I experience half the FPS of one card with a crossfire R9 290 setup.

[Final_Fighter]

sorry for the long posts but speaking of power supply's. you could have a psu that is degrading. i just had to change one for a friend. if you go to your bios and look at the hardware monitoring tab there should be a 12v 3.3 and 5v or something like that and each one will have a voltage reading in real time next to it.
the 12 volt should be 12.1-12.4 but nothing less than 12v the same applys to the rest the 3.3 should be just a tad over but nothing less than 3.3 the 5v should be 5.1 but nothing less if any of these numbers are less than the there staited voltage your psu is going bad or is just a poor built psu. remember not all psu ar built even sometimes you just get a poor one like cpus with overclocking same principle. thats why they built this tab in the bios so you could monitor whats happening. another thing that could cause these to have low voltage readings is defective components. try pulling out one video card and see if the voltages change drastically. they will change but the voltage should never go above 12.9 volts if your voltage readings are already under you might consider a new power supply.

so....
check voltage readings.
check to make sure all fans are working right and correlate to gpu temp
use process of elimination. move components around remove swap play with it a little for results
if all checks out fine look into a new cpu the i7 3770k will take you past lga1150 so its not a bad investment but if you wait too long it will be.


another thing it might be is software. what do you have for virus protection? is your cpu ever running at a low idle percentages in windows 1-2% max at desktop with an occasional jump to 5%?
something you might try is making a 100gb partition just for gaming with minimal software installations and see if it still does the same thing. if you need help with this just say so and i will post how so you dont have to delete your current installation. you can always make it one partition again after the test or leave it just for gaming.

 

[Aquinus]

sorry for the long posts but speaking of power supply's. you could have a psu that is degrading. i just had to change one for a friend. if you go to your bios and look at the hardware monitoring tab there should be a 12v 3.3 and 5v or something like that and each one will have a voltage reading in real time next to it.
the 12 volt should be 12.1-12.4 but nothing less than 12v the same applys to the rest the 3.3 should be just a tad over but nothing less than 3.3 the 5v should be 5.1 but nothing less if any of these numbers are less than the there staited voltage your psu is going bad or is just a poor built psu. remember not all psu ar built even sometimes you just get a poor one like cpus with overclocking same principle. thats why they built this tab in the bios so you could monitor whats happening. another thing that could cause these to have low voltage readings is defective components. try pulling out one video card and see if the voltages change drastically. they will change but the voltage should never go above 12.9 volts if your voltage readings are already under you might consider a new power supply.

That's not completely true. ATX spec calls for +/- 5% variance on +5v, +12v, +3.3v, and 5v standby along with +/- 10% variance on the negative voltage rails. A PSU could be outputting 11.8v and not have a problem and lower output voltages are more common when a PSU is producing peak power. 11.4v - 12.6v is considered "acceptable" by spec, but anything above 11.7 and below 12.3 is considered good.

As for the i7 argument, stop making it. The only benefit to be had would be going from PCI-E 2.0 to 3.0 if you're going from a SB chip to an IVB chip, which still wouldn't result in huge gains considering Sandy CPUs are exceptional over clockers.

If you go back to the first page and read, you'll see he has no side panel fan or any airflow near the bottom of his case with the exception of the power supply (which very well could have cruddy fan.) So pardon me if I keep sounding like a broken record, but it seems very clear (at least to me,) that air flow is a problem considering the OP said the second GPU (the one on the very bottom) is running a lot hotter than the top on. That scream airflow.

Read the thread before posting please.

 

[RCoon]

Read the thread before posting please.

It's also worth nothing that the OP's cards perform perfectly and as expected in synthetic benchmarks, but the issues only seem to arise in Crysis 3 and BF Multiplayer. He also posted a screenshot of his CPU while gaming alongside the 50% on each GPU. His CPU was completely maxed out at 99% on all cores.

Also he hasn't been back in days. We're basically bickering amongst ourselves. For all we know OP has it sorted now. I recommend we stop making guesses until he reports back.

