GregP

This issue has been discussed to no end in these forums, and lots of DCS users have tried to contact AMD to ask if Crossfire support will ever be added to their drivers, but have never received a response. Could we get an official ED response to this question, as in all my searching through these forums I don't think I've ever seen one? Does Crossfire support of the DCS series depend on AMD updating their drivers accordingly (i.e. creating profiles for DCS), or is it the game developer that must work to enable Crossfire? Is there a specific technical reason why CF does not work in DCS? Or is the DCS engine basically "CF-ready" but the DCS series is just lacking proper recognition from AMD? I'm not looking to point any fingers, I'd just like to know how the process works and who we need to lobby to get this finally working. DCS users generally spend a lot more money on computer hardware than your average gamer, especially on video cards (there are already 46, at last count, DCS users who really want to be able to use Crossfire, as tabulated in this poll), and it's really frustrating that we can't get the maximum utility out of these expensive multiple-GPU setups in our favorite flight sim.

Yup, I've already tried that route, like so many others. But I think I'm now going to try to get some of the guys who run the hardware sites I frequent to ask on my (our) behalf, as they seem to have regular contact with AMD. Worth a try at least.

Sorry, I don't own FSX so I really couldn't say. I wish! No, I'm not running Crossfire in DCS. Believe me I've tried every single combination of CCC and Radeon Pro profile parameters that I could think of, and I'm convinced there's no way to do it. I'm running Crossfired 7970's in every other game, and even technically in DCS (because I'm not manually disabling Crossfire) but the second card doesn't get used at all.

Ah, OK, that explains it (sweet pit, by the way). Exporting stuff to a 4th monitor, and being smart about how you arrange the monitors within Windows, is different from what I'm trying to do (although it is what I used to be doing). My setup (pic here) is more like taking a giant canvas of the normal view in the cockpit and just dropping the lower left and right corners of it; this was the only way that I could use the touchscreen to interact directly with the cockpit instruments without having to use Helios. Although I tried and really liked Helios, ultimately what I wanted was something that felt more natural, and didn't give me two cockpit views. I think I've achieved that ... but at the cost, of course, of rendering this ridiculous 6400x2160 resolution. :)

How exactly did you manage to get a T-shape working with 4 monitors placed side-by-side? PeterP suggested here that a second viewport be created in the monitorsetup file, which I tried back in December but found that it killed framerate. I can't quite figure out how else to do it. Are you using SoftTH?

I'm of course familiar with moving the monitors around within Windows to try to minimize overall render area but I could have sworn I already tried this with the T-shape and it didn't work ... can't quite remember why though. Worth a try again! Will do tonight. Thanks for the suggestion.

Even though Kuky's been having no end of problems with his 7970 in DCS, I decided to at least give it a try based on so many other positive things I was reading about this card. My setup had been a 6990 + 6970 in Crossfire (=Trifire), which of course didn't do anything whatsoever for me in DCS beyond what a single 6970 would do, but certainly helped in EVERY SINGLE OTHER GAME I OWN. :) But still, DCS performance is what has driven most of my upgrades lately, so I figured it was worth trying out the 7970. I bought two of them to completely replace my 6990 + 6970. I run DCS at 6400x2160, across three 27" monitors for the 'main' view and a single 22" touchscreen for the instrument view, arranged in a T-shape as shown here. I'm not going to get into exactly what graphics settings I have, because it's the difference in framerate that I'm so excited about here. With my previous setup, which was essentially one-half of a 6990 in DCS (which is clocked at 830/5.0, slightly slower than a single 6970's 880/5.5), I had tweaked my settings to get 24 FPS in a standard simple takeoff mission. To my surprise, when I dropped the 7970's in, my first test yielded 34 FPS, a 40% increase right off the bat! Having read about the 7970's great overclocking potential, I then went right for the max clocks allowed within MSI Afterburner: from 925 to 1125 on the core clock, and from 1375 (=5.5 GHz) to 1575 (=6.3 GHz) on the memory clock. Going into DCS, my takeoff mission now started at 40 FPS -- an overall 67% improvement in framerate! I couldn't believe it. And this on a card that runs cooler and quieter than both a single 6970 and my 6990 ... amazing! I'm using the 8.921.2 RC11 driver set, and as Kuky has discovered, there is no doubt that this is NOT a complete driver release. It's buggy, and does cause crashes occasionally, and not all the features of the 12.1 or 12.2 Catalyst releases are in there yet (the big one, from my perspective, being the lack of ability to use Crossfire in 3D on the 7970 yet). Some other test results of interest: rFactor2, 5916x1080: 6990+6970: 41 FPS 2x7970: 60 FPS (46% increase) pCARS, 5916x1080: 6990+6970: 36 FPS 2x7970: 46 FPS (28% increase) Deus Ex: Human Revolution, 5916x1080: 6990+6970: 74 FPS 2x7970: 90 FPS (22% increase) The Witcher 2, 1920x1080: 6990+6970: 130 FPS 2x7970: 143 FPS (10% increase) The Witcher 2, 1920x1080, 3D: 6990+6970: 36 FPS 1x7970: 50 FPS (cannot use Crossfire yet) BF3, 1920x1080: 6990+6970: 114 FPS 2x7970: 118 FPS (3% increase) Interesting that only BF3 did not see much improvement in FPS. Also, I should note that, in my quick testing, I did start to see some artifacts in some of these games, indicating that I need to scale back the OC a bit. But still, the OC from 925/5.5 up to 1125/6.3 only nets about 10-15% more FPS, so for most of these games there would still be a sizable jump going from the 6990+6970 to 2x7970's at stock speeds. Lastly, given the increases in DCS FPS that others have seen from the 7970 -- generally anywhere from 30-50% -- it's obvious that the increases we're all seeing are very much system-dependent. At 6400x2160, for sure the VRAM on my 6990+6970 was being maxed out, for one thing, so that additional gigabyte of VRAM on the 7970 probably helps there. Bottom line though: I am one happy Warthog driver. :)

