• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

5850's in crossfire - help please!

heman

heman

heman

Associate
Joined
21 Feb 2004
Posts
1,326
Location
London
Hi,

Recently bought a second 5850 so installed it into the 2nd PCI-E x16 slot (see sig for spec), booted into windows and CCC recognises crossfire and has it enabled. Problem is FPS are the same if not lower than one 5850!

The cards are both Sapphire, one with a reference design and the other with MW2 with central fan placement.

Temps are within normal limits, with the warmer card at 60C, and the cooler card at 50C idle and are not getting higher than 70C-80C in game (both hit 87 in furmark).

Example of FPS I'm getting:
BFBC2 x1 5850 between 50-80 fps, crossfire 40-60 fps

What gives?
Any help would be much appreciated as this is my first crossfire setup.

Thanks
 
Stock at present, will be OC'ing at a later date
Can't imagine this will hold them back, or detract performance?
 
Not so much a single GPU, but two in xfire need decent CPU clock, I would say your CPU at 2.6Ghz is holding back your xfire 5850's, 920 do stepping will do 3.8 Ghz with very little volt increase, just depends on your cooling.
 
I'm hoping it will overclock nicely, but I highly doubt that at stock it would limit speeds to the performance of a single 5850. I base my thinking on benchmarks from several sites that use similar setups with i7 920 at stock.
 
It wont be due to the cpu clock speed, i have used my i7 at stock and at my normal 4ghz and although there is performance drop were not talking as the card was never there. you have seated the second card correctly, connected the power cables and used 1 xfire bridge yeah?
 
It's really game depending, some games will show little performance increase with a clocked CPU, these are GPU bound, others may show a high increase, 2.6Ghz is to slow IMO, 3Ghz minimum.
 
I had 2 sapphire 5870s in xfire would run heaven benchmark fine with both cards then close the benchmark and run again and i got single card performance.

My cards were a original reference card and the new pcb cooler card.

I battled for a week to get both cards to play nice together but was same story in all my games and benchmarks one minute xfire worked ok then it wouldnt have it.

Returned my new card for refund.

Run plenty of benchmarks like heaven 2 then close them and try again to see if you have same problem i had with mixing these old and new sapphire cards.

I notice we also have same mobo.
 
johny dolan said:
I had 2 sapphire 5870s in xfire would run heaven benchmark fine with both cards then close the benchmark and run again and i got single card performance.

My cards were a original reference card and the new pcb cooler card.

I battled for a week to get both cards to play nice together but was same story in all my games and benchmarks one minute xfire worked ok then it wouldnt have it.

Returned my new card for refund.

Run plenty of benchmarks like heaven 2 then close them and try again to see if you have same problem i had with mixing these old and new sapphire cards.

I notice we also have same mobo.
Click to expand...

Did you find out what the solution was? Was it a dodgy GPU, or a mobo problem?
Did you manage to get it working?

Antran - I'll check that hotfix out, but the performance is like a single GPU in other games too (tried Crysis Warhead and Prototype)
 
Hi,

Found out what the problem was and this makes me feel like a noob :(
I had two monitors in one GPU, using the second monitor as a desktop extension only (i.e. not for gaming). So I have to disable the second monitor in CCC when gaming to enable crossfire to work. Did'nt realise corssfire would not work otherwise.

Does anyone know a workaround for this?

chief barker said:
The hotfix for BFBC2 will sort it.

I was getting 70-100 fps without it, now 100-200 with it (5970+5870).
Click to expand...

Installed the hotfix but BFBC2 FPS are unchanged from a single GPU setup unfortunately.

However after disabling monitor have improved Heavrn 2 benchmark as well as FPS in Crysis Warhead.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom