played for a minute recording. Was at 5760X1200, all medium settings and 2X MSAA and AA.

The single 5850 was Min 24 Max 41 Avg 35.267

For the record, that was very playable and looked fantastic.

The single unflashed 6950 was Min 36 Max 54 Avg 45.333

Pretty significant upgrade. Again, looked fantastic and played wonderful on the 3 28" LCD's. I am going to try a flash now and see what we get.

 

[TheEyeDoc]

Success on the flash. Had to use the cmd version, but that is no big deal. Amazing.

I will run a quick FRAPS on it again now and see how it compares, then will do some OC tomorrow and compare.

 

[TheEyeDoc]

6970 without any OC was Min 44 Max 58 and Avg 48.733. I expect we will really see the gains with the OC. Nonetheless, the min was a lot higher, there was no lag and I am excited to try it with all highs and a bit more MSAA/AA/HBAO.

 

[TheEyeDoc]

OK, a little error, as I had been doing 2X AA and 4X Aniso all along.

The "6970" at 6970 clocks was Min 39 Max 81 Avg 54.067 Very nice.

I then bumped all settings to highest, went 4X AA, 4X Aniso and HBAO and got Min 29 Max 34 Avg 31.733. Big hit, but again, I was also in a huge firefight at the time with about 4 tanks and 10 infantry all around with buildings blowing up. Still much more playable than I was at low with the 5850's. I could not tell a big difference between the high/med settings on initial inspection, so I will probably drop a couple and enjoy 50+ FPS on my new Eyefinity.

Thanks Anandtech forums. I hope this helps someone else.