Joined: 04 Nov 2011, 07:13 Posts: 108
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I'd like to share my experience in trying to get a crossfire/eyefinity setup working. My system is a PhenomIIx4 @3.8G, w/ 6850x2. Running CCC 11.10+cap4, Radeon Pro, and I have tried hayden's tool for fixing menus. 3x 1920x1080 Dell 2220 led displays.
*Game performance was initially very bad with stock profile. Unplayable bad. I experimented with game options and disabling crossfire. First I disabled crossfire, system was playable but not getting great performance.
*Created a custom profile in RadeonPro, using AA and Crossfire profiles from Oblivion. Now crossfire is working, but I am getting the minute "heartbeat" microstutter (tiny hiccup about every second) I used to get with CCC 11.9 playing witcher 2. Incidentally when I upgraded to CCC 11.10, ms was eliminated in other games, so it is a matter of time til this will (proabably) be fixed, but it is a non-issue at this point compared to other problems.
*Experimented with all graphics settings. I found that I can run the game at ultra at ~61fps(indoors), as long as I do not have shadow detail set to ultra. With this set to ultra, system bogs down and is unplayable. I keep this set to high, and everything else on maximum, and game looks very good w 60fps. If I go to higher detail areas and am not getting 45+, I can always turn down AA/AF, but they are currently maxed.
*According to radeonPro meters, both GPUs are being used at %60 utilization. I dont know if this means I only got 20% scaling, or if because I am testing in the indoor areas at beginning of game, that the framerate is capped at ~60, and thus they dont need greater utilization? Small concern at this point as the game on ultra is in the ballpark of performance I would expect for cf 6850.
*At the beginning of play I have to hit ctrl-alt-del, then "cancel" to bring the framerate back up to expected. It will dip down to 35ish in buildings. I found this tip on youtube. This may be an indication of system processes interfering with gameplay. I briefly experimented disabling all non-MS services and had performance issues. A surgical approach may be required to get around the ctrl-alt-del workaround.
***So at this point, game is playable with crossfire with Ctrl-Alt-Del workaround, and running shadows on at most high. CF scaling is yet to be determined, but game is not that graphically intensive with one 1080 disaplay. Now on to eyefinity...
*My installation of Skyrim does not appear to detect native resolution. I can select "default" settings which will put detail on "high" and (with eyefinity group already enabled at desktop), the game will detect a native resolution of 5:4 (??).
*Start the game with this setting, game is very VERY slow, about .5fps, takes forever to just get through startup splash screen, and then when environment loads, it takes about 1 minute for resources to load before NPC can even talk to me. The resolution appears to be correct at 5760x1080 without stretching. Interestingly, the in-game menus are centered, but the splash screen is stretched (vert-), cutting off some of the menu and graphics.
*Attempted to modify the .ini to set custom resolution, and modified profile to start from TESV, bypassing the config section. This did not have an effect on the resolution of laggggg.
*I had already tried haydens tool prior to any of my eyefinity experiements, but did not get far enough for it to be useful. Game has < 1fps, although fps counter shows it at 35%, and GPUs are showing minimal utilization.
*Could it be that my system is horribly CPU bound in eyefinity? I don't think so. After about five minutes of sitting and waiting, getting my hands unbound (at first save point), I am able to intermittently walk around with a 20-30fps rate, that cannot be maintained. It might be a vram problem? I only have 1G per card.
I am currently stuck. My next step will be to lower detail in eyefinity to see if I am memory staved which is causing effective lock ups. Any help appreciated.
Some more testing. . . .
*Put game on LOW setting to see if eyefinity will work. Nada. Still getting horrible lag < 1fps.
*Disabled crossfire (still on low setting). Now, eyefinity seems to work. So there is a problem with Crossfire + eyefinity. It might bear some investigation/experimentation with CAP settings to see if I can fix this. But ATM, CF+eyefinity appears to be broken. If anyone has discovered a solution to this in the 60 pages of this thread, please let me know...
The game shows great promise for eyefinity. It is picking up correct resolution, and FOV stock settings look good. I can walk around inside, on low settings with a reported 27-30fps, but there is lots of intermittent lag. Map is working and spans three screens beautifully. Default menu is centered, but when picking up items, those menus are stretched and cut off. I suspect hayden's tool will fix this, but I need to get crossfire working.
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