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Help with 2x r290 crossfire problem

martian1

martian1

martian1

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Joined
20 Oct 2014
Posts
153
Hi first virgin post :) i have a msi r290 gamers edition and was wanting to get another for crossfire. I have a corsair 850w gold psu so being unsure if it could handle 2 cards had a friend bring his r290 for me to try.
I installed card after loading default bios [getting rid of my overclock] All went well and pc fired up no bother enabled xfire all went well and i could see the 2 cards in gpuz, ran 3dmark11 fine.Temps fine i then loaded my overclock profile in bios re-booted again fine and re-ran 3dmark again..all's well.
Now the main reason i want xfire is for BF4 as i want over 100frames with eye candy up so i tried a game..garbage :( worse frames then the single card ! It's as if its ignoring one card and running the single card in 8x pci e mode. I also found it spiking badly lock ups now and then basically unplayable.
Any ideas ? i have a i5 cpu overclocked to 4.5ghz [via watercooler]] 16g memory sabertooth Z77 mobo i had no bsod crashing or heat issues of any sort.
I have since learnt about ULPS and that MSI afterburner can cause issues with origin etc but thats after card went back home..bugger!
BTW plenty have stated on various forums my psu is fine and i found a guy who ran same cards no bother with it so i am pretty sure its not the psu.
Help appreciated thanks :confused:
 
Ok is that an option within origin settings itself or do you just have to end task with origin to get shot of while playing.. You are spot on about the game its been a complete pig from the start for loads of people i think it must be a record for problems with an online game ! Its a game of Russian roulette with every patch released sometimes its fine other times a nightmare. I was also getting memory leak issue but it seems to have improved for me. At one point the game would eat away at the memory till pc would lock game up with 13gb of memory gone out of 16gb. Trouble is when it does run its superb :)
 
Ok i will give this a go. With the memory leak i had a setting i altered and forgot about post patch. Its resolution scale in video settings for bf4 i had this on 135% which us supposed to improve game look turned ti back to default and it seems to reduce memory leak for me ! Also and i am no way a AB hater i like it but i uninstalled it as well and memory after a few rounds is maxed around 5.5gb
 
Ok tried crossfire on my friends pc still rubbish fps no better than one card possibly more laggy if anything! Tried disabling ULPS made no difference surely you should hit 100fps in ultra with two r290's no way am I buying another :(
 
Did not have time to try everthing but if it ran benchmarks fine then i would assume drivers are fine and yes it is bf4. I tried to get mate to flick both cards bios to same setting but he didnt bother so might that cause it ?
Also heat was horrific so could it throttle cards ? still seems a complete joke cards do this when they should just run full pelt or not at all. Also the cpu is a i5 2500k overclocked to 4.5ghz is that good enough ?

Thanks for help btw
 
Strange indeed..A little more info
I am running windows 8.1 with all updates Ati driver is 14.9 , cpu is an i5 overclocked to 4.5ghz I have 16gigs of ram. My card is a msi r290 gamers edition my friends card is a r290 but has a ref cooler [pap] we tested in both pcs which as very similar and got the same results which are no better than running a single card possibly worse.
We also set core speed and ram speed the same for both cards.
What we never did was re-install drivers and possibly re-boot after AB was installed otherwise we pretty much tried everything. I think its probably a temperature issue but I am not risking buying another r290 and having nothing but hassle. Shame I cannot afford a single beast of a card and I would drop ATI like a hot potato..hang on they are hot potatoes :)
I have loved most of the BF4 games but between ATi and dice this release has been the most problem riddled I have ever had the misfortune to install, one feature which helped push sales is also bust for me...mantle it drains my pc's memory bringing it to its knees. If I had a NVidia card I wouldn't think twice about sli had no bother what so ever in the past, lesson learned.
 
Smart move :) We did actually re-boot after the AB install, had that confirmed and ULPS was disabled in registry so its not that. Hope to god NVidia do a deal for the next bf game. Frustrating my plans went pear shaped with ATI as I was planning on crossfire when the price dropped, now looks like I will be out of pocket selling the r290 for something that actually works.
 
Ok thanks people i might give it one more shot if i can get the card back to try..just swapped my i5 cpu out for a i7 2600k bf4 cpu usage has dropped so thats something at least :)
 
Update..i got a second card and got crossfire working fine although heat is an issue now. The top card hits 94 degees so bound to be throttling :( i have a corsair carbide case and so far have replaced the stock large side fan with 2x corsair 140mm quiet fans to try suck wam air from cards and have 2x corsair 120mm intake fans in font of case i have tried all combinations and took the rear slot plate out betwen cards to no avail. Wish i knew this and i would have got a Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Tri-X for the top card. Looks like i will have to live with it just a shame i cannot knock a few degrees off the top cards temps..and i cannot space cards any better than they are.
 
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