Crossfire not working?

Dleslie212 · Oct 18, 2013

Yesterday, I went out and bought two MSI Twin Frozr R9 280x cards and installed them last night. One card worked, and one didn't. So today, i exchanged the DOA card for a new one, and after a few reboots and such, got everything installed.

When I run Unigine Heaven with Afterburner open, it shows GPU1 usage at 98% but GPU2 usage stays at 0%. According to GPU-Z and CCC, Crossfire is enabled. Both programs list both of the 280s, and they both appear in Device Manager... but for some reason the 2nd card isn't doing anything? It doesn't even warm up during benching like the first card. Also, the Crossfire bridge is installed

Last thing - both cards are at stock speeds, I haven't tried overclocking anything on them. I tried to download the 13.11 Beta driver, but whenever I go to install it, it gives an error message saying

"AMD Catalyst Mobility cannot be downloaded due to incompatible hardware/software on your computer. Your computer does not contain a proper graphics adapter"

My specs:

2 MSI Twin Frozr R9 280x (Crossfire)
Board - Asus P6X58-E WS
CPU - Intel I7 970 hex core (overclocked to 4.2ghz)
PSU - Rosewill 1000 watt
Ram - 24gb DDR3

Does anybody have any ideas?

COLGeek · Oct 18, 2013

Have you verified that both R9s work properly independently (one at a time installed)?

Dleslie212 · Oct 18, 2013

Yes i did. Installed one, hooked up monitor and booted. Then removed, and did the same with card 2. They both worked fine

COLGeek · Oct 18, 2013

What version of Windows are you using?

Also, you should not be using the Mobility version of Catalyst (per the error above). Rather, you should be using the regular (desktop) version.

COLGeek · Oct 18, 2013

This one: http://www2.ati.com/drivers/beta/amd_catalyst_13.11_betav1.exe

Dleslie212 · Oct 18, 2013

Win 7 64 bit. I do have the regular CCC installed, its just that when I went to AMDs driver download site, i entered all the info as far as what OS, GPU and such i had, and that's what it recommended that I download.

COLGeek · Oct 18, 2013

Try the one I linked.

Dleslie212 · Oct 18, 2013

Just finished downloading. I'll report back in a few.... thanks for the help!

COLGeek · Oct 18, 2013

Got my fingers crossed for you.

Dleslie212 · Oct 18, 2013

Before I install, should I uninstall all the old Catalyst programs and drivers first?

COLGeek · Oct 19, 2013

It wouldn't hurt to do so, just to be on the safe side. But, in reality, it shouldn't matter. However, these are beta drivers so go ahead and remove the previous ones.

Dleslie212 · Oct 19, 2013

Ok installing now. Just a thought - my motherboard doesn't support PCIe 3.0, only 2.0 but i did pretty deep research before buying these cards, and i read that 2.0 would be fine. Could this be an issue?

COLGeek · Oct 19, 2013

That should not be an issue at all. PCIe 3.0 devices work fine in PCIe 2.x slots, they are backward compatible.

Dleslie212 · Oct 19, 2013

Thats what I thought. 13.11 is still installing. I found another guy with a similar problem
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1842954/280x-crossfire-problem-7970-rebrand-cards.html#11749236

Dleslie212 · Oct 19, 2013

doesn't seem to have made a difference. GPU 2 shows a usage spike of 100%, but during Unigine Heaven it stays at 0 while GPU1 hits around 60%. Although, on this last bench, the heatpipe for GPU2 got pretty hot, whereas it never even did that before

COLGeek · Oct 19, 2013

What does GPU-Z show for your configuration?

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

COLGeek · Oct 19, 2013

Also, what profile on Unigine are you using?

Dleslie212 · Oct 19, 2013

http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/13/10/19/8fh.png

Dleslie212 · Oct 19, 2013

http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/13/10/19/gfm.png

the first link is with GPU1 selected, second link is GPU2 selected

Dleslie212 · Oct 19, 2013

There is a difference between bus interface? I don't know if that means anything or not

I'm using the Extreme Preset. Getting a score of around 1070

COLGeek · Oct 19, 2013

Both are definitely enabled. Do you also have Unigine Valley? If not, get it. Use the Extreme HD Preset and run it.

http://unigine.com/products/valley/download/

Dleslie212 · Oct 19, 2013

Downloading now... i'll report back again haha

COLGeek · Oct 19, 2013

Dleslie212 :

That is common. In multi-GPU systems, on some motherboards, the second GPU slot runs at x8 speeds, while the primary runs at x16. This is the case with your motherboard chipset.

Some run at x8/x8 and some newer mobos run at full x16/x16.

Really not a concern for you.

Dleslie212 · Oct 19, 2013

Ok that seemed like it worked! On extremeHD, the score was just over 3000. I wasn't able to grab a screen of that, but heres a screen of the Afterburner info while the bench ran

http://i43.tinypic.com/2egd8r5.png

how does that look?

COLGeek · Oct 19, 2013

You are good to go! Have fun!!

Crossfire not working?

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