Crossfire 5870 help.

C

Copyright

Supreme [H]ardness
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Nov 17, 2000
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So I went a head and picked up another one. I think I may be maxing out my lanes. I get 21,500 with a 900/1300 OC in Vantage... that or my CPU is the bottleneck. Something wierd I run into is my temps on my 2nd card will display in CCC adn then all of a sudden it drops to 0 and stays there. Also sometimes launching GPU-Z locks up my system. Vantage and games so far seem to be playing fine. Should I just blame this on early drivers?


EDIT: Just so everyone knows the MSI R7 drivers apparently have issues in crossfire. Lockups with GPU-Z and the 2nd card not reporting any temps etc. You may also notice issues with MSI Afterburner fan control only effecting one card. The AMD/ATI R6 drivers work fine but seems to take a very slight hit in performance.
 
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Stupid fans have a high pitched noise to them even at 20%.. at 17% its gone.. but MSI afterburner wont let me pull the fan speed of both down.
 
I get about 21,500 on my rig too. I think it has to do with my shitty C0 i7 not being stable over 3.4, I think the cpu is really important.

Also, are you running the RC7 drivers? my second card wasn't recognized on those, from what i discovered no crossfire is, not even the second gpu on a 4870 x2, i had to go back to RC6.
 
ahhh ok so its the RC7 drivers? That is what I am using. Should I go back and use the ones on AMD's site? I think those are RC6?
 
Yeah that's what i did. The RC7 showed my second card at 0% fan and clock speed, and crossfire wouldn't enable. I checked around and found a thread on another forum about others having the same problem, with various crossfire setups.

As for the whining noise, that doesn't seem good at 20%. My cards both run at 35%, and though they're kinda loud there's no whining.
 
FranklyShankly said:
Yeah that's what i did. The RC7 showed my second card at 0% fan and clock speed, and crossfire wouldn't enable. I checked around and found a thread on another forum about others having the same problem, with various crossfire setups.

As for the whining noise, that doesn't seem good at 20%. My cards both run at 35%, and though they're kinda loud there's no whining.
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Yeah its a whistle from the fan. No telling where its being created but the RC6 drivers worked. I now have both temp controls and have my fans at 16% at idle and temps in the upper 40s. I dont like noise. One card at 35% to me is pretty loud lol. Going to test vantage and see if my score changed any.

EDIT: Also are both crossfire bridges supposed to be installed?
 
One should be enough, but someone posted both attached helped in certain games. True or not, I didn't read up on it.
 
Well at 15% fan the cards are vairly quiet but you hear the hum of the fan motors a bit. I spend a lot of time on Silent PC Review so everything else in my rig is very quiet. These arent to bad though. In games I have it setup to stay 80C peak temps for the hottest card. The idle temps are 39/46 with 15% fan. I can't wait for newer drivers.
 
Well I pulled one bridge off and it was about 150 points lower.. put it back on and re-ran 3dmark and it was back up to where it originally was. Watching the test I was getting more dips without the bridge. You could actually see it in some tests.. really weird seeing that ATI says we don't need it.
 
Try some games without the 2nd bridge...Vantage fluctuates so much I don't even use it anymore, I have a MUCH better gaming experience with only one bridge.

BTW I am the one that posted on nvnews,
 
SKL1 said:
Try some games without the 2nd bridge...Vantage fluctuates so much I don't even use it anymore, I have a MUCH better gaming experience with only one bridge.

BTW I am the one that posted on nvnews,
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Interesting. I will give it a shot. I tried it 4 times and each time I got better scores in Vantage with both bridges. I guess we need someone to run some gaming benchmarks that can pull an average frame rate.. like a time demo? I assume you are running the R6 drivers too?
 
It's a mental thing. It's normal for your score in vantage to fluctuate around 300pts per run give or take.

I don't have any proof, but with one bridge the score diffrence sometimes changed too little for it to make a difference.

I got this score with one bridge (OC'd to 890Mhz): http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dmv=1460766

Next run I did with two was 24903 but didn't submit it because it wasn't my highest. if you actually gain something out of using 2 vs. 1 then I dunno what to tell ya.
 