EDIT: SOLD I just got this card two weeks ago from the original owner. He'd bought it new in April, and it has the full 3-year warranty. It's a beast of a card, insanely fast, but I recently upgraded to dual 7970's and don't have any need for it anymore. I've got the original box and all cables, and the card's in perfect condition, never overclocked. I'm selling it for $500 shipped within the US, and I'd prefer Paypal payment. My heatware is here.

OK so I've had a look at somebody else's example file, for a different joystick, and indeed there are "combos" lines further down that allow assignment of specific DX buttons to specific commands. But the entire structure has changed from 1.1.1.0 ... ED, I love your sims, but damn these sweeping undocumented changes are REALLY getting irritating.

No one else has run into this problem? Everybody else has just copied their 1.1.1.0 Warthog lua file over to 1.1.1.1 and it runs with no problems?

Mitch is back! Woohoo! Always loved your skins. Thank you, sir!

Apologies in advance if I'm overlooking something obvious. I only yesterday finally installed 1.1.1.1 (new full install) as I hadn't had the time back in December. I spent quite a bit of time months ago modifying my "Thrustmaster Combined.lua" file such that I could get all the buttons and switches working the way I wanted. My need to do this was necessitated by the fact that: 1) I want to program my WH via TARGET, so that I can make use of its advanced programming functionality 2) I want to be able to use TARGET to pass in DX button/axis codes to DCS, which I then manually assign to sim functions within the corresponding lua file, like this: [196] = { ["combos"] = { [1] = { ["key"] = "JOY_BTN4", }, -- end of [1] }, -- end of ["combos"] ["up"] = 576, ["name"] = "HOTAS MIC Switch Forward", ["category"] = "HOTAS", ["down"] = 575, }, -- end of [196] So, with 1.1.1.1 I copied my controller lua files back into the correct folders, start up DCS, go into a flight ... and my throttle doesn't work. When I go back out to the GUI, I see that the axes somehow never got assigned. I assign them, go back in-sim, and now the throttle works but no buttons on the throttle work. I then exit the game, go look at my Thrustmaster Combined.lua file, and I see that it's overwritten everything I had in there (yes, of course I had a backup :)), and now there's nothing but lines like this: {down = iCommandPlane_Altimeter_ELECT, name = "AAP CDU Power Switch", category = "AAP"}, {down = iCommandPlane_AAP_CDU_Power, name = "AAP CDU Power Switch", category = "AAP"}, {down = iCommandPlane_AAP_EGI_Power, name = "AAP EGI Power Switch", category = "AAP"}, With no obvious way of assigning DX buttons/axes to functions. So obviously my question is, how is this done? Clearly something big changed in 1.1.1.1.

EDIT: SOLD I just bought two of these last month new from Amazon for $350 each: http://www.amazon.com/Radeon-XFX-6970-Graphics-Card/dp/B004GCIZ5A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327680213&sr=8-1 But now I've replaced one with a 6990, so I'm looking to sell it. It's in perfect condition, never been overclocked, and because I registered it within 30 days, the normal 2-year warranty has been extended to a lifetime warranty. I'd prefer payment via Paypal. My heatware is here.