 

[Final_Fighter]

the power supply could seem in spec but when under load it takes a sever voltage drop and being that these are r9 290 they are very picky with the amount they receive. besides it was a suggestion and no, a good psu will stay above 12 volts not below all my corsair power supplys stay above along with my thermaltake im using now. yes you are right about the 10% part but try to stay in yhe +10% part not -10%. less power is actually worse than more.

also he has a fan in the front lower part of the case. his temps are moderatly high but not extremely high they arnt that bad. also i said he should check his fan speeds to make sure they are correct for the temps. the i7 argument is about the op asking about the i7 3770k. if he can get an i5 that will work too but not a lower end one. for the price difference and with those 2 cards why sell himself short get the better if hes got that kind of setup and money later.


i did suggest other possibility's such as software and card configuration. i would suggest you also reading that i do believe it could be his cpu and the fact that it is getting old. another thing is why the attitude? op asked for suggestions and is probably set on what the problem is and is going to move on. people ask these questions because they want help and suggestions. i recommend instead just thinking your right all the time consider everyone elses posts and suggestions. finding the good and building something better of it so you can solve problems faster.

 

[RCoon]

the power supply could seem in spec but when under load it takes a sever voltage drop and being that these are r9 290 they are very picky with the amount they receive. besides it was a suggestion and no, a good psu will stay above 12 volts not below all my corsair power supplys stay above along with my thermaltake im using now. yes you are right about the 10% part but try to stay in yhe +10% part not -10%. less power is actually worse than more. also he has a fan in the front lower part of the case. his temps are moderatly high but not extremely high they arnt that bad. also i said he should check his fan speeds to make sure they are correct for the temps. the i7 argument is about the op asking about the i7 3770k. if he can get an i5 that will work too but not a lower end one. for the price difference and with those 2 cards why sell himself short get the better if hes got that kind of setup and money later. also i did suggest other possibility's such as software and card configuration. i would suggest you also reading that i do believe it could be his cpu and the fact that it is getting old. another thing is why the attitude? op asked for suggestions and is probably set on what the problem is and is going to move on. people ask these questions because they want help and suggestions. i recommend instead just thinking your right all the time consider everyone elses posts and suggestions. finding the good and building something better of it so you can solve problems faster.

Not being nasty, but please put a few line breaks in your posts. Easier to read different aspects of information that way.

 

[Frick]

@Final_Fighter - And as Rcoon pointed out, this only happens in those two games in multiplayer. If it was the PSU the problem would be more consistent. And 11.8V is within specs and it was a hypothetical number I assume. A PSU can hover around that number and still be called good.

 

[Final_Fighter]

Not being nasty, but please put a few line breaks in your posts. Easier to read different aspects of information that way.

will do also new to hear cant believe the negativity so far not so much from you though. do you guys really get below the 12volt mark with your psu? the ones that have done that on me always made my pc act funky

 

[Final_Fighter]

@Final_Fighter - And as Rcoon pointed out, this only happens in those two games in multiplayer. If it was the PSU the problem would be more consistent. And 11.8V is within specs and it was a hypothetical number I assume. A PSU can hover around that number and still be called good.

i not saying its the psu just might want to check for safety could be software also

 

[Frick]

will do also new to hear cant believe the negativity so far not so much from you though. do you guys really get below the 12volt mark with your psu? the ones that have done that on my always made my pc act funky

If it's stable there shouldn't be any problem running below 12V, as long as it's within specs. Better PSU's will obviously be more stable, and that does affect how long your hardware will live. But just being under 12V is not harmful.

(BTW, software is not reliable as voltage measurement)

 

[Lopez0101]

This is just a grab from the latest TPU PSU review. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/CoolerMaster/VSM750/5.html

You can look at almost any review, yes, the voltages put out by almost every rail will go down when you near their capacity limit, but that doesn't necessarily mean they don't work at those loads.

 

[Final_Fighter]

If it's stable there shouldn't be any problem running below 12V, as long as it's within specs. Better PSU's will obviously be more stable, and that does affect how long your hardware will live. But just being under 12V is not harmful.

(BTW, software is not reliable as voltage measurement)

fully agree. just the psu came to mind because my friend had a build were the psu was the culprit. didnt think it would be this big of deal though just thought i would bring it up as something to look at.

