Q&A, July 25, 2012

[6BL Bird-Dog]

Originally Posted by 6BL Bird-Dog

Thanks for the response both to you and to Luthier.
I quote here from a previous post purely to give relevant information on the Xfire issues:

"From experiance I got various results with different card combo`s single and X-Fire.
1x AMD Saphire Toxic 5870 Oc, poor frame rates and micro studders,had to use medium settings .
2x AMD Saphire Toxic 5870 Oc,best ever performance when the early patch release enabled X-Fire,Max settings, good high frame rates and only the microstudders lower altitudes.Ruined when a small patch was bought out within hours because of graphics anomolys with Nvidia systems.
1xXFX HD 7970 Black Edition,Improvement on single 5870, but running at Very High in game settings made little difference compared to 2x AMD Saphire Toxic 5870 Oc,frame rates improved slightly.
2xXFX HD 7970 Black Edition,with both last Alpa and Beta patches more or less the same as a single XFX HD 7970 Black Edition performance slightly improved at highest settings.
I tested the same cards and setups on the rig in my sig and did compare performance with RoF and iL2 1946 ,the latter of which does not have X-Fire support.
In Rise of Flight as I Improved my Gpu hardware I was able to increases my quality settings with also an increase in FPS .The 2x AMD Saphire Toxic 5870 Oc performance was slghtly slower than a single XFX HD 7970 Black Edition.
2xXFX HD 7970 Black Edition runs fluidly with all settings at max with the exception of AntAliasing which Inever run above 2x as it murders the fps in ROF.
iL2 1946 ran maxed out on all combinations ,seamlessly on 2xXFX HD 7970 Black Edition, with the Average 60 FPS limited to 60mhz(my native screen res),but max frames are almost always over 1000fps.
The Clod dev team hit the sweet spot once for me on X-fire but have never unfortunately got close since ,well at least for AMD GPU`s.
In Cliffs of Dover`s present state apart from increasing in game video quality settings performance wise X-Fire is not functioning in anyway near to the Early X-Fire patch release which on my system was awesome compared to any patches before or after,the textures looked much better then too if a little bit too bright."

From present performance results Xfire on AMD Gpu`s is well below what was once obtained .
Could you please ask Luthier if the present poor Xfire performance relative to drivers issues with AMD and if so can he work with AMD to optimise the drivers as he is with Nvidia.The boys from the 777 team may be able to provide a known contact access for AMD driver support as they have worked with the Catalyst Crew in order to get a profile optomised for Rise of Flight.
Thanks in Advance for any efforts made.

I have spent the day testing various settings with fraps & the black death track with starting fraps at the beginning of the track then stopping it when the de-winged hirricanes engine comes to rest on the edge of the crator.My in game settings are always set the same.
ie:All at max 1920x1600@60hz Full Screen ,AAx2,AE Filter off,SSAO off with everything else on.Here are the results .
2012-07-25 17:23:21 - Launcher xfire off VS OFF
Frames: 6393 - Time: 158778ms - Avg: 40.264 - Min: 13 - Max: 94
2012-07-25 17:33:38 - Launcher xfire off VS ON
Frames: 6067 - Time: 159495ms - Avg: 38.039 - Min: 13 - Max: 62
2012-07-25 17:54:12 - Launcher xfire default mode VS OFF
Frames: 6288 - Time: 160151ms - Avg: 39.263 - Min: 17 - Max: 65
2012-07-25 18:04:39 - Launcher xfire AFR freindly mode VS OFF
Frames: 6053 - Time: 159839ms - Avg: 37.869 - Min: 15 - Max: 92
2012-07-25 18:15:07 - Launcher xfire Optomised 1x1 mode VS OFF
Frames: 6413 - Time: 159714ms - Avg: 40.153 - Min: 16 - Max: 97
2012-07-25 18:23:57 - Launcher xfire Optomised 1x1 mode VS ON
Frames: 6293 - Time: 160042ms - Avg: 39.321 - Min: 16 - Max: 63
2012-07-25 18:37:49 - Launcher xfire AFR freindly mode VS ON
Frames: 6301 - Time: 159480ms - Avg: 39.510 - Min: 17 - Max: 64
AFR & Optomised 1x1 modes are additional frame rendering modes that can be used by AMD Crossfire.
As the first X-Fire patch worked so well for AMD but caused problems for Nvidia users I was wondering it would be of help for volenteers from the forums with relevant systems to test any further work with Xfire and Sli paralell to any future comunity patch releases without effecting any further general patches.
This would help speed things up if testers reported performance improvements & anomolies direct to the dev team who could reference the problems against the specific GPU types as realy there are only two types on the market:ie:Nvidia & AMD .Disabeling Xfirewould also test single card performance without subjecting the community to the bugs that often arise with graffics when work on Sli & X-Fire is undertaken.
When satisfactory results are achieved then it could be included into the last patch for final beta testing amoungst the community.
I only suggst this as the early X-Fire patch realy rocked for me and if this can be achieved for all multi card users without effecting single card performance then the game will realy take a massive leap in the right direction.