OK, that makes sense, because in running in windowed mode, you're basically disabling CF. Which is consistent with what most others see: turning CF on lowers FPS. For some reason I see identical FPS both with and without CF, though.

OK, thanks for those pictures. Are you then applying those CCC settings to a DCS profile by choosing DCS.exe and then 'saving' at the top? I'm pretty sure that in windowed mode, CF gets disabled -- that's why you're seeing load on only one card (this should be true for all games). When you say you're getting better FPS in windowed mode -- do you mean, compared to running CF in fullscreen mode? Or compared to running fullscreen with CF off?

At least in the latest 12.2 Preview drivers, with Trifire there is an option to use all 3, just 2, or only 1 video card. It's fairly simple: under 'Gaming' and 'AMD CrossfireX', if you have 3 video cards, you'll see an option to toggle between 3 and 2 of them. Then, if you want to use only one GPU on a dual-GPU card (like the 5970 or 6990), just turn Crossfire off altogether -- that will allow use of just one GPU.

BIGNEWY, You appear to have done the impossible -- getting Crossfire working. Can you explain exactly how you have CCC set up? I've tried every possible combination of settings that I can think of, and no matter what I do, I get 0% utilization of my non-primary cards (this is true for both Crossfire and Trifire, since I'm running a 6990 + 6970 combo).

PoleCat, You're quite the salesman :) as I had never heard of this device before but am now seriously considering buying it. Would you be able to give me rough dimensions of the seat cushion? I'm trying to figure out how nicely it would fit on top of my Playseat.

felafe, how exactly are you trying to use the Warthog? Simply plug-and-play? Because if so, all you have to do is ... plug ... and play. :) In that case you don't need anybody else's profiles; DCS will create them for you as soon as you plug the Warthog in. If you're new to the Warthog and TARGET, I wrote a tutorial here that might be useful for you.

For a long time I had the same desire as you -- a touchscreen CDU that I could use since I was already exporting MFCDs to USB LCDs and using a keypad (X-Keys Professional) for my UFC / NMSP / AHCP. After researching all the options, and trying to figure out how to integrate it all into my cockpit setup, I went with the simplest option: a 22" touchscreen that gives me an easy way to directly interact with ALL of the 3D cockpit's switches. My Viewsonic VX2258WM was about $300, but if you can stretch your budget a bit, you could buy yourself a much more comprehensive and adaptable solution. In the picture here, you can see that I have it mounted below the center view of my main monitors. I've tried a lot of other setups, but this one beats them all in terms of intuitiveness. Also, if I don't want to move my head (via TrackIR) such that the CDU is in view, I can just use a SnapView to place the CDU directly in the middle of the touchscreen and operate it that way.

Update: price drop to $430.

Just rephrasing Kuky's answers and adding a little bit -- bottom line is, for multi-monitor setups, yes, Radeon card offer more flexibility: - With GTX580, in 3D (and here I mean 3D gaming as distinct from 2D desktop work; I'm NOT talking about stereoscopic 3D gaming) you're limited to 2 outputs per card, and 3 total even with an SLI setup - 6970 cards allow 4 outputs per card in 3D, but none on 2nd card if you do CF: so 4 total for CF - neither CF or SLI will work in windowed mode - a single 6970 is sufficient to run DCS on 3 monitors at 1920x1080 resolution each, at high graphics settings, and get average FPS ranges of about 15-30 - CF does not seem to work in DCS, regardless of whether you use fullscreen or windowed mode For FSX, if you can run fullscreen, and CF would presumably be working, you'd get a substantial improvement in FPS with a 3-screen setup if you added a second 6970. In fact this would be true in every game other than DCS, which seems to just flat-out refuse to work with CF (the very few reports of it working also mention severe graphics anomalies that make it nearly useless).

ivanwfr, I for one am hoping that somebody at ED hears you and fixes these problems, even if I have to admit I don't quite understand what the problems actually are. :) I haven't installed 1.1.1.1 yet simply because I just don't have the time right now to do the whole patch upgrade process, which, because of my controller config customization and other mods, generally takes me 3-4 hours. It sounds like 1.1.1.1 is going to mess up my TARGET profile's Thrustmaster-combined.lua file, so that's an additional factor keeping me away from the new patch.

DCS performance is dependent upon both GPU and CPU. It depends on the specifics of each person's configuration. If you've maxed out your system's GPU, you will probably still see an improvement with more GPU power. It is true, though, that DCS is more dependent upon the CPU than most other games.

All the reviews I've seen suggest improvement over the 6970 of nearly 30%, so this could very well be worth the upgrade, in my case.