 

[Final_Fighter]

This is just a grab from the latest TPU PSU review. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/CoolerMaster/VSM750/5.html

You can look at almost any review, yes, the voltages put out by almost every rail will go down when you near their capacity limit, but that doesn't necessarily mean they don't work at those loads.

ya and i would say thats a good power supply because the voltage is actually just a tad over 12 3 and 5 volts before the load is applied this is what i meant to say about a psu being a good one . i thought that people might understand the pc isnt under load in the bios i should have clarified. the voltage will go lower when under load thats what i meant by voltage drop thank you for this info. thats what i mean by taking the good and building something better.

 

[OneMoar]

its not a hardware problem is a software problem its crossfire neither bf4 nor crysis 3 have functional profiles for the 290
mutli-gpu setups are ALWAYS more trouble then they are worth for a single monitor

 

[Final_Fighter]

its not a hardware problem is a software problem its crossfire it SUCKS and neither BF4 nor Crysis 3 are very well optimized for it
solution disable crossfire sell the second card and save up and buy a GTX 770

ya that might be the easy route for the op. the one i would have taken if i ran in to this. but if i could buy 2 r9 290......

 

[GhostRyder]

Please note the part where I mention 'the performance loss he is describing.' He is getting worse frames with two cards than one, what combination (or lack of ) GPU usage % would that work, mathematically speaking?

If however the point was that he is getting XX frames on a single card, and only XX(+19 extra) under Crossfire, then we could say the CPU might be bottlenecking the TWO gpus and not returning the desired results - such as near 100% scaling, doubling the FPS.

As for your example of an i5 unlocked at 4.5ghz, wasn't it a big contention a few years ago that the i7 was a bit unnecessary for general home gaming use, in contrast to the cheaper i5? Yet the i7 does not bottleneck two AMD 290s? So why would the i5 at 4.5ghz? And furthermore, it's one thing to say performance may be different for any GPU setup when overclocking your CPU from 3.4 to 4.5ghz, but to say it renders a multi-GPU setup into a crippled state, with very poor

At what point did I say either setup i5 or i7 overclocked would bottleneck? I never stated that and said either perform exactly the same in most cases (with very rare exceptions).

The problem is also not a crossfire profile...both games have had profiles that work very well for a very long time (I can attest to that)....

 

[Dent1]

its not a hardware problem is a software problem its crossfire neither bf4 nor crysis 3 have functional profiles for the 290
mutli-gpu setups are ALWAYS more trouble then they are worth for a single monitor

I 100% agree.

Typically even during a CPU bottleneck crossfire would still yield some performance increase or at least maintain performance of a single GPU. The fact that his frame rate has decreased significantly below even that of a single GPU indicates its likely a driver, OS, the game(s), or configuration. To a lesser extent heat or a failing power supply. But a CPU bottleneck makes no sense.

Also he hasn't been back in days. We're basically bickering amongst ourselves. For all we know OP has it sorted now. I recommend we stop making guesses until he reports back.

I agree the OP hasn't returned it makes no sense arguing if he isn't interested in our solutions. If he has solved it he should atleast return and let us know and click the thanks button.

 

[JaredzzC]

Hi, Everyone.

Thanks for all of your replies.
I managed to get some money and I went ahead and bought the i7-3770k earlier today so it should arrive by Wednesday/Thursday. I should be able to tell you by then if it helps so that we are able to settle this.
I had been wanting a new CPU anyway so this kind of gave me an excuse to buy one, even if it turns out that my CPU isn't the cause of the problem.

I had not been ignoring any of your posts, if that's what any of you thought; I just merely wasn't aware that there were any new ones. After page 2, I received no more emails notifying me that someone had posted on my thread so I had assumed that there were no more messages. I came on today and to my delight, there were another 2 pages of replies which I am very grateful for. It's nice to know others are trying to help you.

For those of you whom were wondering what my CPU usage was(in-game*) whilst only using 1 GPU, then here it is:

Also, for those of you whom are talking about whether it's my PSU, then here is a snapshot of the figures whilst in-game*:

I have tried a couple of drivers (I did make sure the previous ones were uninstalled before installing new ones), and they didn't really help. 14.7 just seemed to be absolutely disastrous in terms of multi-gpu gaming, so I stuck with 14.6 which seems to be stable.

