Two MSI 7970s work fine independently but BSOD when crossfired.

StephenP85

Honorable
Sep 3, 2013
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10,660
In the past month, I've noticed my GPUs (MSI reference 7970s) acting strangely in crossfire, starting with the occasional driver crash, to now giving me a BSOD if crossfired -- all settings stock. I have completely reinstalled Windows. I set all clocks/voltages to default. I have switched the cards around, I get the same issue. Each card works perfectly fine individually (running furmark stress test). I have tested the individual performance of each card in PCIe Slots 1 and 2, and the cards perform fine in these individual tests. But crossfire is a no go. Both cards can even be installed and powered on at the same time, with or without a crossfire bridge, as long as you don't try to enable crossfire (with the bridge installed, of course). The second you enable crossfire and hit "apply" in CCC, the screen goes blank for about 10 seconds, followed by BSOD x116 related to atikmpag.sys. Then the PC reboots back into windows, just fine, crossfire still disabled.

I have tested this with multiple drivers, ranging from 13.6 all the way up to 13.11 beta. Each time, I completely wiped all remnants of the previous drivers before installing new drivers. The drivers will not install correctly if a crossfire bridge is installed -- they will go through the motions of installing, but the screen resolution is very low, and upon reboot I receive the message "Catalyst Control Center cannot be started. There are currently no settings that can be configured using Catalyst Control Center." So, I had to wipe the drivers and again and install with only one card.

I also used 3 different crossfire bridges, in various configurations and combinations. At one point I also tried a different PSU.

So, it leads me to suspect the motherboard. Is that a reasonable guess? Any other ideas? I don't have another Z87 motherboard for easy access.

My system (CPUs and GPUs are watercooled):

i7-4770k
MSI Z87 MPower
16GB (2 x 8GB) G.Skill 2133MHz
2 x MSI Reference 7970s
Seasonic X-1250 Gold
Samsung 830 256GB SSD