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CPU usage is higher when using Crossfire

jbslayer
By jbslayer
in Graphics Cards
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So I recently bought a 7970 off ebay  to go along with my other 3 year old 7970 just to get more performance in games and I tried the setup with multiple games such as GTA V, Crysis 3, Battlefield 4, Dragon Age Inquisition. What I noticed was that my CPU usage would jump 10%-15% higher than just using a single card and would create a bottleneck for my GPU's therefore not letting them hit max load. I was wondering if this was normal for other Crossfire users or I just might have a bad setup.

 

My specs:

i5 3570k @ 4.6 GHz

ASrock Z77 extreme4 motherboard

16 GB DDR3 1600MHz

2x7970 in Crossfire

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In an ideal situation, BOTH the CPU and GPU should be at 100%.

If your CPU has increased since adding a second graphics card, then your GPU WAS the bottleneck.

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