AMD RADEON HD 7990 vs i7 870

[pernice_brother]

Hi All

I've recently installed the Radeon HD 7990 and fired up Far Cry 3 on Steam to try it out.

During play I get a lot of frame-rate stuttering, even on the lowest quality settings. Could this be because of my (not overclocked) i7 870 bottlenecking?

I'm playing on Windows 7 64 bit, and have 8gb of RAM.

If it is my i7 as I suspect, which processor do you recommend for high-end gaming and applications that use a lot of processor power, (eg, music production software).

Cheers, Paul.

 

[PP Mguire]

First, I recommend using the 13.8 V2 drivers. Secondly, any Crossfire solution is going to have micro-stuttering. It's what AMD cards are known for apart from frame latency, which the 13.8 drivers have cleaned up quite a bit.

Next, the easiest way to tell if the card is being bottlenecked is monitor GPU usage with MSI-Afterburner. If the first GPU is at 99% (or slightly below) and the second GPU is barely being used, that's just the game/drivers not utilizing your second GPU properly. If both are being used equally and they are around 70% or lower then that would be your CPU holding your GPU back.

If it is, a 4670k would be a huge upgrade over your current i7.

 

[pernice_brother]

Thanks. The game is only using one of the GPUs but I cannot find a way to enable both of them anywhere within 13.8. All I can see, under 'Gaming' and then '3D application settings' is 'AMD Crossfire - Frame pacing ON'.

I monitored the GPUs in Skyrim and the same problem occurred - only one GPU being used.

Any ideas? All help much appreciated.

 

[PP Mguire]

Frame Pacing is what greatly reduces the frame latency resulting in smoother frames.

The only thing I can suggest is look hard for a Crossfire enable option. I know the 13.8 V2 driver set does CFX on FC3 and TR specifically.

Edit: Did you use the deleter utility (or driver sweeper) to completely take out the old driver first?