280x Crossfire Woes

[Jonnygrunge]

Hi All,

I have recently bought to nice shiny new ASUS Direct CUII TOP 280x cards. Before I had two ASUS HD6950(70) running in Crossfire hassle free for 3 and a half years!
Stuck in my 280s installed drivers, blue screen Stop 3b - VGA Driver issue!
Cleaned drivers and removed installation, re-installed OK. Ran Unigine Heaven to check cards and bench, HX850W power draw at wall remains at around 250W and it appears only one card is running, Unigine result confirms this!, although Crossfire is detected in GPUz and in CCC! Could it be problems with the aging X58 chipset and PCIe bandwidth? I have also heard tri-channel RAM could also be an issue! Although there has never been any issues before, my CPU is running at 4GHz stable 24/7, surely an I7 920 at these speeds would not be too much of a bottleneck for the 280s!
There is a BIOS update for the mobo albeit 3 years old, is that worth a shot? I have updated the chipset drivers and I am using the Catalyst 13.12s WHQL.
I then ran 3DMark11 and audio went into a loop and the system hung! B*ll*cks! Any ideas would be gratefully received, I really hope a new Motherboard and CPU is not on the cards! I am spent up (for now! )

Jonnygrunge.

 

[MeatLoaf]

Have you tried each card on its own to rule out a duff card?

 

[Jonnygrunge]

Not yet! I will give that a go tonight!

 

[LtMatt]

Hi All,

I have recently bought to nice shiny new ASUS Direct CUII TOP 280x cards. Before I had two ASUS HD6950(70) running in Crossfire hassle free for 3 and a half years!
Stuck in my 280s installed drivers, blue screen Stop 3b - VGA Driver issue!
Cleaned drivers and removed installation, re-installed OK. Ran Unigine Heaven to check cards and bench, HX850W power draw at wall remains at around 250W and it appears only one card is running, Unigine result confirms this!, although Crossfire is detected in GPUz and in CCC! Could it be problems with the aging X58 chipset and PCIe bandwidth? I have also heard tri-channel RAM could also be an issue! Although there has never been any issues before, my CPU is running at 4GHz stable 24/7, surely an I7 920 at these speeds would not be too much of a bottleneck for the 280s!
There is a BIOS update for the mobo albeit 3 years old, is that worth a shot? I have updated the chipset drivers and I am using the Catalyst 13.12s WHQL.
I then ran 3DMark11 and audio went into a loop and the system hung! B*ll*cks! Any ideas would be gratefully received, I really hope a new Motherboard and CPU is not on the cards! I am spent up (for now! )

Jonnygrunge.

Update your mobo bios. If its three years old that could cause issues. Then have a read of this thread.

 

[old gamer]

disabling ulps is worth a shot

 

[LtMatt]

disabling ulps is worth a shot

Definitely!

 

[Jonnygrunge]

disabling ulps is worth a shot

Yeah tried that last night! As card number 2 was at 100% load, in Windows 7 desktop environment! Think I will again remove the drivers, then use DC pro in safe mode. Re-install, disable ULPS through Afterburner. If no luck try re-seating and testing each card individually. Hope it is not a conflict with the X58 chipset!

 

[old gamer]

ive always disabled ulps by editing the registry, the only downside is if you install new drivers the ulps is enabled again but no big deal realy