crossfire dilemma..

[neil pettitt]

hi chaps, this post is mostly aimed at you guys who may be running the his 7950 ice q boost cards. Im in a postion to get myself a second card and go crossfire. There are tho some things that put me off a bit tho. Ive read some of you guys have had a nightmare with setting up. Basically will i be able to just pop another card in and hope for the best or will i have to flash the bios thing that some of you seem to do . Also will i have to mess with voltages im not really sure if im confident to do this. Also would it be a better idea if im going to add another card if i bought a non boost card ....My head is spinning atm as to do what to do. If its going to be a nightmare i might just sell my 7950 and buy something a bit more beefier. Ive got about £260 to add to what i could get for the 7950 ....i know it might seem a waste of money but i would rather spend my money on my rig than let the mrs waste it on a well known aution site..

 

[Something Else]

buy the second card and run it, don't like it then send it back. simple

 

[tommybhoy]

There are tho some things that put me off a bit tho. Ive read some of you guys have had a nightmare with setting up.

It's not a nightmare, there are two 'problems' for better a word:

Problem 1. Boost bios is rubbish, with gpu usage 'spiking'(you may not be aware that your current card is already doing it, so you might not need to do anything) but can be fixed with either:

Easiest- hack the Power Limit:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18509458

It may look complicated, but it really is simple, if you can't get to grips with doing it, and you are purchasing soon-like tomorrow as it's the last day on offer, then matt can help you out(you would have to pm him as he's been a naughty chappy and is on a forum holiday), unless you wait until I get back from Italia.

Or A Custom bios flash with the boost removed with increased Power Limits- it is very easy to do and IC3 gives some info on this in his Ice-Q bios thread:

Make sure to have the swithc at position 1 which you can find next to crossfire.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1353325/tutorial-atiwinflash-how-to-flash-the-bios-of-your-ati-cards

or

Flashing through DOS

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57750

I flash through Windows but lots of people don't like to do it that way. I never had any issues by using Windows Ati flash
After flashing make sure to reinstall drivers and OCing tools e.g. MSI AB

Problem 2-for some that don't wan't to run the high 1.25v, but it doesn't bother me.

Also will i have to mess with voltages im not really sure if im confident to do this.

If you just hack the Power Limits, then your gpu will have a default voltage of 1.25V, so you won't need to as that's plenty for good clocks.

Also would it be a better idea if im going to add another card if i bought a non boost card ....

No get the Ice-Q, best AIB 7950's for CrossFire by a long shot as they are the only custom cooled ones to vent out the rear.







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[neil pettitt]

Hi, many thanks for the reply. Right first im not sure if I could do that power thing, also is there a chance you could burn your card out?. Second if you flash your bios like some of you have and it goes fits up how do you get it back to original?. Also I'm not really up on crossfire but how I see it is it basically to get higher fps... Is it possible that after putting in the second card I would see an increase in fps... .would it make any difference to anything that my system is only about 6 weeks old. Lastly I've never used any of theses monitoring programs like after burner .which would be the best to use?. ....How do I pm ltmatt?. Sorry for the quite amateur post but I want to try crossfire but on the other hand if its lots of agro I'd soon have 1 smooth running card....BTW the His card is so quiet and runs sweet ,you would not even notice its in the case.......BTW I'm running an i7 3770k xfx 750 mod power and 8 gig ram....

 

[IC3]

Hi, many thanks for the reply. Right first im not sure if I could do that power thing, also is there a chance you could burn your card out?. Second if you flash your bios like some of you have and it goes fits up how do you get it back to original?. Also I'm not really up on crossfire but how I see it is it basically to get higher fps... Is it possible that after putting in the second card I would see an increase in fps... .would it make any difference to anything that my system is only about 6 weeks old. Lastly I've never used any of theses monitoring programs like after burner .which would be the best to use?. ....How do I pm ltmatt?. Sorry for the quite amateur post but I want to try crossfire but on the other hand if its lots of agro I'd soon have 1 smooth running card....BTW the His card is so quiet and runs sweet ,you would not even notice its in the case.......BTW I'm running an i7 3770k xfx 750 mod power and 8 gig ram....

Have a look at my thread (in signature) it should help out a bit.
Another vote for IceQ especially with the stunning bundle!
Using GPU-Z or ATIWinFlash/ATIFlash you can make a copy, in my thread theres a link to helpful tutorials.

Small cut out from the thread -

****7950 (disabled) BOOST BIOS THREAD****

After a long research on various forums there's finally a way to get round annoying BOOST function which made your Overclocking unstable, kept constant 1.25v and the jumps underload which caused big FPS drops. This BIOS modded by kahboom from Overclock.net Forum disables the annoying BOOST function which allows you to have lower voltage's with higher clocks, there are 4 profiles with clocks 1Ghz+ and the good thing with this BIOS is it works like an update for your factory BIOS so you don't have to do anything accept from flashing. So what are the real advantages of this BIOS?
- Lower voltage in idle and load
- Lower temperatures with higher clocks
- No annoying FPS drops during gaming
- 50+ power and raised 1.30v voltage limit
- No need of running overclocking tools as you have 4 profiles with different clocks 1Ghz+ to choose from.

EDIT:
This should help as well when you go CF - CLICK!

 

[tommybhoy]

Right first im not sure if I could do that power thing

Yes you could, my instructions may look scary to the uninitiated, but if you take your time, READ(and take it in) one step at a time and follow the steps precisely, it is very simple to do.

If you can find your powerplay settings, export and upload them to a hoster and post the link, or, copy and paste them to a text file, and put it in the thread and myself or someone else can do the rest for you if you simply can't do it.

also is there a chance you could burn your card out?.

I can't say 100% no it won't, but I highly doubt it as the card has a hardware tdp limit that software(the hack) can't bypass.

Second if you flash your bios like some of you have and it goes fits up how do you get it back to original?.

Flick the bios switch, your card has dual bios, ones for flashing custom bios, the other is a fail safe backup, as long as you only flash a single bios, if you brick it, the other back up bios will always work(providing you are not stupid and attempt to muck up the second bios too), it's a fantastic fail safe feature.

Also I'm not really up on crossfire but how I see it is it basically to get higher fps... Is it possible that after putting in the second card I would see an increase in fps... .would it make any difference to anything that my system is only about 6 weeks old.

That's the purpose of CrossFire-up to double the fps of a single card.

2X7950's=Faster than a Titan for ~£400

Lastly I've never used any of theses monitoring programs like after burner .which would be the best to use?

Afterburner- it's OSD is second to none.

How do I pm ltmatt?

You press the 'Trust' button next to 'quote' on the bottom of a posters post-obviously you would press matt's 'trust' button though on one of his posts:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18431335

Tell him tommy sent you.


BUT, after all that, you need to do some reading on the pros and cons of CrossFire, basically when it's spot on, it rocks, but when you come across a title with poor/zero CrossFire support, then your obviously only going to be utilising a single gpu with the other one doing nada.







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[neil pettitt]

Many thanks once again chaps, im going to do some more reading and hopefully by the weekend i will have made my mind up which way to go. The main reason i was wanting to go crossfire was for when bf4 comes out. When you say some games are not optimised for crossfire am i right in thinking that just one card works and the other is idle? would this effect performance in that game or would you just play it like any other game but only using 1 card or would you have to remove the crossfire bridge so the game just thinks its playing with a single gpu ?. Sorry about all the questions but its not that often i get to spend this much cash on my pc so i want to make sure this is going to be right for me.....on the other hand if you dont buy a ticket you cant win the lottery can you...