3870 X2 and 8.3 cats problem

[Jaggy]

Asus P5E3 Deluxe/E8400 [email protected]/Ocz 2gb ddr3 1333MHz Platinum/Sapphire 3870 x2/Corsair HX620 psu/74gb raptor/Xfi Extreme Gamer

This is my second 3870 X2, my HIS card died on me after about 7 - 10 days. Got a Sapphire as a repalcement.

I did a clean install of XP Professional SP2, all updates, updated bios to 1001 and loaded latest chipset drivers, running at stock.

Loaded the 8.3 Cats and got just over 9000 in 3Dmark 6, having had achieved just over 14500 with my previous card something was obviously wrong.

Pushed the 8400 to 3.8 and got just over 11500. Fiddled around with just about everything I could think of but couldn't get any higher.

Decided to try the 8.2 Cats but running ATI Uninstall threw up the following message in a RNDLL window -deep breath !......

An exception occured while trying to run "C:\windows\system32\atiiiexx.dll,_InfEngUninstallIN FFile_RunDll@16 -flags:0x2010001 -inf_class: DISPLAY -clean -silent"

ATI Uninstall continued and removed the driver as far as I could tell, loaded the 8.2's in and got 13800 in 3Dmark6 at stock, 17481 at 3.8.

Anyone have any idea what is happening here, I don't understand the poor benchmarks with the 8.3's ?
Has anyone sucessfully uninstalled the 8.3's or got the above error message while trying to do so?

 

[drunkenmaster]

had issues with installing, lots of people seem to be getting a huge drop in 3dmark scores but as of yet no ones seen anything but increases elsewhere in real games so not sure it matters.

It reeks of crossfire simply not working in 3dmark and nothing else except that, not sure why, try renaming 3dmark.exe to that of a game crossfire is working with and see if crossfire suddenly works. Try changing the Cat AI feature to a different level, advanced or normal, off seems to stop crossfire working in some games so it could just be that.

 

[The Asgard]

3D Mark 06 is borked in XP for sure with 8.3. From seeing it stutter it looks like its dropping into low power mode. However games seem fine.

 

[schumi84]

I have an identical problem to you Jaggy. Am hitting 11500-12000 in 3dmark06, however as my game performance hasnt taken a hit (Crysis benchmark i still get 44.5) i may well stay with them.

 

[waterproofbob]

I had issues with the 8.3 in CoD with constant dropping down to an FPS of 30 all the time (not a problem I had with 8.2) I've now gone back to the 8.2s as they for me seem more stable so am sticking with them.

 

[Chronictank]

The specific problem we ran into was a timeout during attempts to install the driver either through the Catalyst Install Manager or manually. Additionally, once we got the driver installed on one 3870X2, plugging in the second would cause a hard lock when windows tried to automatically find the driver for the second card. We suspect that this occurred because we had previously installed two 3870X2 cards and then removed one before installing the 8.3 catalyst driver. We aren't exactly sure of the cause and neither is AMD, but we can say that the fix for us was removing some non-present including display adapters (along with driver files) in safe mode. After rebooting a few times to let windows do its thing, we installed the driver and all was well.
How to Not Have Issues

To make sure this doesn't happen, when installing CrossFireX, here is what we suggest:

1. Install Vista SP1 (this is easier/better than installing the required hotfixes)
2. Uninstall old drivers first
3. Reboot and let windows install a standard VGA adapter (or cancel if prompted for drivers)
4. Power down and install the second (or additional two or three) cards
5. Boot and let windows finish finding new hardware
6. Reboot and let windows finish finding new hardware (if it needs to)
7. Install Catalyst 8.3 or higher

That should keep you safe, in our experience. It's a serious headache to fix the problems once they start, as simply uninstalling doesn't fix the issue.
How to Fix It (Spring Cleaning)

Just in case, here's what you'd need to do if you find the driver times out on install. Please be cautious with this procedure and do not remove any software devices, as they can be difficult to reinstall without reinstalling the OS.

1. Start up with only one card in the system
2. Uninstall ATI drivers through the control panel -> add/remove programs
3. Reboot into safe mode (press F8 at boot)
4. Open a command window with admin privileges
5. Run these commands from a command prompt:
* set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
* start devmgmt.msc
6. Enable show hidden devices
7. Uninstall all display adapters listed (present or non-present/hidden - they appear slightly faded); make sure to check the box to remove driver files if possible
8. Uninstall any non-present/hidden "PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge" devices from system devices. It may also help to uninstall other non-present hardware, but be careful about software and non plug-and-play devices (don't remove them).
9. Reboot normally
10. Let windows finish finding new hardware
11. Power down and plug in all new hardware
12. Boot and let windows finish finding new hardware
13. Reboot and let windows finish finding new hardware (if it needs to)
14. Install Catalyst 8.3 or higher

As we said, it's best to follow the first set of directions as it's quite a bit less involved. If all goes wrong, however, this lengthier repair/install process should help you get yourself out of a hole.

You guys with problems tried this?

Also if you are on Vista you need to install the hotfixes to make sure LDA works properly (asuming your using crossfire X)

 

[Jaggy]

I had issues with the 8.3 in CoD with constant dropping down to an FPS of 30 all the time (not a problem I had with 8.2) I've now gone back to the 8.2s as they for me seem more stable so am sticking with them.

You didn't have any problems uninstalling the 8.3's ?

 

[waterproofbob]

You didn't have any problems uninstalling the 8.3's ?

nope just removed through XP driver section and voila all gone. Reinstalled 8.2s no problems and all seems fine again.