Copyright said:
Interesting. I will give it a shot. I tried it 4 times and each time I got better scores in Vantage with both bridges. I guess we need someone to run some gaming benchmarks that can pull an average frame rate.. like a time demo? I assume you are running the R6 drivers too?
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Im running R7s from MSI which I think are pretty much the same as R6.
 
SKL1 said:
Im running R7s from MSI which I think are pretty much the same as R6.
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R7 jacked my stuff up. Try see if you can read your temps in CCC on your 2nd card? Seems Like my self and others run into this issue. The R7 had better performance. My cards are not matching brands though so the bios's don't match either. Not sure if that's an issue but the problem was fixed going to R6 Drivers.
 
SKL1 said:
Try some games without the 2nd bridge...Vantage fluctuates so much I don't even use it anymore, I have a MUCH better gaming experience with only one bridge.

BTW I am the one that posted on nvnews,
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HardOCP reported in one of its articles that having both bridges on fixed some graphical glitches with 5870 CF even if 1 bridge is technically all you need.
 
Well its the opposite for me, games run a lot smoother and I get better performance.

I think this is all driver and Win7 issues. So far I'm very happy with the performance of these cards.

BTW GPU-Z locks ups my system also...but only in Xfire
 
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SKL1 said:
Well its the opposite for me, games run a lot smoother and I get better performance.

I think this is all driver and Win7 issues. So far I'm very happy with the performance of these cards.

BTW GPU-Z locks ups my system also...but only in Xfire
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Its locking it up because of that driver. I bet if you go into Catalyst Control Center and click on teh drop down to view the 2nd video card you might notice your temps not reading also. R7 would run fine but I have a feeling my video card wasnt being cooled properly because it couldnt see the temps. Something you might want to check out.
 
Copyright said:
Its locking it up because of that driver. I bet if you go into Catalyst Control Center and click on teh drop down to view the 2nd video card you might notice your temps not reading also. R7 would run fine but I have a feeling my video card wasnt being cooled properly because it couldnt see the temps. Something you might want to check out.
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Yeah mine is the same....This needs to be fixed

We are not the only ones
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18058786
 
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SKL1 said:
I'm gonna stick with R6 ....everything is working now, except GPU-Z doesn't show my OC
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Yeah, we are stuck with these until the official ones come out and hopefully have it all worked out. I think there is a lot of power left to be made with these things in the drivers alone. What was your vantage score? I was getting little over 21K with 900/1300 but dual 8x lanes are holding me back.
 
SKL1 said:
This is mine..specs in sig.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=2098176&postcount=300
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Nice.. highr then me.. my GPU scores is very close to yours 2,351 for mine. My CPU score is 16K. This was with the R7 drivers. The R6 are less responsive to my overclock and also no matter how many times I try it. I bench higher with 2 Crossfire bridges. I also get these quick drops in Vantage with only one bridge that goes away when two are installed. Vantage has always been real close for me every time I bench.. Ive ran it probably 30 times playing with this setup. 2- bridges will give you better benches. I get bigger drops in games also with one bridge.
 
I tried the drivers that came out today and still the same problem. 2nd GPU will detect at first and show temps then about 10 seconds in drops back to 0 for temp and 0 for activity and never changes. It's funny because my last 4870x2 had issues with its 2nd GPU also.. it used to hang at 100% for no reason and cause the fans to spin up high. Not sure if this is an issue with my two cards being from two different brands but I never had an issue setting up others like that and why would the RC6 work fine if that was the problem?
 
Copyright said:
I tried the drivers that came out today and still the same problem. 2nd GPU will detect at first and show temps then about 10 seconds in drops back to 0 for temp and 0 for activity and never changes. It's funny because my last 4870x2 had issues with its 2nd GPU also.. it used to hang at 100% for no reason and cause the fans to spin up high. Not sure if this is an issue with my two cards being from two different brands but I never had an issue setting up others like that and why would the RC6 work fine if that was the problem?
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Mine does it too, ignore it.

It find it cool though if you have a friend over. Put the fans on 60% right?

Then be like "Yo, you gotta see this thing go in overdrive!". My temp gauges and fans settings crap usually kicks in when any software tries to read the card.

