Second Card Stays at Idle Clock Speeds During Games (crossfire)

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JaredFrost95

JaredFrost95

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Jul 25, 2011
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I've been trying to get my reference 7970 and powercolor 7950 to run together smoothly for a while now. Every game has been giving me stutters, the usage graph for the 7970 would be spiky and low while the 7950 was smooth and high, etc etc.

I believe I figured out why. I left HWMonitor on my second monitor while playing battlefront(in full screen) and during the valley test. In both cases, the 7970 went to 800mhz under load (what I set it to in msi afterburner to match the 7950) HOWEVER, the 7950 stayed between 300 and 400mhz. This obviously must be the cause of the stutters. I don't know why it's doing this. I tried rebooting with out msi afterburner to see if it was interfering. ULPS is disabled. Both of these cards run beautifully on their own. It doesn't look like msi afterburner has the option to seperate clock speeds between cards so I don't know how to resolve this issue. Tried re-installing drivers... Please assist...
 
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ShadyHamster

ShadyHamster

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When you say full screen mode do you mean exclusive full screen or full screen windowed mode? Unless things have changed recently you need to be running in exclusive full screen mode.
Try disabling the second monitor and see if that improves things, i haven't had much experience with multi monitors and x-fire, only ever used a single monitor so not sure what effect a second screen would have, it could be causing issues trying to render stuff on the second monitor maybe?

As for controlling the clock speed in AB for both cards, you need to untick the 'Synchronize settings for similar graphics processors' in settings.
If you are using the more modern UI of AB there should be a button to toggle between the 2 cards, if using the older style UI you can change between the 2 cards using the drop down menu in settings.
 
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JaredFrost95

JaredFrost95

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Okay I successfully locked them both to the same exact clock speeds. Still getting either extreme micro stutters or less than half the from rate of when I use 1 card. Can't tell which it was, didn't have an FPS counter. I think the BIOS on these two cards are conflicting and I should probably throw in the towel.
 
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madmatt30

madmatt30

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How's your second screen connected ??
You want them both connected to the top card in PCI slot 1.

Long while since I used crossfire , sold one of my 280x's & repurposed the other one in the end

Found a gtx 970 was very close to matching them in most games & just seemed a more sensible solution.
 
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JaredFrost95

JaredFrost95

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I'm waiting on vega so I can make my decision between green or red. Both monitors plugged into first card since I'm not using hydravision. Main monitor is 1080p 144hz through dvi dual link, second monitor is 1050x1400 60hz dvi on monitor end, hdmi on card end. I'll try with the second monitor unplugged, real quick.
 
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