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Crossfired 5850's Issue

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I just installed a second 5850 today for crossfire. Power is fine, connected the two cards with two crossfire cables. On reboot, CCC seemed to detect the second card fine, asked me to enable, which I did.

I fired up the Far Cry 2 benchmark, and after a run through, discovered I'm actually getting worse performance than I did with a single card. 0_o

Not sure what is going on, because in most benchmarks I saw, Far Cry 2 was one case where crossfire scaled very well. Any clues on what could be going on? If you need any more details, I'll be happy to provide them.

Also, not sure if it helps, but here are the two cards:
SAPPHIRE 100282SR Radeon HD 5850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5...
SAPPHIRE 100282-3SR Radeon HD 5850 (Cypress Pro) 1...
 

crazyeyesreaper

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uninstall drivers via erockers guide reinstall drivers after using driver cleaner or w/e in safe mode most likely the drivers are just borked also make sure CAT AI is ENABLED if its disabled crossfire gets turned off (its a nifty thing actually in games where crossfire causes rendering issues u can just turn CAT AI off and all is well) that said driver reinstall is your best bet


How To: Reinstall Video Drivers (Quick Guide)
 
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Thanks, I know at least Cat AI is in fact enabled. I can try reinstalling drivers.

Also, I was reading here about the pcie slot speeds:
Making Crossfire Work and Optimization

I have an x16 and an x8 slot. Do I have to take additional steps to get this to work properly for crossfire?

Edit: I ran the benchmark for Far Cry 2 in windowed mode, and the second gpu is at 0% use... the clock speed is 157MHz and memory is at 300MHz
 
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nah should work just fine no issue what so ever even 4x PCIE 2.0 is enough unless using 5970s in quadfire do a driver reinstall from scratch
 
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do a driver reinstall from scratch

I'm having an issue with those instructions, after uninstalling and rebooting, windows 7 will automatically install what it thinks are good drivers for the cards, without asking me for permission or anything....
 

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well windows default driver wont hurt anything if u have to just unplug from the net before rebooting the windows default driver just lets basicaly things work the install of new drivers should be fine all your really doing is purging the system of the old ati driver you were using anyway
 
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Edit: I ran the benchmark for Far Cry 2 in windowed mode, and the second gpu is at 0% use... the clock speed is 157MHz and memory is at 300MHz

CrossFire usually doesn't work in windowed mode.

I'm having an issue with those instructions, after uninstalling and rebooting, windows 7 will automatically install what it thinks are good drivers for the cards, without asking me for permission or anything....

That's fine, once you get to the point where everything is cleaned/uninstalled, just install the new drivers. :toast:
 
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CrossFire usually doesn't work in windowed mode.



That's fine, once you get to the point where everything is cleaned/uninstalled, just install the new drivers. :toast:

Well, I went through all the steps, cleared out everything, and I'm still getting bad performance. I run in windowed mode (where I see the 0% gpu use), and get the same exact FPS as full screen.

So looks like crossfire is not working in either windowed/full screen right now. :(

I really don't know what to try at this point.
 

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Thanks, I know at least Cat AI is in fact enabled. I can try reinstalling drivers.

Also, I was reading here about the pcie slot speeds:
Making Crossfire Work and Optimization

I have an x16 and an x8 slot. Do I have to take additional steps to get this to work properly for crossfire?

Edit: I ran the benchmark for Far Cry 2 in windowed mode, and the second gpu is at 0% use... the clock speed is 157MHz and memory is at 300MHz

crossfire doesnt work in windowed mode.

have you disabled catalyst AI? that disables crossfire.
 
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crossfire doesnt work in windowed mode.

have you disabled catalyst AI? that disables crossfire.

Yah, but like I said in the post above, I'm getting the same exact FPS full screen.

Also, I had not changed the AI settings from default after driver reinstall. So it is set to standard right now, which sounds like it is what I want. I will try with advance and see if it makes a difference. Edit: Nope.
 