So starting Crysis you'll hear the second card turn up like a turbine and he'll go nuts thinking you got a ferrari with Nitrous, lmao.
 
nascasho said:
Mine does it too, ignore it.

It find it cool though if you have a friend over. Put the fans on 60% right?

Then be like "Yo, you gotta see this thing go in overdrive!". My temp gauges and fans settings crap usually kicks in when any software tries to read the card.

So starting Crysis you'll hear the second card turn up like a turbine and he'll go nuts thinking you got a ferrari with Nitrous, lmao.
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Yeah, I think not. I have my stuff running a custom fan curve in MSI Afterburner. This program wont work properly with the drivers that don't give temps on the 2nd card.
 
^^^It was a joke... :/

Where all the funny go in this world?! I demand a new server!
 
nascasho said:
^^^It was a joke... :/

Where all the funny go in this world?! I demand a new server!
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hahaha.. sorry man the funny in me that night was all gone after driver difficulty. Everything is back running again as it should with RC6 so I am just praying ATI doesn't fk me again with their driver support. The 4870x2 and 2nd gpu hanging under load when it should be at idle is still leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

I have a thread started over on ATI's site so maybe we will get a reply.

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=260&threadid=120324&enterthread=y
 
I really hope that the fact that it's taken so long for us to get some official drivers means that AMD has really put alot of effort into getting them right the first time. I'm anxious to see if they can get the 5870 towards it's theoretical performance level of the 4870X2.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
I really hope that the fact that it's taken so long for us to get some official drivers means that AMD has really put alot of effort into getting them right the first time. I'm anxious to see if they can get the 5870 towards it's theoretical performance level of the 4870X2.
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Yeah, im trying not to jump the gun and call ATI out on their crappy drivers but its hard after being burned in the past. We shouldn't have to wait months and months for a good driver.
 
Copyright said:
hahaha.. sorry man the funny in me that night was all gone after driver difficulty. Everything is back running again as it should with RC6 so I am just praying ATI doesn't fk me again with their driver support. The 4870x2 and 2nd gpu hanging under load when it should be at idle is still leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

I have a thread started over on ATI's site so maybe we will get a reply.

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=260&threadid=120324&enterthread=y
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Very strange.. they removed my post from their forum.

EDIT: Some a-hole removed it probably didn't like what it said so I revised and left a new one for us with the issue to follow.

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=260&threadid=120325&enterthread=y
 
I remember when the 9500Pro first came out all those years ago. It was a very similar situation where it took a while before we got drivers that did the card justice, but once they got them out, it turned that card into one of the best Mid-Range cards of all time, IMO. Too bad I gave that old rig away, I would to play with it for nostalgia. RTCW and Battlefield 1942 were awesome with it. Now back to the present day....
 
SicKlown42012 said:
I remember when the 9500Pro first came out all those years ago. It was a very similar situation where it took a while before we got drivers that did the card justice, but once they got them out, it turned that card into one of the best Mid-Range cards of all time, IMO. Too bad I gave that old rig away, I would to play with it for nostalgia. RTCW and Battlefield 1942 were awesome with it. Now back to the present day....
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I never got to play with that card but I did play with a 9700 Pro that was really nice at the time. It totally smoked the setup I had going. I think I had an FX card at the time :rolleyes:
 
Just installed cf in my pc. gpu-z hard locks every time. No temp or clock speeds shown on 2nd gpu. Also on the crossfire screen, the box is checked for crossfire, but there is only 1 gpu identified. Running a benchmark, cf not working, exact same score as 1 card. I tried drivers on xfx cd, and drivers that were posted yesterday from ati. Hmmm.....
 
dccmadams said:
Just installed cf in my pc. gpu-z hard locks every time. No temp or clock speeds shown on 2nd gpu. Also on the crossfire screen, the box is checked for crossfire, but there is only 1 gpu identified. Running a benchmark, cf not working, exact same score as 1 card. I tried drivers on xfx cd, and drivers that were posted yesterday from ati. Hmmm.....
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Yep the RC7 drivers seem to do this to almost everyone with crossfire. RC6 drivers still work, they were the ones at the AMD recommended page until yesterday. I'm sure you can still find them around somewhere. Hopefully the release version will have these problems fixed.
 
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