Crossfire Problems

[BlueWrath]

Hi Everyone,

I'm currently trying to get crossfire enabled with 2 Sapphire HD4850s, however I am running into some problems.

The main problem I am facing is that I am getting absolutely no performance increase with Crossfire enabled. I think this may be because the second GPU appears to be doing nothing at all. I've run a number of full screen applications and having GPU-Z (which reports 2x Crossfire as being enabled) logging the activity of the second card. It seems that the first card does all the work and the second card just idles giving me no FPS increase. Another thing I have noticed in CCC is that in the hardware information that it recognises 2 card a "Primary Adapter" and a "Disabled Adapter"

Anyone have any ideas why this would be happening? I have both the ribbon cables attatched, disabled / re-enabled Crossfire and updated the drivers. I am now out of ideas.

My System (running XP):

- 2 x Sapphire 4850 512MB
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.4GHZ)
- GSkill 2G(2x1G) DDR3 1333 PC10600
- Gigabyte GA-EP45T-DS3R
- OCZ StealthXstream 600W SLI Ready Power Supply(9800GX2 Support)

 

[sudec]

You should try checking in device manager, whether both cards are enabled, and I would also recommend to try an older driver with the cards. It really does help sometimes.

Also make sure that both cards get enough power, because it happened to me that I had problems like this, and the second wasn't correctly plugged in.

 

[V3NOM]

try 8.10 then 8.11 then 8.12 beta and full drivers. then report back private

 

[BlueWrath]

Thanks for the replies guys!

@ sudec

I took them out, reseated both of them and then plugged them back in. So I think the power cords were not the problem. Thanks for the help anyways!

@ V3NOM

None of those drivers seemed to do anything to improve the situation. I then noticed I had the 8.8 driver disk lying on the floor and decided to give that a go thinking it couldn't make anything else worse. Installed em' and it now seems that the second GPU doesn't just sit there idle anymore, it is now doing something (running at about 40 - 50% load) whenever a 3Dapp is running. However, CCC is still telling me the adapter is disabled and I am getting almost no increase in speed with any full screen apps.

Anything else I can try?

 

[V3NOM]

8.9? :lol: may as well i guess..

 

[50bmg]

In CCC make sure Catalyst AI is ENABLED. Cat AI must be enabled to see the increase in performance.

It is in the 3d settings.

edit: update your drivers. I would go with 8.12 beta over 8.12.

 

[BlueWrath]

Thanks for the replies so far.

I don't really know what solved the problem but I had a copy of Server 2008 (damn drivers and XP) lying around so I decided to give that a burl and it worked a charm, with the latest drivers that is

One more small question though. I'm running PC3 10700 RAM and I've overclocked my Q6600 to 2.7GHZ (running at 300MHZ FSB) and I've recently been advised by a friend to undo the changes (my max temps are at 50 degrees C). My intuition tells me that the RAM will be fine unless I up the FSB > 333MHZ. Am I right here? Or is my friend right?