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7950 Crossfire issues - help!

Secret_Window

Secret_Window

Secret_Window

Soldato
Joined
10 Aug 2006
Posts
5,207
I bought 2 Gigabyte 7950 OC Windforce cards to crossfire with. Uninstalled my Nvidia drivers from my GTX 570, and installed Catalyst 12.3 with CAPS 12.3 profile.

Unfortunately, every single game I play has poor performance issues. I loaded up MW3 and fps was climbing to 170 then pausing and dropping to 50-60 constantly. It did a similar thing in Deus Ex:HR as well, where frames were up and down between 40-70 (worse than my 570!!!).

I checked all the obvious things I can think of. I have checked crossfire is enabled in the drivers. I made sure I enabled the correct profile for each game for crossfire under 3D application settings. I checked overdrive in Catalyst which reports 900mhz for each card as they are overclocked. I checked the crossfire bridge is attached properly. Each card is getting two 6pin PCI-E PSU cables directly from the PSU (modular).

However (where I believe lies the problem), in GPU-Z in both idling on the Desktop and in a game, there is a something wrong with the clock speeds of the two cards. GPU-Z (sensor tab) is showing both cards only running at 300mhz whatever I do. Occasionally it flickers to 900mhz for about a nano second and reverts back to 300mhz. Which leaves me the impression something is down clocking the cards. Question is why and how? And what likely things could cause this to happen?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks
 
did you try driversweeper to get rid of any trace of nvidia drivers? ive heard they still leave files behind even when you uninstall them
 
it might be interfering with the ati drivers,download it and burn to cd and try removing all nvidia drivers and ati drivers and do a clean install,then atleast you know youve tried that

you boot from your dvd drive and it loads up
 
Secret_Window said:
Yes unfortunately I did. Could this be causing my problems?
Click to expand...

Although driversweeper and the like can help in some situations, I always recommend not to do this without trying a standard uninstall first. What can happen is that some files get removed that cause problems. This may not be the case for you, but it is a possibility.
 
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wazza300 said:
it might be interfering with the ati drivers,download it and burn to cd and try removing all nvidia drivers and ati drivers and do a clean install,then atleast you know youve tried that

you boot from your dvd drive and it loads up
Click to expand...


Sorry, I'm confused. Download what? I already used driver sweeper to begin with. You want me to use it again?

arc@css said:
Although driversweeper and the like can help in some situations, I always recommend not to do this without trying a standard uninstall first. What can happen is that some files get removed that cause problems. This may not be the case for you, but it is a possibility.
Click to expand...

I uinstalled normally for the Nvidia drivers, then ran Driver sweeper after.
 
Have you installed the catalyst profiles, should be available same page as drivers but underneath(last time I checked). Likewise, are you playing windowed or not windowed, xfire + windowed game normally means not working and some games have a harder time triggering full speed in windowed mode as well though I can't remember which.

I think it was lotro for me as I usually play mmo's windowed, for that I'd just add a full speed profile and enable it whenever I played a game windowed.

So that could help if you are running windowed, second I'd try sorting out a profile per game, I've not messed around with the newer xfire profiles per game, do they have any options for clock speed in there? They made it harder, the older profiles you could just save them then edit clock speeds in each profile in a text editor.

I'd reinstall drivers, do the catalyst profiles(if they are still about and useful), reinstall directx and potentially reinstall a game if you can easily as in some cases you might have simply game settings set up initially with the game detecting an Nvidia card.
 
You could try ATIman uninstaller, works for me everytime. It's free and a recent version is found anywhere on Google! You might aswell give it a try!
 
drunkenmaster said:
Have you installed the catalyst profiles, should be available same page as drivers but underneath(last time I checked). Likewise, are you playing windowed or not windowed, xfire + windowed game normally means not working and some games have a harder time triggering full speed in windowed mode as well though I can't remember which.

I think it was lotro for me as I usually play mmo's windowed, for that I'd just add a full speed profile and enable it whenever I played a game windowed.

So that could help if you are running windowed, second I'd try sorting out a profile per game, I've not messed around with the newer xfire profiles per game, do they have any options for clock speed in there? They made it harder, the older profiles you could just save them then edit clock speeds in each profile in a text editor.

I'd reinstall drivers, do the catalyst profiles(if they are still about and useful), reinstall directx and potentially reinstall a game if you can easily as in some cases you might have simply game settings set up initially with the game detecting an Nvidia card.
Click to expand...

I downloaded the latest Catalyst (12.3) with the latest profiles (12.3) from the AMD site. I have also tried both with and without the profiles being used for each game - no difference.

I also don't game in windowed mode.

I am going to now uninstall all the drivers and try the ones supplied on the disc from Gigabyte to rule out issues with the latest drivers.

I will report back in a bit. Wish me luck.
 
I know its a bit of a pain in the ass but have you condidered a clean install of windows just to make sure? Might be worth it in the long run.
 
Right, installed the drivers off gigabyte disc and the performamce is a bit better. In mw3 fps stays in 100+ more but it keeps lagging for a few secs and then fps dips to 50's.

I've checked the clocks of each card again and now it appears one card is reaching 900mhz and the other is staying at 300mhz with little to no activity.

Something is clearly wrong but I have no clue what, where and why. I fear this may be a format job. :(

If things don't improve after a format I am guessing it has got to be a hardware fault somewhere. Sigh hope it doesn't come to being that.
 
Update:

Ok installed 12.4 Catalyst with 12.3 CAPS and things are working better. I have discovered that MW3 does not scale properly in Crossfire and there are performance issues with it enabled and not when it is disabled. Same goes with Deus Ex:HR too. So AMD sort your bloody drivers out!! :o


Anyway, first thing I did to test it was working properly was BF3 of course, along with the CAPS profile. I have also given each card a small overclock to 950mhz and 1352mhz. In BF3 I put everything on Ultra including 4x MSAA and I was averaging about 100fps with dips to 80 in large gun fights. I think that is a pretty reasonable result. The game has never looked so smooth.:cool:

I'm going to do a fresh install of Windows either tomorrow or Monday to ensure best possible performance without any left over drivers possibly interfering.
 
Thanks.

One card is pretty damn fast. I was pretty happy just using one card in a few games.

I will say this though. If you have a GTX 570/580 or 6950/6970 the 7950 might not be on its own a big upgrade. In a few things it was performing very similar to my 570, but then my 570 was at 580 speeds in lots of things. This might bother some people (the negligible increase in speed) but for me I benefited going AMD regardless because my monitor required AMD technology to work properly - which I am now pleased to report is now working properly. The additional card was really to make it more of a worthy upgrade than changing like for like in performance.

I highly recommend the Gigabyte cards. Both my Gigabyte GTX 570 SOC and these Gigabyte 7950 OC cards have been absolutely superb as far as cooling and quietness is concerned. I cannot recommend them enough. They make reference coolers seem extremely awful.

I had to take out my Xonar D1 though to make room for the second card. :( It was in the bottom PCI slot and the second card's cooler was sat right on top of the Xonar and I wasn't very happy having the cooler sat right on top of it and risking the chance that it wouldn't get enough airflow. So now I need to get a PCI-E Xonar (which can go in the very top slot away from the two cards) to replace it as the sound on my motherboard sucks in comparison lol.
 
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