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#1 |
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AMD Rep
Joined: Jul 2007
Location: Norwich
Posts: 25,053
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How To Make Sure Crossfire Is Working?
I've seen a few posts recently about people unsure if their crossfire system is working properly. There are two methods to check that crossfire is working as it should. I will explain these now and how to set them up so you can make everything is working as it should be.
First of all i strongly recommend all crossfire users to download the latest version of MSI Afterburner and install it, run it, then restart your pc when prompted. Make sure you install RivaTuner as well when you run the installer. Download Link http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/..._download.html When you have done that we first need to disable ULPS to get the most out of our crossfire setup. ULPS is a handy power saving trick that shuts off your second gpu when idle. It will save you a little bit of electricity but unfortunately it does come with a small performance penalty. I recommend you turn it off. You will gain about 5% extra performance with it off, assuming you run at stock clocks. If you overclock you absolutely must turn it off to get good results. So if you decide to disable it, this is easily done via afterburner settings. Scroll down to the bottom and put a tick in 'Disable ULPS'. After this you will be prompted to restart your pc. Copy these settings, click ok, restart. ![]() Basic Method - Quick Way To Check If Crossfire Is Working Once you've installed the latest beta driver and then afterburner open up CCC. (Catalyst Control Centre) Click preferences in the top right hand corner and make sure Advanced view is selected, like so ![]() Crossfire should be enabled by default after installing the driver. Open the performance tab on the left. Click AMD CrossfireX. Ensure that Enable CrossfireX is selected. Note only Windows 8 users will see the option below that. The option to enable/disable crossfire is not preset for 7990 users. Should you wish to disable crossfire for a specific game you need to create a profile within 3d applications and select the game exe, add it, then disable crossfire and click apply. ![]() Next we need to make sure frame pacing is enabled. Again this should be on by default, but just double check. Go to the gaming, then 3d applications on the left. Click X to close CCC to the taskbar. ![]() Right Click the CCC icon ( ) in your taskbar. Go to 1.AMD Radeon >> Show CrossfireX Logo. Tick that like in the picture below. ![]() Now whenever a 3D Application loads, if Crossfire is working then you will see a small CrossfireX logo in the top right hand corner. This will tell you that Crossfire is working as intended. ![]() Advanced Method - Slower But More Thorough Method To Check That Crossfire Is Working - Will Allow You To Better Monitor GPU Performance There is also a more advanced method to monitoring crossfire usage and general gpu performance. That is using MSI Afterburner's On Screen Display. This will enable you to monitor how well each gpu is performing, how much its being used as well as how hot it is running. Its very handy and i strongly recommend all crossfire users to use it. That way you can be sure you're getting the most from your gpu's all the time and things are working as intended. You can also set up a toggle key to enable and disable the overlay at any time, should you find it irritating while gaming. To set this up do the following. First set up a toggle key to turn the OSD on or off. I use F8. Go to settings, then on screen display. ![]() Now go to the monitoring tab. Change hardware polling period to 1000. That means the overlay will update once a second. ![]() Now we need to set up the OSD itself to display the desired information. To do this what we need to do is. Tick and activate each of the hardware monitoring graphs under this section. So you tick GPU 1 Temp, then go down to Show in On-Screen Display and put a tick there. Then you go to Override group name and put a tick in there. Name it GPU1. Now do the same for GPU 2 Temp. This time when you get down to override group name make sure you put in GPU2 and not GPU1. GPU1 ![]() GPU2 ![]() I recommend you set up the following for GPU1/2. Make sure you tick override group name and keep naming the relevant part GPU1 and GPU2. You want all GPU1 info on one line and GPU2 info on the next line below it. GPU1 TEMP GPU2 TEMP GPU1 USAGE GPU2 USAGE GPU1 CORE CLOCK GPU2 CORE CLOCK GPU1 MEMORY CLOCK GPU2 MEMORY CLOCK You can also monitor other things like fps, frame times, vram and dram usage. I think these are very handy to monitor, particularly fps. So i'd recommend setting up overlays for these as well. Note under Framerate and Frametime you're not able to override group name. So all you do is tick Show in On Screen Display, like