Trifire problems

[Ovr]

Evening gents,

For a little background my system is an i7 902 D0 @ 2.0ghz, 6gb ram (rated at 8-8-8-24-2 at 1.65V), X58 Gigabyte UD5 board, and two Ati HD6970 cards plus a HD6950 in trifire.

I'd been running crossfire for a while and since installing TriFire I've been getting the occasional loss of signal to the monitor (only running a single) which I can't tell if the PC has crashed or not. However, occasionaly a game will hang on loading and require a reboot (no ctrl-alt-del etc.) - this never happens once in game which is strange as I can play for hours with no problems but exit and reload can cause the hard lock.

I've stress tested the system and LinX/Prime95 run for over an hour without problem and I'm using the same BIOS settings I've used for a year+ without problem. This makes me think that the new Trifire is causing issues.

Has anyone else had/heard of a similar problem? I've done several clean driver removals and then reinstalls but the problem hasn't gone away. In saying that, it does seem to have got worse with the 11.8 drivers and now the 11.9RC1's. Would a clean install help do you think?

Any opinions are greatly appreciated as it's doing my nut in! I think the system is working fine in essence as I can run all benchmarks without problem and just did a 3dmark11 run @ 14k marks on stock clocks which can't be bad?

Beginning to pull my hair out!

 

[Orcvader]

Erm, the 6870 and 6950 cannot be ran in crossfire due to being in different series. It has be be three 6800 cards or 6900 cards, not a mix of the two. I think that's your problem there...

 

[Ovr]

Oh and a bit of additional info - since my last post about temps I've changed the fan profile of the cards and after 10+ runs of heaven the temps maxxed out at 75°C on one card, max fan speed of 55% which is pretty good! Love my Raven02 case

 

[Ovr]

Erm, the 6870 and 6950 cannot be ran in crossfire due to being in different series. It has be be three 6800 cards or 6900 cards, not a mix of the two. I think that's your problem there...

Easy typo is easy. Changed OP

 

[Orcvader]

What PSU do you have? Have you tried the latest drivers? Maybe a CMOS reset could help?

 

[Ovr]

Sorry forgot to mention the PSU, it's a 1000W OCZ Gold Plus, the latest model. Haven't tried a CMOS reset....maybe worth doing then reloading my profile?

 

[Orcvader]

Sorry forgot to mention the PSU, it's a 1000W OCZ Gold Plus, the latest model. Haven't tried a CMOS reset....maybe worth doing then reloading my profile?

PSU should be fine but I could be wrong, the 6970/50s are pretty power hungry.

Yes it's worth a reset, just incase it may be the board not behaving. A fresh install of Windows would help rule out any problems on the software side as well, so maybe test it on a spare drive if possible. Have you tried going back to two 6970s to ses if the problem disappears?

 

[Ovr]

Not taken a card out as it was an absolute mission getting them into place as the HDD's needing relocating and to take the last card out (the 6950) would mean taking everything out again - definite last stand!

 

[Crezzlin]

Hi did you flash your 6950 to a 70? also when I put my 3rd card in I had stupid driver problem even when I removed the old drivers etc, I would put a fresh copy of windows on to clear the fact it’s a software and not hardware problem, also I can tell you that some games have problems with the 11.8 drivers under trifire like blacktops will flicker! Do you have any software to control fans like msi afterburner as that was my main problem as I has 2 6950’s and when I put the 6970 in as well it was giving me problems .

If you want to compare any benchmarks you have done let me know and I will run them

 

[Ovr]

Hmmmz, I've done quite a lot now to test! Ran Prime95 for an hour without fail, similarly with OCCT and IBT - no problems. Left the PC on overnight and woke up to a black screen, ngh....

So, one of the 6970s was indeed a 6950 flashed so I flipped the BIOS switch back to 6950 and nothing changed - I've ensured that the cards are all running at stock and Furmark ran for 30mins without fail.

So I am completely and utterly stumped

 

[Ovr]

Hi did you flash your 6950 to a 70? also when I put my 3rd card in I had stupid driver problem even when I removed the old drivers etc, I would put a fresh copy of windows on to clear the fact it’s a software and not hardware problem, also I can tell you that some games have problems with the 11.8 drivers under trifire like blacktops will flicker! Do you have any software to control fans like msi afterburner as that was my main problem as I has 2 6950’s and when I put the 6970 in as well it was giving me problems .

If you want to compare any benchmarks you have done let me know and I will run them

Thanks! I've run 3dmark and got 12k marks, Heaven 2998.

 

[Ovr]

Sheesh this is getting extremely frustrating now! One card fine, two cards fine, three cards....random screen time outs and occasional hard lock. I've even tried different cards in different combos and they're all fine until number 3 goes in.

The time outs seem to be most common when the PC is left idling for a few hours (say leeching) and I come back to having to hit the reset button.

If anyone could hand out any advice I would literally give them a big kiss as this is driving me nuts!

 

[Ovr]

Sorry to bump this again guys but I've gone all the way and formatted and even without gfx card drivers installed I get signal loss and then a crash (verified by playing mp3's and them playing for 15-30s after the black screen and then crashing.)

So fed up now The cards all seem to work fine on their own, maybe the configuration would make a difference. Feeling a bit gutted

 

[Ovr]

Something random is up as the system doesn't even boot with one of the cards in the second position, just fires up and the 1st cards fan goes to 100% with no screen init etc.

I swear I've never been this frustrated with hardware before! Feels like chasing a white rabbit.

 

[pgi947]

just fires up and the 1st cards fan goes to 100% with no screen init etc.

If it helps I had this issue but with crossfire 6950's and it turned out I had knocked one of the PCIe power cables loose from the power supply. So it could still be a PSU issue.

Have you tried putting the connectors onto separate rails?

Also is it possible for you to try this on another PSU? I know you have a good power supply but its still possible it could be faulty.

 

[SpecOps]

check your memory modules ,you may think its the cards and it could be summit else ,
also just thought check the crossfire bridge connectors one could be faulty

 

[Crezzlin]

Something random is up as the system doesn't even boot with one of the cards in the second position, just fires up and the 1st cards fan goes to 100% with no screen init etc.

I swear I've never been this frustrated with hardware before! Feels like chasing a white rabbit.

Hi did you have any joy finding the fault? I have had loads of problems with my trifire setup for starters BF2 is all choppy and fps just drop at random parts of the game.. I’ve also tried everything I can think of! Does your board have a Molex power point on the board for trifire or multi gpu setups??

 

[Ovr]

Managed to fix it in the end, thank god!

I had tried everything bar changing the MSI 6970 out of the first card slot - as soon as I did that, bamb, everything functioning perfectly with no crashes! (except for Deus Ex HR cutscenes but that's a known issue)

So I'd recommend moving the cards positions about as some don't like to be in certain slots/next to each other; it could be something on my board (GigabyteEX58-UD5 ) but without another to test I can't be sure.

Worth a go for sure!