What's going on? AMD R9 290X Crossfire misbehaving

[TheBigCheese]

Hi everyone


I'm having some real problems with my graphics cards, they are:

Sapphire R9-290X 8GB in crossfire, from OCUK of course.


The problem seems to be:

Heat
I know it's an issue with AMD cards, GPU 1 frequently goes up to 85C and the fan sounds like a jet engine, this happens very quickly after games start up.
I am aware of how menus can stress GPUs so I am talking about when it is in game and V-SYNC'ed to 60fps.

I am going to move and clean the PC out tonight to give it the absolute best chance of cooling possible and see if that makes a difference. The cards are in an Antec 1200 case so there is plenty of airflow.


Crossfire doesn't seem to work
Crossfire doesn't seem to work at all! I can't seem to find an updated list of the games that are actually properly compatible with Crossfire. One of them mentioned on the AMD site is Crysis 3, so I've been testing that this afternoon at around 3K resolution (the step down from full 4K, I can't remember the exact dimensions) with all settings on very high and it's pretty choppy to play, pretty much expected for ONE card. The second card doesn't even start, GPU-Z is showing the load at 0%.

I have enabled the Crossfire setting in the AMD control panel, even allowing it for games that don't have a crossfire profile so I can't understand why it's not engaging at all.

I am running the latest drivers and Windows 10 Home.


If anyone has any ideas I would very much appreciate it!


Thanks.

 

[ALXAndy]

Sell them/send them back to whence they came and buy a 980ti or, if you are running 4k maybe a Fury or even Fury X.

Leave Crossfire where it belongs, among the realms of hell.

 

[TheBigCheese]

Thanks for the post but buying/selling is off the table for now, I have other things calling for my cash, so I'm trying get what I have working properly.

 

[fs123]

To get you started.

- Make sure you have crossfire enabled in CCC.
- To monitor gpu usage install MSI afterburner and enable on screen display for both cards.
- Make sure you are running the games in fullscreen mode since crossfire does not work in a window or borderless window.

- Right click on the Catalyst control centre icon in the status bar and go to one of the Radeon profiles. You should see an option to show crossfire logo. This will make a logo appear in the top right of the screen when a game supports crossfire.

 

[shankly1985]

Didn't see you say this but worth noting are you running full screen?
This only happening on crysis 3 other games doing the same?

As a side note
It's not just amd that run hot all GPUs run hot when I'm multi configurations it's the way it is nothing can change the fact two GPUs pushing hot air inside a case the hot air must go somewhere and it just happens GPUs suck this hot air back in.

Better case cooling can help with much wider spacing between the GPUs or just use reference design cards.
Or water cooling.

 

[shankly1985]

Sell them/send them back to whence they came and buy a 980ti or, if you are running 4k maybe a Fury or even Fury X.

Leave Crossfire where it belongs, among the realms of hell.

Just leave..
How's that helping anyone?

 

[passey89]

Didn't see you say this but worth noting are you running full screen?
This only happening on crysis 3 other games doing the same?

As a side note
It's not just amd that run hot all GPUs run hot when I'm multi configurations it's the way it is nothing can change the fact two GPUs pushing hot air inside a case the hot air must go somewhere and it just happens GPUs suck this hot air back in.

Better case cooling can help with much wider spacing between the GPUs or just use reference design cards.
Or water cooling.

It doesnt help i had refernce 290x's in a 3 slot gap and they still hit 90c.

Make sure full screen try firestrike on the standard one my crossfire 290x 8gbs scored a graphics score of 27,000 see what you get.

 

[shankly1985]

It doesnt help i had refernce 290x's in a 3 slot gap and they still hit 90c.

Make sure full screen try firestrike on the standard one my crossfire 290x 8gbs scored a graphics score of 27,000 see what you get.

While it's true amd reference design are quite poor vs nvidia even nvidia reference design gets hot.
The best way from my experience is the bigger gap even aftermarket designs do well enough here.

 

[TheBigCheese]

To get you started.

- Make sure you have crossfire enabled in CCC.
- To monitor gpu usage install MSI afterburner and enable on screen display for both cards.
- Make sure you are running the games in fullscreen mode since crossfire does not work in a window or borderless window.

- Right click on the Catalyst control centre icon in the status bar and go to one of the Radeon profiles. You should see an option to show crossfire logo. This will make a logo appear in the top right of the screen when a game supports crossfire.

Yes, definitely enabled, including "Enable AMD CrossfireX for applications that have no associated application profile"

I do have MSI Afterburner, is that better software to use than GPU-Z? I don't want to accidently crank anything up to eleven!

I didn't know about it having to be in full screen mode!!! Thanks, I'll give this a go!

Didn't see you say this but worth noting are you running full screen?
This only happening on crysis 3 other games doing the same?

As a side note
It's not just amd that run hot all GPUs run hot when I'm multi configurations it's the way it is nothing can change the fact two GPUs pushing hot air inside a case the hot air must go somewhere and it just happens GPUs suck this hot air back in.

Better case cooling can help with much wider spacing between the GPUs or just use reference design cards.
Or water cooling.

It's been other games as well, but I have been using them all in a window.

The only thing that seemed different was the Bioshock Infinite benchmark, that ran rull screen at 100+fps at 2K but didn't seem to use GPU 2 either.

Yeah I am concerned that I don't have optimal airflow...I'll be stripping it down and cleaning tonight!