so. ![]() If you do decide to monitor memory usage and ram usage then i suggest you use override group name on both and have the name as MEMORY, in caps. If you use the same override group name on both it will put them on the same line on screen. It looks neater. ![]() You can also add cpu temp + cpu usage to the OSD as well if you want. Just follow the same instructions as above to add those. Now we need to tweak the overlay so we can see it easily while running 3D applications. It needs to stand out so we can easily read it. For this we need to open RivaTuner which will be in your taskbar somewhere near the MSI afterburner icon.With RivaTuner open, go to 'On Screen Display Shadow' and change it to on. ![]() Now we need to change the colour of the text so it stands out well against backgrounds. To do that click the purple On Screen Display Palette. Select white as the primary colour and black as the secondary colour. ![]() Once all that is done and you're happy its time to play some games and check out that overlay. Pay attention to the GPU Usage. Look out for the percentage sign that is displayed. This will tell how much each of your gpu's is being used. You want to see this at 90-99% on both gpu's ideally. If you don't it could be a sign that you're cpu bottlenecked or there is something else wrong. Here is what the overlay should look like in game. Spoiler:
Here's what you should be looking out for in games. Both gpu's showing at 90-99% with crossfire running. The GPU usage is on the top line, after the temp. Below that i have cpu temps and cpu usage. I use this to monitor cpu bottlenecks. Spoiler:
FAQ 1. My GPU usage and or core clock keep jumping around, going up and down. Check to make sure the card is not throttling. Have you set the power limit in afterburner or CCC to +20%? I will update the FAQ when i can think of something to put here.
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Last edited by AMDMatt; 14th Apr 2014 at 18:51.
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#2 |
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Sgarrista
Joined: Nov 2011
Location: The KOP
Posts: 7,743
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Thanks Matt
Never knew about displaying an icon when a game loads ![]() thanks |
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#3 |
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Wise Guy
Joined: Jul 2010
Location: Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Posts: 1,318
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Excellent. Finally got the on screen display working. Didnt realise you had to manually set it up like that.
Ok so ran sleeping dogs and both GPU's usage is jumping around from 60-100 throught the benchmark. What do I need to do to fix that? |
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#4 |
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AMD Rep
Joined: Jul 2007
Location: Norwich
Posts: 25,053
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Have you disabled ULPS and vsync?
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#5 |
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Wise Guy
Joined: Jul 2010
Location: Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Posts: 1,318
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Yes on both.
EDIT: Ran Arkham City and its showing both cards at 50% |
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#7 |
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Wise Guy
Joined: Jul 2010
Location: Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Posts: 1,318
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#8 |
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AMD Rep
Joined: Jul 2007
Location: Norwich
Posts: 25,053
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Got those screenshots? Do you know how to take screenshots?
![]() Looking through your thread here id say your issue could be one of the following. You don't have power limit set at +20% for both cards. One of them or even both might be throttling. Core clocks jumping around during the sleeping dogs benchmark would indicate that. As would fluctuating gpu usage. ULPS is not really disabled. GPU-Z showing different Bandwidths would indicate that. Your overclock is not stable. Put it back to stock and see what happens. Does usage stay more constant? Are you using the latest 13.10 beta drivers? That's all i can think of for now. |
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Last edited by AMDMatt; 23rd Sep 2013 at 18:00.
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#9 |
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AMD Rep
Joined: Jul 2007
Location: Norwich
Posts: 25,053
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I can't really read that. Can you make it bigger and upload it to IMGUR. Lock overdrive and just use afterburner for now. See my post above as well. Maybe one of those suggestions helps.
