Crossfire sync problem

[crazyeyesreaper]

well im running crossfire sailindawg on 5850s and both stock and overclocked (mild oc) they do it but in single card i have no issues now granted in most games a 5850 theres no problem as it is crossfire is for epeen ant 8xAA roflol. still it is troublesome for those who spend top dollar and get shafted ive had this issue on 2 790gx boards with both a 4870x2 and the 2 5850s of course the main issue here is for me its crossfire only when the above happens disable crossfire or turn of catalyst ai (same as turning crossfire off) fixes the issue but makes that 2nd $300 gpu usless

as i said it has SOMETHING to do with ATI's AFR rendering techniques cant remember where i read it but they mentioned issues with vista back in the day ati 2k 3k 4k suffered from it altho to a lesser and lesser degree

 

[cadaveca]

Wow, Cadaveca, I did a search on the BOPs board after watching your video. I found this video that shows the same identical problem with a 4870x2 on a BOps board. I found it in this thread.

No solutions offered for that board, you lived through that first hand. It seems that this problem of the video being out of sync (for lack of a better description) has been around since at least the 4xxx series. Now it's being seen in the 5xxx series. That's very troublesome.

Are you running your cards with the stock BIOS? Stock volts?

This makes me really reconsider ATI cards. I hope there is a solution to this. It kind of reminds me a bit of the cpu sync problem with AMD's S939 dual cores and WinXP, whereby XP could not coordinate the dual core timing and balance workload.

Yeah, a former employee @ Foxconn sent me the board many moons ago as a birthday gift. I really love that board...and worked hard through all the issues present. Still using it, actually.

And yeah, I shot those vids with no overclock anywhere in the system. No need for any overclock, other than to bench.

It really seems to have nothing to do with Crossfire itself...just that Crossfire brings out the issue more commonly than single card. I have seen this issue since X1800 days, in the least. People were trying to overclock the X1800XL as fast as the XT, but a 25mhz crystal prevented the XL from scaling like the XT with a 27mhz crystal, and I was dealing with this issue. I remember well.

 

[Sailindawg]

well im running crossfire sailindawg on 5850s and both stock and overclocked (mild oc) they do it but in single card i have no issues now granted in most games a 5850 theres no problem as it is crossfire is for epeen ant 8xAA roflol. still it is troublesome for those who spend top dollar and get shafted ive had this issue on 2 790gx boards with both a 4870x2 and the 2 5850s of course the main issue here is for me its crossfire only when the above happens disable crossfire or turn of catalyst ai (same as turning crossfire off) fixes the issue but makes that 2nd $300 gpu usless

as i said it has SOMETHING to do with ATI's AFR rendering techniques cant remember where i read it but they mentioned issues with vista back in the day ati 2k 3k 4k suffered from it altho to a lesser and lesser degree

As a guy that uses SLI32xQ AA on games where I can, I can appreciate where your coming from. It's all about visual quality. The more the better!! But this problem has been around for a while with ATI gpu's. I'd be RMA'ing cards at this point.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

nah why rma them for 1 game engine being a pos i have UT3 but never play it and the last remnant is only passable in terms of an RPG and there the only games that give me that flicker issue so for me its isolated to Unreal engine 3 games but i dont play many of said games so im fine with it i usually play crysis crysis warhead medeival 2 total war empire total war rome total war etc
and those games run fine im really really REALLY loving The third age total war mod for Medieval 2 a decent quadcore and 2 5850s i can handle up to 20,000 soldiers on screen with greater then 30fps and thats all i really need lol

 

[Sailindawg]

I'm glad to hear it's only one game. You probably stated that previously, but I've lost track. Do you have Brothers in Arms Hell's Highway? That's UT3 based. If you have it, does it exhibit the same out of sync behavior?

 

[cadaveca]

Yes, it does. It's not just UT3 games though...although they are more problematic than others.

 

[Mussels]

@OP

I read your system spec and see that you're running X48 chipset. I'm running X48, but on a BlackOps board. For the BlackOps there was a BIOS update that fixed a conflict with the board when the 4870's came out. The updated BIOS fixed a crossfire problem and an issue with the dual gpu card of that series. I have been running nvidia and didn't worry about the BIOS update. You might want to check DFi's BIOS updates to see if they issued an update for your board at the timeframe the 4870's were introduced. If you running the latest BIOS, you should be covered because DFI's BIOS updates generally contain all previous fixes / updates.

that is interesting. i'll have a looksee if theres a new bios for my board as well.
edit: my BIOS is really outdated, so i will look into that.

edit: the OP has 790FX... not x48. you must have looked at my specs by mistake.

the fact that the OP has this issue on an AMD board really is worrying...


edit 2: updated the BIOS on the mobo, and tested a "PCI-E compliancy" setting (1.0/1.0a are the options) - still no go.

 

[Adol007]

Wow, Cadaveca, I did a search on the BOPs board after watching your video. I found this video that shows the same identical problem with a 4870x2 on a BOps board. I found it in this thread.

No solutions offered for that board, you lived through that first hand. It seems that this problem of the video being out of sync (for lack of a better description) has been around since at least the 4xxx series. Now it's being seen in the 5xxx series. That's very troublesome.

Are you running your cards with the stock BIOS? Stock volts?

This makes me really reconsider ATI cards. I hope there is a solution to this. It kind of reminds me a bit of the cpu sync problem with AMD's S939 dual cores and WinXP, whereby XP could not coordinate the dual core timing and balance workload.

Thats how it looks for me when it happens only going down to up or up to down.

I've taken condensed air to everything and switched around my cards but I see it may be a ccc or hardware problem as others are having it.

After switching around my cards a new problem developed.

Now instead of the whole screen scrolling, its just a line and the screen blacks out from time to time.

This is not good.

 

[Mussels]

that video is not the issue we're having. that ones a problem that was fixed ages ago, where crossfire would screw up after coming out of sleep mode (especially in vantage/L4D)

 

[Adol007]

that video is not the issue we're having. that ones a problem that was fixed ages ago, where crossfire would screw up after coming out of sleep mode (especially in vantage/L4D)

By sleep mode do you mean the pc is in sleep mode or the card is in 2d mode to conserve power?

 

[Mussels]

By sleep mode do you mean the pc is in sleep mode or the card is in 2d mode to conserve power?

PC in S3 sleep.

 

[Adol007]

And how was it fixed?

 

[Mussels]

And how was it fixed?

a driver update.

 

[Adol007]

Ok

well my problem is still looking like that so it may be another issue with the card.

I bought them used so I'm thinking that I may have one faulty card because before it only happened in crossfire but now it's happening in single gpu mode after I switched the cards.

Thanks for the help and suggestions everyone.