Help with 2x r290 crossfire problem

martian1 · 22 Oct 2014 at 00:16

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:

Uncle Petey · 22 Oct 2014 at 00:39

It may have been down to ULPS and AB shouldn't be causing any issues that I know of or have experienced.
PSU is ok unless you want to go nuts with overclocking.

BF4 should run fine with xfire (does for me anyway), so it probably is down to a couple of settings.

If you get a chance to try his card again, set up AB like this: (It's what I use and it works fwiw

)

martian1 · 22 Oct 2014 at 02:43

Thanks for that i dunno if AB causes issues this guy seemed tp think so..

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/747530-Problems-with-crossfire-on-Battlefield-4

Its a pain for my m8t to lend me card its his main pc for 24/7 so only option would be for me to try this on his pc which is very similar.. Not ideal but worth a go ! Whats bugging me is game has not been right for me since fall patch its better now but not 100% which isnt helping with diagnostics

Uncle Petey · 22 Oct 2014 at 03:35

BF4 is a weird one tbh. Some people (like me) have no problems with multiple cards and others have massive issues running just one.
Also, you may or may not find that reinstalling drivers after adding another card can help. Again, some do, some don't.

ED: His point about disabling Origin in game overlay is worth a shot too. I have it disabled and it may well have been for the same reasons.

martian1 · 22 Oct 2014 at 05:05

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

Uncle Petey · 22 Oct 2014 at 13:13

Just go to origin settings and disable origin in game

Yeah, the mantle memory leak can be a nuisance... It doesn't seem to be as bad as it was though, but it is still there.
I've found that you can usually get away with a decent length round at least before it becomes an issue. With 16GB ram, you'll probably get away with it for longer than I do

martian1 · 22 Oct 2014 at 13:36

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

snips86x · 22 Oct 2014 at 13:38

Uncle Petey said:
BF4 is a weird tbh.

Corrected that for you

Uncle Petey · 22 Oct 2014 at 14:47

lol, is that the Italian version?

martian1 · 28 Oct 2014 at 20:20

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

Ragnahex · 28 Oct 2014 at 20:38

i ran crossfire 290's and it scaled great. I did get weird microstutter until i messed with settings a bit though

Uncle Petey · 28 Oct 2014 at 22:34

martian1 said:
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

In BF4?

Don't be so quick to write it off. Do you think your brief experience is the final and definitive one?

Did you do any of the other things I said?
You may have even needed to reinstall drivers. Like I said, sometimes you need to, sometimes you don't.

martian1 · 29 Oct 2014 at 08:27

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

nutsnut · 29 Oct 2014 at 08:55

I average 90fps fully maxed out with 7970 crossfire so the 290's should easily allow for over 100 fps. Monitor the gpu usage in each card whilst playing, also your not running in windowed mode are you?

nutsnut · 29 Oct 2014 at 08:56

People reported better performance with i7 cpus and multiple gpus in battle field but not two the extent of what you are describing.

Scotspaul · 29 Oct 2014 at 10:03

I run 2 x 290's fine in crossfire for BF4.

I had some issues recently with the 14.9 drivers, so I went back to 14.7 and it runs fine - I get over 60fps all the time at 1080p with 200% scaling. Monitor is 60Hz so no need for higher for me, and that is using the mantle drivers.

Also, I find it does crash to desktop if I have that Raptr thing running.

I guess i could have tried harder to get the 14.9 drivers running but the stuttering that kept happening was making the game unplayable, and I was spending more time rebooting than I was playing so back to 14.7 for now

Top card was getting pretty hot, but now I have a SP120 fan blowing between them and that keeps temps within 3-4 C of each other. Top card gets to ~82C now, depending on ambient room temps.

Uncle Petey · 29 Oct 2014 at 10:23

martian1 said:
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

Both bios' should be identical, so that shouldn't have been the issue.
Throttling could have been the problem. You do ideally need a couple of slots between the cards with good airflow from decent intake fans.
A couple of non ref cards will dump a lot of heat into the case.

Was Origin in game disabled? Driver version? Mantle/DX?
You have have needed to restart after making those changes in AB, though I'm not too sure if the latest version requires you to. Again, it may have also needed a driver reinstall when adding another card.

Not sure on the cpu. Last time I ran this with a 2500K was in the BF4 beta and that was a bit poo with an i5 and it did see an improvement with an i7. I do recall them addressing that to a decent degree at some point though.
While it is advantageous to use an i7 with xfire in this, I wouldn't have thought that it would cause any real issues to run an i5 with a decent clock.

Scotspaul said:
I run 2 x 290's fine in crossfire for BF4.

I had some issues recently with the 14.9 drivers, so I went back to 14.7 and it runs fine - I get over 60fps all the time at 1080p with 200% scaling. Monitor is 60Hz so no need for higher for me, and that is using the mantle drivers.

Also, I find it does crash to desktop if I have that Raptr thing running.

I guess i could have tried harder to get the 14.9 drivers running but the stuttering that kept happening was making the game unplayable, and I was spending more time rebooting than I was playing so back to 14.7 for now

Top card was getting pretty hot, but now I have a SP120 fan blowing between them and that keeps temps within 3-4 C of each other. Top card gets to ~82C now, depending on ambient room temps.

I found 14.9 to be rock solid... Strange how these things work brilliantly for some and poorly for others.

martian1 · 31 Oct 2014 at 18:02

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.

Uncle Petey · 31 Oct 2014 at 18:06

It's not a temperature issue.
AB should have prompted you to reboot after installing and/or disabling ULPS.

I reckon it was to do with either not reinstalling drivers or not restarting after installing AB.

Sorry to say, but this is a simple pebcak issue

Sure, it may not be quite as plug and play as SLI may be, but 290 xfire works just fine - especially in BF4.

eyetrip · 31 Oct 2014 at 18:48

I feel your pain.

No matter what I do, I can not get this game to run nicely with anything over 1080p and single card.

Crossfire and trifire and even single just give erratic cpu and gpu usage which I can feel and see in Eyefinity.

Single card fine at 1080p. I can emulate the erratic behaviour by turning resolution scaling to 200%, which made me think was using too much memory in Eyefinity, but even lowering settings didn't help.

Single card 1080p is the only way I can get it to run smooth. I have mucked about with getting this game stable for months with no joy. Am uninstalling it this weekend.

I hope you have more luck with it