I have:

i5-750
Windows 7
2x HD 6870s
8GB RAM

My framerates are dropping in heavy action in MP even with my settings down to DX9 very high. Some areas in SP have subpar FPS in Ultra on DX11.

I've tried setting Radeon Pro to FEAR and Alternate Frame Rendering, but that doesn't seem to be helping much either.

What I'm looking at is framerates very close to what I was getting with a single HD 6870, except this time it hardly matters what graphics level I choose. Normally I would assume this indicates a CPU bottleneck, but the i5-750 is quite fast for an old CPU and CrossfireX isn't the most reliable setup.

What do you guys think?

1. I need better crossfire tweaks...

or

2. ...the i5-750 is too slow and needs an OC?

i think no1.

I used to run the game with i5 760 @ 4.2ghz + 2x 580s, lemme say first if you didn't already know that an i5 750 running @ 4ghz is very different than say an i5 2500k running at 4ghz.
Although the two cards would be running fine off the i5 760 and i was getting really smooth gameplay(even before the numerous drivers that helped things on a little) it wasn't till i got hold of the 2500k which made the gameplay 'snappy'.
There is a difference, smooth is very nice, but snappy is king.

i5 2500K is faster than i5 750 at same speed but the difference isnt much.

And how does the 750 do @ 4.5 ghz? can it keep cool with air-cooling at that speed?
Make the jump, you won't regret!

>And how does the 750 do @ 4.5 ghz? can it keep cool with air-cooling at that speed?

no, you need wc for i5-7** at 4.5 ghz. wanna to have air cooling - go buy 2500k/2600k

Should be plenty of CPU, regardless., but monitoring CPU during the FPS dips would be telling. Running task manager's performance tab in the background would be enough. Do you have a tool to separately monitor your GPU utilization? Afterburner or somesuch? Btw, how much vram is on those cards?

Should be plenty of CPU, regardless., but monitoring CPU during the FPS dips would be telling. Running task manager's performance tab in the background would be enough. Do you have a tool to separately monitor your GPU utilization? Afterburner or somesuch? Btw, how much vram is on those cards?

i5-2500 @ 3.7
12GB ram
6770

In your opinion, do they bottleneck each other?

Should be plenty of CPU, regardless., but monitoring CPU during the FPS dips would be telling. Running task manager's performance tab in the background would be enough. Do you have a tool to separately monitor your GPU utilization? Afterburner or somesuch? Btw, how much vram is on those cards?

The cards both have 1GB.

Judging by the constant temps, the cards are close to 100% at all times. I can't be entirely sure just based on the temp graph though. I'll check the CPU load now.

EDIT: Just did the CPU test, all 4 cores seem to be close to 100% at all times.

Also I noticed something strange. I transferred the game off my HDD onto my SSD, but the load times feel exactly the same. The SSD isn't slow, the boot-up still happens instantly after the windows logo and Guild Wars still runs like 50x smoother while loading towns. I guess Crysis 2 really does throw everything at the RAM?

It acts like CPU bottleneck, you are sure right about that... But that should be enough CPU. I have 90% utilization at the worst on 3 core AMD @3.5ghz. I'm wondering if something else is taking up clock cycles?

As an aside, Vram clogging is a problem for me with 768mb. (SLI gtx460's) I have to Alt-Enter to windowed mode then back before some maps for stutter-free play. It clears my vram usage to about 45% instead of 95%.. (do it at the "circle countdown" screen). Dont think its your problem, but 1gb is on the low side for C2.


@Jaredzzc: I dont think CPU would be the FPS limiter in that config.

Its a pretty fresh install. The CPU is not hardly being used at all when a game isn't running.

If I set the game to "high" DX11 it never drops below 30, but when it gets close 30-40 the mouse drags a little bit and that ruins my aim.

Wrath, did you see this thread?

You could try messing with your processor affinity -- see this tutorial.

If this actually helps, please post. This is a bizarre idea, but EA has apparently recommended it in another case.

If you don't have AF enabled, try that x8 should do it.

Wrath, did you see this thread?

You could try messing with your processor affinity -- see this tutorial.

If this actually helps, please post. This is a bizarre idea, but EA has apparently recommended it in another case.

I've already done that with two cores, all it does is cut my menu FPS in half and add a lot of choke to the game. Guess I could try one though.

Need to make sure you have latest drivers and delete everything in your temp folder from windows file in c driver. if you have quad core then assign cpu1 for the gaming(in this case c2 ). then after youve done all that you need to restart comp for the effect otherwise it doesnt really work.

Need to make sure you have latest drivers and delete everything in your temp folder from windows file in c driver. if you have quad core then assign cpu1 for the gaming(in this case c2 ). then after youve done all that you need to restart comp for the effect otherwise it doesnt really work.

Well my drivers are the latest. My temp folder only has 25MB in it, that's pretty low ain't it?

In your case you ought to try to let Crysis 2 use all of the CPU cores again. Its likely the updated drivers were the main part of your FPS increasing.

My updated drivers gave me more than double what my average use to be? even tho i was using the drivers that had been released just before these ones?

My updated drivers gave me more than double what my average use to be? even tho i was using the drivers that had been released just before these ones?

Just saying there's no harm in trying, its easy to set the CPU cores back down to 1 again if it causes issues.

I wasn't aware your old drivers were so recent.

I was gonna suggest the same thing... re-enable those cores for a wee bit so we know for sure thats whats doing the deed.. You can see why its so hard to believe (!)

ok, ill try that... but yea when they told me i was a bit :/

cuz why use one core when you could have the full power of 4?! ( in my case )

lol maybe origin is doing it. Now that would be a story.