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Nothing works with 290x Crossfire

Tacitus

Tacitus

Tacitus

Associate
Joined
10 Dec 2014
Posts
418
Location
Edinburgh
EDIT:

I've turned off Frame Pacing and all bar one of my issues have gone away - a funny crackling noise through my speakers.

Disclaimer: Before everyone starts prattling about my PSU, I used to run 2 290xs about a year ago without problem in the exact same system.

Hey guys

My new 290x came a few days ago, and it works great!

However, when crossfiring it with my other 290x nothing will run. Every game I've tried to launch has crashed before I've even gotten into the game, with the exception of Bioshock Infinite (which crashed after about 5 minutes). I'm forced to hit the restart button on my PC at that point.

Games I've tried include GTA V, Dragon Age Inquisition, Bioshock Infinite, Total War Attila and Witcher 3. I've also tried to run Valley, which froze my PC immediately.

Dragon Age in particular surprised me, as that ran great when I had 2 290xs a year ago.

I'm using 16.7.2 drivers, and temps aren't an issue since they're just idle temps...

Does anyone have any idea what's up or what can be done?

Full specs:

i5 4670k @ stock clocks
8GB RAM
290x Crossfire (PowerColour PCS+ and Sapphire Vapour-x)
Windows 8.1
EVGA SuperNova 750W PSU

Thanks
 
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I just ran your system through a PSU calculator, and it suggests a PSU of 884W. Did you have the same 750W PSU when you previously crossfired 290Xs?
 
You were pushing the limits of that PSU a year ago, add a years worth of component degradation and that's most likely your cause.
 
Bonjour said:
I just ran your system through a PSU calculator, and it suggests a PSU of 884W. Did you have the same 750W PSU when you previously crossfired 290Xs?
Click to expand...

I was.

The PC has largely been used for watching YouTube/word processing since.

I had a wall power metre thing and the highest it ever recorded was about 715W from the wall. People really overestimate how much power these things draw.

In any case, I got into DA:I for about 5 seconds with ULPS disabled before it crashed, and updated to the latest drivers as well.
 
The overestimating is done for a reason. The calculators assume for 3-5 years of use, thus over estimate accordingly to allow for degradation.

Disabling UPLS just prevents the 2nd card idling in a low power state while not in use. It really does sound like a PSU problem.
 
Try undervolting both cards so they draw less power and see if it runs the games then.
Just a thought.
It'll only take a minute to try and if it works you can either run them like that or accept it's down to limitations thru wear and tear and buy a new psu.
 
A good quality 750W PSU should be fine for your system with everything at stock or light overclocks, but it will have issues if you start overvolting (speaking as someone who ran an overclocked 2600K and 2 x 290's on an XFX 750W PSU fine, then had a shut down while overvolting the GPUs after pulling 940W from the wall!).

That said, if your system is freezing/shutting down and requiring the reset button being pressed, this has 90% of the time been PSU related in my experience.

You could try a fresh Windows install, and/or different AMD drivers to try to find if the issue is in the other 10%, but I do think you will ultimately find the issue is the PSU. It's single rail, so it won't matter which cables you're using, but I would try unplugging and replugging every PSU cable to ensure they're all nice and firm - I have seen someone on the forum who fixed their random crashing issue by finding one of the GPU power cables wasn't quite clicked into place.

The next step, if it was my PC, would be to undervolt the GPUs, as Nash suggested, and see if the issues change or resolve, but be prepared that you might end up needing to get another PSU to fully resolve this.
 
Put my cards at the lowest MSI afterburner would have them (-100mV, -50% power limit, 525 core and 650 memory) and games still crash immediately on load.

I don't think it's the PSU because it happens on the loading screens straight after hitting launch. GPU2 peaked at 30% load.

My motherboard is a Gigabyte Z97x-SLI.
 
At stock volts that system will no way overload a 750g2, its almost the same as my system and i tested them thoroughly. The most i could ever get that system to pull at the wall was about 800 watt and that was with both GPUs at +200mv @1250/1700mhz and the 4970k at 1.36v @4.9ghz.

Even if the GPU is running at 90% efficiency your still under the 750watts, but im guessing its running at more like 80-85% efficiency so its well under in that case.

Check the cables are all plugged in correctly, including the PCIE sata power plug which gives extra power to the pcie for multi card setups.

I assume youve ran DDU before you installed your graphics drivers?, and yeah you always wanna be disabling ULPS, it can cause crashes. Make sure you disable it directly in the registry as third party programs only disable it on your main card. Run regedit and just go to edit, find, then tick "match whole string" and search EnableULPS and then when it finds it hit enter then change value data from 1 to 0 hit enter, then you can hit f3 to search again, and repeat untill its finished searching.

You have to do that every time you update your graphics drivers.
 
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I know it isn't the fact it's a 750W PSU - as I've said in the top post I've had 290x crossfire before running absolutely fine, and I'm not pushing any major OC as of now (1030 core 1325 mem).

I've now tested both cards separately again, and both are hitting 1100/1400 @ 4k on their own and are completely stable.

I also ran one of the cards on its own in the bottom PCIE slot. It was slower than I had expected (about 20-25% slower than when it is in the top slot) but it otherwise worked fine.

In crossfire I'm getting stuttery audio though, like a buzzing noise in the background that is very distracting, but it then still crashes. This happens even when my speakers are muted?!

Really feeling a bit lost with this whole thing :(
 
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When I say my PC freezes, I mean if I hit ctrl alt del I get my secondary screen going to it, and my primary screen stays static. The mouse can't be moved, and I have to hit the reset button on my PC.

To give an update of what I've tried/done so far:-

- Both cards tested separately and work
- Both PCIE lanes work, as I've tested the cards individually in the bottom and top one. Both are running at PCI-E 3.0 x 16 @ 8x 1.1 (according to GPU-Z)
- Undervolted/clocked both cards to see if power issue
- Overvolted/raised power limit on both cards to see if that would help.
- Disabled ULPS
- Changed power cables going to GPU from PSU
- Made sure power cables are properly connected.
- Tried latest drivers (before reverting to 16.7.2).
- I managed to get into game when turning CFX off, playing a game for 10 minutes, closing it, turning CFX on, and then booting into the game

My best result has been about 5-10 minutes in each of DA:I, GTAV and Bioshock, on different random occasions.

I have not tried:-

- Lots of different drivers (recommendations?)
- Updating the bios on my cards - they're slightly different, but I'm not sure how to go about doing it, or which version to use.
- Fresh Windows install.
 
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