![]() EDIT Nevermind i downloaded the screenshot. I see the problem. Answered below. |
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#10 |
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AMD Rep
Joined: Jul 2007
Location: Norwich
Posts: 25,053
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Set the power line at +20%. One of your cards is likely throttling, possibly both. Put both cards at 925/1250, leave power limit at +20% and run the sleeping dogs bench again. What's your usage like now?
EDIT If you want to overclock you should always leave the power limit at +20%, otherwise the card will throttle and de-clock to stay within TDP. Leave voltage at default as well. Get things working correctly before you start overclocking and adding unnecessary voltage. More voltage means you throttle quicker. |
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Last edited by AMDMatt; 23rd Sep 2013 at 18:02.
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#11 |
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Wise Guy
Joined: Jul 2010
Location: Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Posts: 1,318
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If I click reset to set everything back it drops the voltage right down to 1094 and the WF runs fine like this. However the HIS seems to jump from 600-950mhz. Im guessing it needs a bit more power?
Prior to starting this overclock again I was getting much more stable results in the benchmark with the only problem being the last section where it never seemed to go above 60 but that section has always ran worse than the rest which im guessing is the same for everyone |
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#12 |
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Sgarrista
Joined: Mar 2010
Location: Under The Stairs!
Posts: 7,731
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Another excellent piece of work from the Lt, oCuk really need to get you on the payroll matt.
Can an oCuk mod get this onto the '** Useful links to popular threads and resources **' thread please? |
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#13 | |
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AMD Rep
Joined: Jul 2007
Location: Norwich
Posts: 25,053
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Quote:
You either have to run each card with separate voltage settings (can be done via afterburner, you untick synch gpu settings, then save a profile for gpu1, go back into settings and switch to gpu2 then rinse and repeat) or you're gonna have to compromise and meet in the middle. In this instance what i would recommend is trying out these clocks and voltages. Make sure you have Sync both cards set in settings. It should be like that via default. Try running both cards with these voltage settings and clock speeds. ![]() If that is stable and all runs ok then you can slowly start increasing the core clock/memory. It was your HIS card that would have been throttling by the way. | |
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#14 |
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Wise Guy
Joined: Jul 2010
Location: Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Posts: 1,318
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Ok so before I saw your post I ran mine at core voltage 1094, +20 (I think I had forgotten to reactivate that after resetting everything), 950, 1250 and worked fine. There was a couple sections where usage dropped to 89 but I assume thats normal?
This is the benchmark results
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#15 |
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AMD Rep
Joined: Jul 2007
Location: Norwich
Posts: 25,053
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Gpu usage should be 99% constant in this benchmark. It might drop a bit as the scene's change though, so that is normal. Bump core voltage to at least 1.125v. That was the stock minimum for the HIS card. That should be good up to around 1000 core or so, maybe higher. Always make sure power line is at +20%.
You can tell when the card throttles as the GPU Core clock will drop. You should be able to see this on the OSD. |
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Last edited by AMDMatt; 23rd Sep 2013 at 18:38.
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#16 | |
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AMD Rep
Joined: Jul 2007
Location: Norwich
Posts: 25,053
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Quote:
![]() Feel free Tommy (or anyone else) to add some suggestions or possible FAQ's at the bottom if i missed something. | |
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#17 | |
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Wise Guy
Joined: Jul 2010
Location: Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Posts: 1,318
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Quote:
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#18 | |
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AMD Rep
Joined: Jul 2007
Location: Norwich
Posts: 25,053
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Quote:
Pretty sure afterburner didnt change voltage with his boost cards did it Tommy? Not without the bios flash. What do you think Tommy? Maybe we should get him to flash the bios with the one i use? It might work better that way as he has a non boost 7950 as well. Either that or hes gonna have to use HIS tool for the HIS card and afterburner for the Windforce. | |
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Last edited by AMDMatt; 23rd Sep 2013 at 18:48.
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#19 |
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Wise Guy
Joined: Jul 2010
Location: Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Posts: 1,318
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Yes with +20% on.