In terms of windows updates, I have all the necessary ones installed.
In terms of software, then I'm not sure.... anti-virus was mentioned so I turned it off and it didn't make a difference (as I expected), but I was just trying out what people had said : )
In terms of the airflow, I keep my side panel off even though it has a 1x120mm fan because the temperatures are quite a bit lower when it is like that. My tower is quite packed(picture shown on page 1) so there isn't much room for sufficient airflow, so I chose to take the side panel off.

*in-game refers to Crysis 3 Multiplayer

 

[Aquinus]

Hi, Everyone.

Thanks for all of your replies.
I managed to get some money and I went ahead and bought the i7-3770k earlier today so it should arrive by Wednesday/Thursday. I should be able to tell you by then if it helps so that we are able to settle this.
I had been wanting a new CPU anyway so this kind of gave me an excuse to buy one, even if it turns out that my CPU isn't the cause of the problem.

I had not been ignoring any of your posts, if that's what any of you thought; I just merely wasn't aware that there were any new ones. After page 2, I received no more emails notifying me that someone had posted on my thread so I had assumed that there were no more messages. I came on today and to my delight, there were another 2 pages of replies which I am very grateful for. It's nice to know others are trying to help you.

For those of you whom were wondering what my CPU usage was(in-game) whilst only using 1 GPU, then here it is:

I have tried a couple of drivers (I did make sure the previous ones were uninstalled before installing new ones), and they didn't really help. 14.7 just seemed to be absolutely disastrous in terms of multi-gpu gaming, so I stuck with 14.6 which seems to be stable.

In terms of windows updates, I have all the necessary ones installed.
In terms of software, then I'm not sure.... anti-virus was mentioned so I turned it off and it didn't make a difference (as I expected), but I was just trying out what people had said : )
In terms of the airflow, I keep my side panel off even though it has a 1x120mm fan because the temperatures are quite a bit lower when it is like that. My tower is quite packed(picture shown on page 1) so there isn't much room for sufficient airflow, so I chose to take the side panel off.

Holy CPU load, Batman! I take it the cores are idle when the game isn't running (nothing running in the background)? That would be a CPU bottleneck alright and I definitely would stand corrected if that's the case.

 

[Dent1]

Holy CPU load, Batman! I take it the cores are idle when the game isn't running (nothing running in the background)? That would be a CPU bottleneck alright and I definitely would stand corrected if that's the case.

But the important question is should he be getting bottlenecked?

And can a bottleneck explain 2 cards performing 50% worse than 1 card? Have you seen any previous examples of this?

 

[JaredzzC]

Holy CPU load, Batman! I take it the cores are idle when the game isn't running (nothing running in the background)? That would be a CPU bottleneck alright and I definitely would stand corrected if that's the case.

Yea, the cores are idle when the game isn't running, as far as I'm aware:

 

[Aquinus]

But the important question is should he be getting bottlenecked?

And can a bottleneck explain 2 cards performing 50% worse than 1 card? Have you seen any previous examples of this?

Nope, but do you have any better suggestion on what it could be? CFX has some level of CPU overhead, but it's not that much. I wouldn't expect it to perform just as well if you add a second card if one card is already pegging out the CPU since the CPU already has to do some more work to drive that second GPU, but I also wouldn't expect it to be 50% slower.

Another question worth answering would be, with just one GPU, what does the GPU usage look like while the CPU is pegged out? I suspect that it's probably not 95-100%.

 

[OneMoar]

you people are beating a dead horse
both battlefield 4 and crysis 3 scale like utter shit with crossfire and with the recent bf4 patch dice broke it again ..

 

[Final_Fighter]

cool and i hope that cpu works great. it should be able to get the job done. with that you now have one kickass machine.

 

[Dent1]

JaredzzC,

Update us when your new CPU arrives.

 

[JaredzzC]

JaredzzC,

Update us when your new CPU arrives.

Of course I will. My intention all along was to keep people updated on the progress of my situation.
My CPU's estimated delivery date is tomorrow, so hopefully by then I shall post more details.