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Crossfire : Not impressed at all!

Sharkypal

Sharkypal

Sharkypal

Permabanned
Joined
22 Jun 2005
Posts
836
I have to say that I have had my crossfire setup for 3 weeks now and I am very unhappy with it. Its non stop problems with pretty much every game I play. From unexplained drops to desktop to VPU not responding errors. The most infuriating thing about it is the minute I turn crossfire off, the machine runs like a dream.

I think that Crossfire is a very Beta technology tbh. Having to rename exe's to get games to work etc is really not acceptable for a mainstream product. I hate to say it but I am seriously thinking about going to Nforce5/AM2/SLI as ATI has really let me down here.

Just needed to vent and maybe save someone £700.00 or thereabouts.

S

PS : Just because I am interested .... should that "Catalyst AI" thing be on or off?
 
I think that Crossfire and SLI are a waste of money to be honest. Even if i had the money i would not go that route.
 
Yep, I tried it but tbh, its just a pain in the behind. The most annoying thing is how the second you turn Crossfire off, there are 0 problems. Just shows how incomplete the technology is.

S
 
Sharkypal said:
PS : Just because I am interested .... should that "Catalyst AI" thing be on or off?
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It should be on for crossfire to supposidly use its optimizations.

I feel your pain though, it took me weeks to get my crossfire system something like stable and i threw so much money into it with various power supplys to get it stable.

Single card for me in the future or Sli if it came to it.
 
Coolasmoo said:
It should be on for crossfire to supposidly use its optimizations.

I feel your pain though, it took me weeks to get my crossfire system something like stable and i threw so much money into it with various power supplys to get it stable.

Single card for me in the future or Sli if it came to it.
Click to expand...

Yah its really not on for that type of money. Im not a "brands" person but SLI just seems to be far more stable.

S
 
I've had sli since october and just given up on it, nothing to do with stability though just cost..

I have to say it was the only thing that got me close to being able to game at the native res of my 2405.. does sound like crossfire isn't all its cracked up to be.

*disclaimer

I swapped 2 7800GTXs for 1 X1900XT so there's no fanboyism here!
 
Exsomnis said:
*Subscribes to this thread because it's going to end in handbags.* :p
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Inevitably, although that was not my intention at all. I just wanted to vent about my problems with Crossfire because its what I happen to own. If I had purchased SLI and had problems this thread would have a different title. I think I will just go with one x1900 for now. Cant be bothered with anymore messing about.

S
 
All i can suggest Sharky to get some stability.

Make sure the power supply is on par with a thermo nuclear reactor :rolleyes:

Hmmm, anyway

You will need a decent supply to get anywhere near stable. The FSP Sparkle 700W im using comes highly recommended for Crossfire,

Catalyst 6.5 seems about the best driver right now for me in Crossfire so try that if you havent already.

Try swapping the Crossfire mastercard to the bottom slot and slave nearest the CPU if your Bios gives you the option to change this.
 
According to ati's site an antec 550 neoHE is enough for crossfired x1900 boards. Seen a load of other people running dual core cpu's with a few hard drives on 530 watt psu's etc no problems. :confused:
 
Sharkypal said:
Yep, I tried it but tbh, its just a pain in the behind. The most annoying thing is how the second you turn Crossfire off, there are 0 problems. Just shows how incomplete the technology is.

S
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agreed

SLI works, Xfire is not mature enough yet.

if this is wrong spank me! :p
 
easyrider said:
agreed

SLI works, Xfire is not mature enough yet.

if this is wrong spank me! :p
Click to expand...


Xfire has come on a lot over the time its been out, just because a few people are haivng problems doesn't mean everyones having them. Same can be said for any technology or piece of hardware, for some people it works flawlessly, for others they have problems, luck of the draw when pc's are concerned ffs. :mad:
 
Gerard said:
Xfire has come on a lot over the time its been out, just because a few people are haivng problems doesn't mean everyones having them. Same can be said for any technology or piece of hardware, for some people it works flawlessly, for others they have problems, luck of the draw when pc's are concerned ffs. :mad:
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Thats my point...It should work for everyone. :)
 
It seems to me that from a affordabilty/upgrade aspect, when you get to the point in time where you need a second card, either Nvidia or ATI have already brought out a newer GPU that trounces the result you would get from going down the twin card route. You are still left wanting ....
 
what is vpu recover actually meant to do? beacuse ive always found it causes more problems than it fixes when its on :|
 
A couple of things I've noticed with Crossfire,


1) As Coolasmoo said the power supply needs to be good, you want @ least 2 seperate rails of 15 amps feeding the pcie rails alone, or a single massive rail of 60a for the whole system.

2) You may need to use ATitool to override the default fan speeds. I was having problems, as in my current case the cards were getting upto 90 degrees under full load when overclocked. It took me a few days of nailing the problem, also communicating with Coolasmoo during the expereince for his insights. He mentioned he used to have a 1800 card that was prone to the same issue due to the card overheating and using atitool to ramp the fan up a little (got me thinking). I have now saved a profile for both my 1900 cards, forcing the fan to 100% as soon as the temp reaches 70 degrees. I have not had a single Crossfire problem since. I think that ATI kept the speeds low to counteract the reports of the really noisy stock cooler, by default they don't hit 100% until the temp reaches 90 degrees, that's too high for stability.


I use the Tagan 900w supply, which is the second revision, it's moderatley quiet for such a huge supply (not as quiet as the Seasonic). So good 700w supplies are the minumum requirement for absolute saftey, running 550w supplies close to their limits is not the answer.

Trying the Atitool fan trick I mentioned may be of help..

Catalyst 6.5 have worked great for me, they're the best since 6.3, in fact I believe they're better as there's no screen ripple effect anymore after running intense games (known issue with 6.3 & 6.4).


Regards
Raja

there's are a host of other settings that can cause issues too;

Overclocking of the main sytem, if it's too high??

P2P writes not enabled in bios? This is known to create issues if switched off, should be on enable.

You need to provide us with all your system specs and overclock info if you expect any real help.
 
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Yes, there are a whole host of known variables that need to be addressed before one can ascertain the where the issue lies.
 
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