1 LTC Reward - Cannot get crossfire 290's working properly

B

Bojamijams

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 5, 2008
Messages
178
Hi Guys, here's a bit of background:

System:
Win 8.1 x64
16gb RAM
Asus P8p67 EVO
i7 2600k @ 4.7ghz HT ON (and OFF)
Diamond R9 290 Reference
Asus R9 290 DIrectCUII
14.1, 14.2 and now 14.3 drivers

Symptom: BF4 (either in Mantle or DX11 mode) switches usage from 0 to 100% alternating between the two cards. So never see two cards running above 0% at the same time except for a split second as they're ramping up/down.

Updated to the latest 14.3. Disabled ULPS again; first through Afterburner and then through regedit to make sure all references to EnableULPS are set to 0.

Turned on Hyperthreading (might as well try anything). Even changed BIOS one revision back to rest with it and then back to the latest, no change. Unplugged 2nd card after returning to the latest BIOS to re-enumerate the PCI-E bus. Still no luck.

I know other people are not having any issue with 290 in crossfire on a p67. One guy I talked to has the Asus Pro and I have the Asus EVO mobo (difference is that EVO has two NICs and onboard Power/Reset buttons). So it isn't that the hardware doesn't support it or anything. It seems to be a setting/driver issue but the guy who has it working on a P67 Pro is running the latest 14.3 as well. He's running BF4 with Mantle, same as me and getting usage on both always.

I've seen other people report this issue but seems there's no known fix yet (that they've updated their posts with anyway) They were using the same two cards so I don't believe the issue is that the 290's aren't the exact same model. I see higher scores in 3dmark but not in BF4 or Skyrim.

I'm willing to entertain any ideas ;)

Thanks for stopping by.
 
did you properly clean by using driver sweeper/Ccleaner before going to new drivers AND not all drivers perform the same on all systems. I know for me and buddy he could use cat 13.1 all the way through 14.2 where I cannot use many of them without having performance issues and so forth.

anyways, good cleaning, up to date drivers are always a god stepping stone.
 
I used the AMD uninstall utility that they want you to use to properly uninstall everything.
 
have you tried swapping ports between the cards as the asus is a DCII so is oc though not by much. Still is a 290 no matter the maker granted the 290/290x are different in crossfire as it uses the bus to do it vs previous ones relied on the cable (though didn't seem to matter much)

http://www.overclock.net/t/1440600/r9-290-having-problem-with-crossfire might be a power-tune issue?
I do not have the foggiest am sorry.
13.35 mantle drivers. and possibly even making sure frame pacing thing is disabled or whatever. I did fine with myself swapping to new driver I had to go to the upper right and click "reset to factory defaults" or it just wouldn`t play nicely in a couple cases.
 
Heh I had read that post before :)

I tried with both cards at stock 947/1000 (in effect downclocking the DCII) but the issue persisted.

I suppose I can try disabling frame pacing and also going back to WHQL drivers (13.12 I believe). Will update later tonight as I try it.
 
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Did you try what above post suggests already and switch the cards around between the PCIE slots?
 
Can you try closing afterburner or changing version of it? I had some serious issues with load on 1 gpu when afterburner was open.
 
Oh, and are you using the Afterburner Beta 19 that was just released? Give that a try as well if you are using the official release it's *really* old.
 
Or possibly try not afterburner or TRIXX at all, or maybe try TRIXX, again buddy had to use TRIXX even though we had a good couple hours trying to figure out why wouldn't work for him. I don't recall with TRIXX but I do know for myself as soon as I adjust clocks, voltages whatever with AB it freaks out and will not go back to default clocks unless I reboot. I know for myself at least 13.9 or 13.11 beta 9.4 gives me good performance and game compatibility, almost as good as 12.xx drivers
 
Yeah I just downloaded Afterburner last night (was using Asus GPU Tweak before that but it didn't have Disable ULPS option). I downloaded the Beta version so it is the latest.

I'm not home right now so I haven't tried anything quite yet, but I'm building a nice list of things to try. I'll swap out the GPUs once I've exhausted the simpler software fixes.
 
Stop using Afterburner, it's always inconsistent for me with my AMD 290 cards. I prefer GPU Tweak for cards flashed to an ASUS BIOS or TRIXX for all other BIOS. Combine either of those options with HWINFO & Rivatuner for OSD/monitoring.
 
take out the 290's and send them to me.

problem solved let me get you my ltc address.....

i actually haven't tried running my 290's in crossfire, i have 2 mining with a 7950 in one box and my 3rd 290 has been running bf4.

i cant bring my self to pull a 290 out of a miner and crossfire it for bf4 and use it for gaming when its making money in the other pc lol. it was hard for me to move one into my main pc and move the 7950 over haha.
 
I had the same problem and the only thing that fixed it was a fresh install of Win 8.
 
You may be fine.

In the Afterburner settings page, click the box that says....."enable unified GPU useage monitoring" That's AB 3.0.0 beta 19 I'm referring to.

There's something screwy in the AMD software that is making it look like the GPUs are not working correctly.
 
