I’m trying to setup WoW for a friend on an older computer. The computer is about 10 years old, running a 2500K @ 5Ghz and 2x Radeon 6870 in Crossfire. The CPU is still decent, especially with the good overclock. Obviously a GPU upgrade makes sense at this point, but with the current inflated GPU prices, we were hoping to get by for a while with the existing GPUs.
The main issue with Crossfire (at least with these cards) is that it has issues in games that don’t use exclusive fullscreen. WoW dropped the option for exclusive fullscreen starting with the BFA prepatch several years ago. When running the game in a borderless window (WoW’s version of fullscreen), only one GPU is used.
WoW used to have great Crossfire support. I, for many years, ran 2x 4870x2 in quad crossfire. I had moved on from those cards by the time fullscreen was removed however.
My backup computer is still using 3x GTX680 in SLI. SLI doesn’t seem to have any issues running in a window, as I see consistent usage on all 3 GPUs.
Has there ever been a workaround found, or any kind of hack, that can make Crossfire work without exclusive fullscreen (aka current WoW)?
Software support and popularity of SLI/Crossfire has been dwindling for a long time now. Even though modern motherboards and GPUs technically support it the only time I’ve seen it used recently is with benchmarking, e.g. 3DMark. I wish you luck on figuring out a workaround but it might be worth looking into picking up a used/refurb machine in the meantime in case it doesn’t work out, especially if your friend plans to raid or do epic BGs — that 2500k is going to have a hard time with anything with lots of units on screen since WoW is CPU-bound and dependent on single core performance.
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Actually wow is running pretty well just using the single 6870. I’d still prefer that it used both.
GPU makers dropping SLI/Crossfire support because it consumes more power, needs support from developers and driver optimization. Single card is always the best anyway.
It’s possible to enable SLI for WoW at least for DX11. Problem is DX11 has draw call limits. In those scenarios DX12 is just going to be better overall.
Next gen AMD GPUs will have ‘built in SLI’ via chiplets and AMD is redoing the overall graphics architecture of GPUs in general. We might see easier adoption of SLI then but time will tell if devs will use the resources properly.
Yeah SLI works in a borderless window, but Crossfire doesn’t.
Clearly a newer DX12 card would be superior. Buying a new GPU is on the agenda, but not when 5 year old used cards are selling for $800. Until prices settle down, he’s going to have to do the best he can with his Radeon 6870s or simply not play WoW.
The fact that SLI does still work makes me hopeful that there is some way to enable Crossfire, since the technologies are similar. But it’s looking pretty bleak so far.
I’m still searching for an answer on this (Crossfire in windowed fullscreen). It still seems to me that it should be technically possible, since SLI can do it.
It’s not the card that’s superior it’s the API that’s superior.
But yea totally agreed the current retail prices are bonkers. I order my hardware via a supplier so I don’t have similar issues.