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Well, I went through all the steps, cleared out everything, and I'm still getting bad performance. I run in windowed mode (where I see the 0% gpu use), and get the same exact FPS as full screen.

So looks like crossfire is not working in either windowed/full screen right now. :(

I really don't know what to try at this point.

Some common mistakes people make (as well as I :roll: )

Follow this list, you should be fine.

  1. Remove all ATI drivers via Drivesweeper & in Safe Mode
  2. MAKE sure that the Crossfire bridge is connected properly and has no bents or is broken
  3. Are all the cards properly secured tightly? (My cards would pop out until I got a screw to keep them in place)
  4. Make sure Enable ATI Overdrive is enable via CCC for both cards
  5. On the taskbar go to the ATI icon and right click it -> ATI 5800 series -> CrossfireX Settings -> Show Crossfire X while playing games

If you see the CrossfireX displaying while playing video games then it is working correctly.

Also, make sure you download the latest Crossfire Profile 10.8a

Lastly, what drivers are you using?

Good luck
 
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Some common mistakes people make (as well as I :roll: )

Follow this list, you should be fine.

  1. Remove all ATI drivers via Drivesweeper & in Safe Mode
  2. MAKE sure that the Crossfire bridge is connected properly and has no bents or is broken
  3. Are all the cards properly secured tightly? (My cards would pop out until I got a screw to keep them in place)
  4. Make sure Enable ATI Overdrive is enable via CCC for both cards
  5. On the taskbar go to the ATI icon and right click it -> ATI 5800 series -> CrossfireX Settings -> Show Crossfire X while playing games

If you see the CrossfireX displaying while playing video games then it is working correctly.

Also, make sure you download the latest Crossfire Profile 10.8a

Lastly, what drivers are you using?

Good luck

I did not have ATI Overdrive enabled, did that. Also, didn't realize you had to install the catalyst profiles separately. I downloaded that setup file and installed them, is there anything else I need to do in regards to the profiles?

The crossfire icon did show up during testing, and I noticed when I quickly alt-tabbed the second gpu was at 35% before it backed down to 0% from alt-tab. So, it must be doing something, just not sure why I'm getting worse, or equal performance of a single card. Could my cpu be bottlenecking the benchmark?
 
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No your CPU is fine...did you try any other games? What drivers are you using?

Edit: Not all the time your 2nd GPU will be at 99% , that's normal 35-60% its different for each game.
 
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No your CPU is fine...did you try any other games? What drivers are you using?

Edit: Not all the time your 2nd GPU will be at 99% , that's normal 35-60% its different for each game.

Ok, haven't tried any others games yet, mostly because Far Cry 2 is the one that I benchmarked a single card with.

Sorry, forgot to say I'm using the 8.10 drivers (so latest).

Also, Just to give a rough idea of the issue, after a loop of 3 runs on the far cry 2 basic ranch benchmark, I get an average 71 FPS using a single card, but an average of 61 in crossfire. :banghead:

Edit: Just tried Bad Company 2, with crossfire enabled/disabled, getting almost identical performance. No noticeable jumps in frame rate with crossfire enabled.
 
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When was the last time your DirectX was updated?
I hear 10.8 isn't that great, period.

I would suggest the following:
1) uninstall everything through the control panel's uninstall
2) after reboot if older drivers are applied, go in to device manager and uninstall both the cards and the drivers
3) shutdown this time and remove the crossfire bridges
4) boot back in to 7, making sure that only the default windows vga driver is applied
5) start with 10.3 and install the crossfire profiles from 10.7
6) shutdown and put on both bridges and reboot. CCC should see it and apply crossfire at least it did for me last night

I went through this last night. I though the card I just bought off someone here was borked because I was getting texture flickering and the rolling flicker in general. Thing was it was only happening in Vantage and Heaven benches. I played BC2 single player for a while and never had any problems. So I went through that whole procedure above and also reinstalled June DX files. I had done it once before but I was messing with my cpu overclock too. I think it messed up the install and was causing problems because they are now all gone.
 
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Well I'm about ready to just give up and return/sell the card.... 3 driver wipes later, and I haven't seen anything but worse performance.