Well it's not just making it look like they're not running correctly, I really see no increase in FPS on Crossfire vs Single GPU so it's more then just what AB shows the usage to be.
 
fresh install should help. probably not much slower than troubleshootong
 
Bojamijams said:
Inconsistent how? Doesn't save your settings or actually causes issues?
Click to expand...

I would get major throttling when even slightly overclocking using Afterburner even though temps were below 60 C for both cards. Also settings wouldn't seem to stick without a restart in some cases. I don't think Hawaii support is all the way there with AB yet, though I haven't tried the new beta 19.
 
Would a Repair Windows installation be enough of a 'reinstall' for Win 8?

I've never used it but from what I understand it basically reinstalls windows while keeping all your files. Or for these purposes would it not be enough?
 
you can try that before reinstaling but i havent found that useful for ANYTHING.
 
Before doing a OS reinstall I would uninstall Afterburner, uninstall Cats, then use DDU in safe mode to wipe out anything remaining (I would also clean out NV just in case you used to have an NV card installed, I assume you're not using onboard graphics at all so wipe Intel as well if that's the case). Reboot, reinstall Cats, install TRIXX or GPUTweak and see what your usage is like then.
 
make sure your "fullscreen mode" is fullscreen in video settings, i think crossfire only works with that mode
 
Well it would seem that going back to 13.12 made it work in battlefield. But none of the 14.x drivers would work for me. I guess that means I need to do a thorough clean in Safe Mode? I always used AMD's uninstall utility to try the 14.x drivers but I guess it isn't good enough?
 
I have always used driver sweeper and Ccleaner myself however, for the cat 14x drivers I had to use the amd uninstaller utility (or just install driver and tell it uninstall instead) then followed that up with DS and Ccleaner. I love AMD really do but they definitely need a better software side of things not for all the extra fancy stuff but for the simple UI, install/uninstall, glitches like the Cat center blanking out and so forth.

So then my idea of backtracking worked for you :) the reward can go to LLk3BNNWgTLk4doksm2ruKwoMuXv9X7VYW (^.^) so it all works fine and proper performance no bugs that you can see? maybe by 15.1 the 14.x sets will be sorted out :p
 
I'm still seeing the alternating video cards usage on Skyrim. But, from what I remember, Crossfire has always been odd in that game. Maybe if I can get 14.x working in BF4, it'll also work in Skyrim.
 
Skyrim apparently does not deal well at all with Crossifre, but then again I do not think Bethesda based games ever really like multi-card configs seeing as they really had no need of them up till skyrim anyways :p I am surprised you have issues with BF4 in this regard though, as it scales extremely well with multi-card.
 
Well BF4 works now with Crossfire. The trick is now to get it working with 14.x drivers somehow. Skyrim not working is disappointing but runs great enough on a single GPU that I can let it slide.

I will send you the LTC when I get home tonight :)
 
well hey as long as you don't load it with tons of mods and expect it to perform perfectly I suppose all is good. 13.12 and it pegs both cards with BF4 properly?
 
Yes. Graphics are not all Ultra because I was running on single GPU and wanted 120FPS.. will load it down some more tonight
 
what was resolution again? I sometimes load my card (7870) full out just to see what it will do but I rather good frames and the actual looks at least to my eyes are easier to see what is going on if decent settings where if its jacked out it to me doesn't actually look much better. BF4 in many ways is a joke to me so I haven't bothered putting in tons of time to it. I can moan and complain about what I do not like about it, but no point. Least it sounds great :p
 
Bojamijams said:
Well BF4 works now with Crossfire. The trick is now to get it working with 14.x drivers somehow. Skyrim not working is disappointing but runs great enough on a single GPU that I can let it slide.

I will send you the LTC when I get home tonight :)
Click to expand...

BF4 works in CF with the newer drivers. Your problem isn't solved. You just have a work around. You should reinstall your OS and start fresh. That is the true fix for you.
 
lol what? not every system is the same and operates accordingly. A proper driver sweep will clean that right up, he did said sweep and went back to older drivers and it works, maybe he didn't bother sweeping again to go to the newer ones. Just to state the obvious, how come so many people complain about the new driver sets not functioning properly and yet go back to older ones and it works proper it might be a "work a round" but is the point not to get things that work proper, stable, and give good performance?

4 friends of mine that are gamers and/or miners keep trying the new driver sets and they go back to the 13.x drivers instead, wonder why that is?
 
Damn it. Used DDU to remove everything in safe mode, it removed some references to the 6900 series which was the old card I had before I got the two 290's so I was happy to see that, but BF4 still will not utilize both cards with 14.3.

Sigh.
 
Bojamijams said:
Damn it. Used DDU to remove everything in safe mode, it removed some references to the 6900 series which was the old card I had before I got the two 290's so I was happy to see that, but BF4 still will not utilize both cards with 14.3.

Sigh.
Click to expand...

try to make a custom crossfire profile for it
 
Well for whatever reason it will not work properly in Mantle but in regular DX11 crossfire now works just fine in 14.3... so... kind of there.. almost... screw it, I'll take it :)
 
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