The problem is it's an older motherboard so the two SLI slots are close together, no room to have one at the bottom of the case and spread them apart...assuming you can pick and choose your ports on newer motherboards!



A couple of things I just need to clarify...

1. I have a multi-monitor setup, the second screen being 1080p.
Is a game still classed as being in full-screen if I have the second screen with the GPU monitoring software on it?

2. In the system tray for the CCC options, it's showing six Radeon R9 200 series devices...does it matter which I add the Crossfire logo to?


Thanks to you both, you have written some brilliantly helpful replies!

 

[LtMatt]

Hi everyone


I'm having some real problems with my graphics cards, they are:

Sapphire R9-290X 8GB in crossfire, from OCUK of course.


The problem seems to be:

Heat
I know it's an issue with AMD cards, GPU 1 frequently goes up to 85C and the fan sounds like a jet engine, this happens very quickly after games start up.
I am aware of how menus can stress GPUs so I am talking about when it is in game and V-SYNC'ed to 60fps.

I am going to move and clean the PC out tonight to give it the absolute best chance of cooling possible and see if that makes a difference. The cards are in an Antec 1200 case so there is plenty of airflow.


Crossfire doesn't seem to work
Crossfire doesn't seem to work at all! I can't seem to find an updated list of the games that are actually properly compatible with Crossfire. One of them mentioned on the AMD site is Crysis 3, so I've been testing that this afternoon at around 3K resolution (the step down from full 4K, I can't remember the exact dimensions) with all settings on very high and it's pretty choppy to play, pretty much expected for ONE card. The second card doesn't even start, GPU-Z is showing the load at 0%.

I have enabled the Crossfire setting in the AMD control panel, even allowing it for games that don't have a crossfire profile so I can't understand why it's not engaging at all.

I am running the latest drivers and Windows 10 Home.


If anyone has any ideas I would very much appreciate it!


Thanks.

Sounds like something is amiss here.

Are you running the games in Exclusive Full Screen Mode?

My recommendation would be to try a fresh install of the latest Catalyst 15.9.1 Drivers and follow my guide here to set up CrossFire with monitoring overlays. It sounds as if it's not enabled properly as the scaling and performance on Crysis 3 is superb on CrossFire.

Post back once you've done all the above and let us know how you are getting on.

 

[shankly1985]

For crossfire to work you must be in fullscreen mode for each game.. Has for multi screen can't help you there my experience is very limited.

 

[Uncle Petey]

A couple of things I just need to clarify...

1. I have a multi-monitor setup, the second screen being 1080p.
Is a game still classed as being in full-screen if I have the second screen with the GPU monitoring software on it?

2. In the system tray for the CCC options, it's showing six Radeon R9 200 series devices...does it matter which I add the Crossfire logo to?


Thanks to you both, you have written some brilliantly helpful replies!

1. Running other screens is fine and will not affect xfire. For example, I run 1440 and 1080 screens together with no issues.
If it's full screen on the main/primary monitor, then that's all you need.

2. Right click on the desktop, open CCC and enable xfire in there.

Fwiw, Crysis 3 runs brilliantly in xfire.

Sell them/send them back to whence they came and buy a 980ti or, if you are running 4k maybe a Fury or even Fury X.

Leave Crossfire where it belongs, among the realms of hell.

Honestly... Shut up.

 

[fs123]

A couple of things I just need to clarify...

1. I have a multi-monitor setup, the second screen being 1080p.
Is a game still classed as being in full-screen if I have the second screen with the GPU monitoring software on it?

2. In the system tray for the CCC options, it's showing six Radeon R9 200 series devices...does it matter which I add the Crossfire logo to?


Thanks to you both, you have written some brilliantly helpful replies!

Just install MSI afterburner and you will have on screen gpu usage, frame rate , temps, etc. You can also overclock with it too if you want.

In the system tray icon you can only select the 'show crossfire status icon' from the 1st profile. The rest won't have the option anyway.

 

[Confused Stu]

Saw the thread title, came in to check Crossfire is checked in CCC and the games are running full screen, see that you're already in safe hands with fs, shankly, Matt and Petey on the case.

As has been said, having a second (third or even fourth) screen attached won't make any different to Crossfire so long as you haven't hooked any of the screens up to an output on the second GPU, and you haven't set both screens into an Eyefinity group and are then playing the game in a window covering one screen only. So long as "Full screen" in the game options is selected, Crossfire should kick in.

 

[TheBigCheese]

Hi everyone

Just wanted to catch up quickly and say thanks so much for the help so far!

I am going to clean out and move the PC to hopefully improve airflow soon and see how the temperatures go.

Crossfire does work! I was needing it to be in full screen which it wasn't.

The AMD Crossfire logo is really handy and shows me it's working. Loading MSI Afterburner seems to make the fan speed up without actually doing anything to change settings which is a bit odd so I'm using GPU-Z and that showed the second card was working!


AMDMatt I'll be looking through the link you posted to your section about crossfire cards, looks very detailed, thanks!

Thanks again everyone, I'll let you know how it goes!

 

[TNA]

Definetly agree with Matt, on my 295x2 I had Crysis 3 running at 4K which worked very well in crossfire, even better than I expected it ever would.

 

[UTmaniac]

If you aren't already, create a more aggressive custom fan profile through an app such as MSI Afterburner.

I use 50% as a baseline until 30C and then a linear increase up to 100C. When running pCARS, I typically have ~75% fan speed active, holding temps at ~55C.