Could the card models have anything to do with it? I noticed that in ATI overdrive, the clock/mem speeds can go higher on the new card. They are currently set to the same as the 1st card though.
 
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I don't know if it is still true but I've been told that if your going to crossfire cards make sure they are the same type. So if you have a reference board card get another one. Mixing reference and non reference can be hit and miss so I've been told.

I'd still recommend updating DX if you havn't already.
 
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The highest clocked card will tick to the slower one, so they match. They must be of same speeds. Why not OC the slowest one to match the highest speed card? Sad it ain't working out for you, but I'd least wait a bit before selling it.
 
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I don't know if it is still true but I've been told that if your going to crossfire cards make sure they are the same type. So if you have a reference board card get another one. Mixing reference and non reference can be hit and miss so I've been told.

I'd still recommend updating DX if you havn't already.

I have the very first reference model from sapphire, there were none available everywhere I looked, there was one second revision that looked reference still, but it was more expensive than a new Sapphire (third revision) non-reference model. It seems pretty crappy that it isn't just the gpu that has to match.... if that is why it is not working.

The highest clocked card will tick to the slower one, so they match. They must be of same speeds. Why not OC the slowest one to match the highest speed card? Sad it ain't working out for you, but I'd least wait a bit before selling it.

Right now I have them both clocked to stock speeds, 725/1000
 

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worst case if you can do a complete reinstall i had this issue with my 4870x2 when i first got it.... had to install windows again and do a complete wipe the 2nd time around everything worked just peachy
 
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I have the very first reference model from sapphire, there were none available everywhere I looked, there was one second revision that looked reference still, but it was more expensive than a new Sapphire (third revision) non-reference model. It seems pretty crappy that it isn't just the gpu that has to match.... if that is why it is not working.

Well like I said, that is all hearsay. The only other crossfire setup I had was a single 4870x2. This is my first crossfire setup with two cards.

Does CCC see both cards when you don't have the bridges on? It will give you an error under the crossfire tab saying you need to add the bridges.

Have you tried swapping the cards? Seen that one work too.
 
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Well like I said, that is all hearsay. The only other crossfire setup I had was a single 4870x2. This is my first crossfire setup with two cards.

Does CCC see both cards when you don't have the bridges on? It will give you an error under the crossfire tab saying you need to add the bridges.

Have you tried swapping the cards? Seen that one work too.

I'll try both these tomorrow, right now its 12:37 AM, so I'm gonna call it a night.

Thanks for the help everyone, if I can't get crossfire working, it won't be from lack of assistance/effort that is for sure.
 
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In first time i didnt notice one thing about crossfire, when my monitor looked brighter,yesterday i decided to turn of crossfire to save some energy just in case,and when i did my monitor become much darker does it means PSU started to give less energy to vcard than it does to crossfire mode?it looks like i was sitting ant pc with darker screen all time all these years i didnt had crossfire?
 
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In first time i didnt notice one thing about crossfire, when my monitor looked brighter,yesterday i decided to turn of crossfire to save some energy just in case,and when i did my monitor become much darker does it means PSU started to give less energy to vcard than it does to crossfire mode?it looks like i was sitting ant pc with darker screen all time all these years i didnt had crossfire?

That's just some new glitch with the latest drivers. You need to go into Catalyst control center and in the upper right --> Options-->Preferences-->Restore factory defaults to get rid of the dark screen problem. :)
 
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So, this morning before flipping the cards or anything, I installed MSI afterburner so I could monitor what was going on. After a run through of the FC2 benchmark I got these results:


To me this screams "issue". The GPU use never climbs above 50/50 while in the benchmark. at the point in the screenshot its at 40/40, which directly coincides with the results I'm getting (worse performance than a single 5850).

Also, the clock speeds are correct during the benchmark 725/1000 on each card.

I opened a ticket with Sapphire asking if these two cards are compatible, but have not heard back from them yet.

At least one thing is sure, the new card does a whole let better in the cooling department...
 
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