Crossfire Issues... never solved just dealt with

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Yoplait95

Yoplait95

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Jan 8, 2013
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So my question is.. do I need a stronger psu to run crossfire.... I went out and bought an 850w corsair psu to replace my current 750w Corsair psu......

Reasoning being I have completely switched from an 8320 on am3+ to an i7 3930k build with 16gb of ram... Even with the switch, I still have lower fps in LITERALLY everything with crossfire enabled.. Artifacting, glitching, general lower fps than a single card....

Here is my build.. My pc atm...
(PCPARTPICKER WON'T LET ME ADD A SECOND DIFFERENT GPU..) The second gpu is a Tri-x R9 290 from saphire..

I have the 850 ready but not installed..
 
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YoAndy
Power Consumption

Power consumption then, honestly it's not good but not that bad either. I mean do we in this enthusiast class / level really card about a 50 Watts extra ? The two GPUs consume up roughly 500 Watts under full stress, add to that the rest of your system (processor, chipset peripherals) at say 200 Watts and you'll find yourself in the 750 Watt power consumption region tops when playing a hefty game with two cards. If you plan to overclock CPU and GPUs, then make sure you add at least another 200W onto your PSU requirements. Keep that in mind okay? Increased voltages means increased power consumption. To be able to operate two or more cards in Crossfire mode you'll need a Crossfire compatible motherboard, most if not all...
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Obakasama

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Both manufacturers suggest 750W minimum. General rule of thumb for PSU, as I understand it, is for it to be double the actual wattage of the components. PSUs tend to be most efficient at half load. With that in mind I personally would consider a higher wattage PSU. I use this as a general guide:
http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page362.htm
And this suggests a 1000W PSU. But your link would put that at 1200W.

As for why you can't get Crossfire to work? No idea. According to the link, at time of writing, you have no motherboard...

More seriously though, not all games can use a multi-GPU set up well.

Not familiar with multi-GPU set ups but the two GPUs you mentioned are clocked differently. I can't help but think that, like RAM, the GPUs need to have the same clocks to work effectively together. The only other thing I would suggest is try and rule out a hardware issue: do the individual cards work with no issues in the system?

Standard things to consider if you haven't already: updating drivers and BIOS.

That's as much as I can think of. Perhaps others will have suggestions and actual advice for you.
 
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Yoplait95

Yoplait95

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Yeah been like this since 2015.. I have switched through sooo many motherboards. AM3+ even to x79... right now my current motherboard is a chinese x79, though it has pcie 3.0 @x16 for 3 lanes..

DamnI mean I guess I'm willing to grab a corsair 1200i....... at some point down the road..

Yeah I've done everything basiaclly with drivers and even to the point of reflashing both gpus to a reference 290 for their clock speeds.
 
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YoAndy

YoAndy

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Jan 27, 2017
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Crossfire, like all multi-GPU solutions, can cause issues like microstuttering and dropped or runt frames.

Microstuttering is what happens when you get sudden changes in the framerate, usually dropping from a high framerate to a low framerate for a fraction of a second, then going back up to a high framerate. This affects different people differently. Some can barely notice it unless it is really pronounced. Others are very sensitive to it and I've seen people claim that it can make them sick and nauseous.

Dropped and runt frames are basically when the GPUs fail to correctly render frames, causing the display to essentially skip over those frames. This can be perceived by the player as stuttering or hitching on the monitor.

In the past the issues listed above have been huge problems with crossfire, which is why I think many people, even today, continue to be turned off by even the mention of crossfire. But newer AMD drivers have largely fixed these problems. However, I still wouldn't say everything is 100% okay, and from what I hear crossfire still isn't quite as good as Nvidia's SLI.

Another potential drawback to crossfire is that not all games scale well with it, meaning that you don't get the full power of that second card. For example you might get only 50% better framerate with crossfire over single-GPU instead of the theoretical 100% gain you should get. This can be mostly fixed with driver updates, but AMD has been known to be rather slow about releasing such updates. But again, word is that they are getting better at it.
 
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Yoplait95

Yoplait95

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Jan 8, 2013
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Yes. I've installed literally all.. release drivers all the way up to Crimson Relive 17.5 current.. I'm currently using 4 monitors.

I installed teh 850w... and behold... BEFORE
6ba1bd9c85eaf770b1067f157b67ea61.png

AFTER 850w
iQwx1gg.png


So to get even more of a gain.. should I buy a EVGA G2 1000w?
 
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YoAndy

YoAndy

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Jan 27, 2017
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Power Consumption

Power consumption then, honestly it's not good but not that bad either. I mean do we in this enthusiast class / level really card about a 50 Watts extra ? The two GPUs consume up roughly 500 Watts under full stress, add to that the rest of your system (processor, chipset peripherals) at say 200 Watts and you'll find yourself in the 750 Watt power consumption region tops when playing a hefty game with two cards. If you plan to overclock CPU and GPUs, then make sure you add at least another 200W onto your PSU requirements. Keep that in mind okay? Increased voltages means increased power consumption. To be able to operate two or more cards in Crossfire mode you'll need a Crossfire compatible motherboard, most if not all Intel X58, P67, Z68, Z77, Z87 and X79 motherboards are compatible, basically look for two mechanical x16 PCI-Express slots that can run x8 Gen 2.0 PCI-E each. BTW AMDs 900 series also has multi-GPU support and sure, upcoming Haswell (Z87) solutions will all run fine too. Driver compatibility - in all our tests we had no significant issues whatsoever. All games worked straight out of the box including good Ultra HD compatibility. We see a bit of a bottleneck with Hitman Absolution being capped. But other than that, seriously props to that.
 
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