Just ran Arkham City again and the usage there is around 60% on both for most of the benchmark there |
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#20 | |
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AMD Rep
Joined: Jul 2007
Location: Norwich
Posts: 25,053
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Quote:
![]() Your HIS 7950 card is not really compatible with MSI afterburner unless you flash the bios to a non boost bios. That's what i and many others have done in the HIS 7950 Ice-Q thread. You either have to flash a bios, which is pretty easy as ive written a full guide for it. Its fail proof. The bios would remove the throttling from your HIS card, as well as give you a +50% permanent power limit. Or you can download HIS Tool. The HIS version of MSI Afterburner. You would have to use that for your HIS card and afterburner for your Windforce. With HIS Tool downloaded you would need to do Tommys power limit hack. This will allow you to increase the HIS card's power limit to +35% and will remove any throttling on it. Tommy power hack guide and my bios flashing guide are both in the HIS 7950 Ice-Q thread linked above. | |
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Last edited by AMDMatt; 23rd Sep 2013 at 19:00.
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#21 |
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Wise Guy
Joined: Jul 2010
Location: Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Posts: 1,318
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So I just flash the HIS card? Seems straight forward enough
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#22 |
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AMD Rep
Joined: Jul 2007
Location: Norwich
Posts: 25,053
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Yep just flash the HIS 7950 card. Make sure you flash the right card.
Might be safe to remove the Windforce first.If you follow my guide carefully you won't do it wrong. Use this bios and follow my bios flashing guide in the spoiler in Tommy's post. http://www.sendspace.com/file/5mv49f |
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#23 |
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Sgarrista
Joined: Mar 2010
Location: Under The Stairs!
Posts: 7,731
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Forget Batman as a CrossFire BM, usage sits about 60%-it's just the game, if you want though you can go into CCC and max out tessellation and untick 'surface optimization' and basically override everything to max for BAC and save it to the BAC profile.
SD or BioShock Infinite are the best oc testers, they really do kick the **** out your cards. Get Gpu-z and check your Asic, if you have a high and a low Asic then voltage oc'ing becomes a harder proposition but can still be done. AB was a pita with my high/low Asic cards when I had them for adding voltage, I used AB for one card and His iTool or Trixx for the other, that way voltage was applying, you oc as normal but just use two programs instead of one, important part though is you have to manually start the second OC tool for the second card each boot as it will override the first cards voltage if left on auto. |
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#24 |
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AMD Rep
Joined: Jul 2007
Location: Norwich
Posts: 25,053
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Thanks Tommy that explains that one then. I had a feeling optimisation would be poor when i saw it was a TWIMTBP title.
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#25 |
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Sgarrista
Joined: Mar 2010
Location: Under The Stairs!
Posts: 7,731
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It's just as poorly optimised on Nvidia too matt, devs really ***** it up big time, the most they bothered was to make it work(DX11) in the end- never mind optimise it lol.
Loved the first, got ****** off when WL scrubbed about 3-4hrs of play time off my save and I haven't picked it back up since and probably won't finish it now. Hopefully the 3rd one will be WL free, if it's not, I won't be picking it up for pence on the Steam Sale.
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#26 | |
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AMD Rep
Joined: Jul 2007
Location: Norwich
Posts: 25,053
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Quote:
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#28 |
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Gangster
Joined: Jun 2013
Location: Northern Ireland
Posts: 217
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Should come in very handy when I get my 2nd 7950 next week. Thanks Matt!
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#29 |
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AMD Rep
Joined: Jul 2007
Location: Norwich
Posts: 25,053
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#30 |
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Wise Guy
Joined: Jul 2010
Location: Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Posts: 1,318
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So ive flashed my card and re installed afterburner and re done the settings above etc.
Just ran the benchmark again and it fluctuates from 90%+ but mostly staying at 97%+ apart from the second to last one where it can dip to 87%. The indoor section is showing both being used at 98-99% but the fps still stays dead on 60 |
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