ATI Crossfire not working properly

[mike3zx]

Hello,

I have recently purchased a 2nd ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB to use in Crossfire. After connecting both bridges, reinstalling new drivers and testing out the cards, it seems there are some issues.

1) Games do not see an increase in performance at all, in fact most see a reduction in performance. (Crysis has a lot of fragmenting when I play)

System Specs:

AMD Phenom 9600 2.3GHz 2MB L3 Stock
Antec EA650 650W Continuous Power ATX12V Ver.2.2 / EPS12V version 2.91
G.SKILL 8GB (4 x 2GB) DDR2 800 F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ
GIGABYTE GA-MA790GP-UD4H AM2+/AM2 AMD 790GX
SAPPHIRE 100259-1GL Radeon HD 4870 1GB (x2 in Crossfire)
Windows Vista x64 Ultimate w/ TLB Errata disabled in BIOS (haven't had any problems)

I'm thinking it's either CPU bottleneck or power supply, what do you all think?

Thanks,

-Mike

 

[daedalus685]

What resolution do you play at?

With that CPU you wont see much improvement over on 4870 1gig at anything less than 1920*1200 with eye candy set quite high. (AA and the like)

Your PSU shoudl be enough power.. though it might be pushing it depending on how you ahve the cards connected.

 

[mike3zx]

I play at 1920x1080 on my TV over HDMI. I usually play with 4x AA and everything set very high on games.

Do you think going to a 3.0GHz AMD Phenom w/ 6MB L3 I would see a noticeable improvement?

I would have to imagine I should still see something with the added GPU on games even with that CPU.

 

[daedalus685]

Depends on the game, you would maybe see 20% improvement int eh best of situations with crysis...

With that CPU single didget scaling in most games wouldnt be out of the question.

Going the 3ghz should give you substantial gains.

 

[mike3zx]

Depends on the game, you would maybe see 20% improvement int eh best of situations with crysis...

With that CPU single didget scaling in most games wouldnt be out of the question.

Going the 3ghz should give you substantial gains.

So you would agree that going with the new CPU would give me pretty big gains? What do you think though is causing me to lose frames in all games I play (Fallout 3 @ 1920x1080 w/ 8x AA and Ultra settings, Crysis same, HAWX DX10 Super High Settings, etc.)?

 

[photonboy]

You can easily determine if your CPU is maxed out by playing a game and running the Task manager in the backgroun (CTRL-ALT-DEL).

Play for at least 5 minutes, then stop the game and see your recent CPU history.

If your CPU or at least part of it is completely maxed out it's your CPU. If it's NOT then it's another problem.

Personally I would have thought you'd see performance in some games.

You can also try comparing with no AA at all to see what that does.

 

[SpinachEater]

I ran in to the a similar problem when I sat up xfire, didn't see a performance gain in my games and eventually found out I wasn't using xfire at all. There are some things that you can do to make sure you are using xfire.

First, go into your system tray CCC icon and enable the ATI xfirex symbol so you actually know if it is kicking in or not. That will get rid of any doubt if it is actually running or not. When you start a 3D app, you should see the ATI symbol in the upper right corner of your screen. A second way to check is to benchmark with 3DMark06. You should see a healthy bump in your score when 2 GPUs are in play (and the ATI symbol if you enable it...two birds with one stone).

Second, you have to have two things selected in CCC to have xfire work. The first is obvious, under Crossfirex settings, enable it. The next is usually not too clear. In the 3D settings you have to have Catalyst AI enabled. Set the slider to standard.

I would also remove ALL video drivers (NV, ATI, Intel...ect...ect..) through add/remove programs, restart, delete ALL ATI, NV folders and then reinstall 9.4 freshly. Sometimes installing ATI drivers over one another or after having NV drivers doesn't work out the best.

This should help you get started!

 

[mike3zx]

I'm reinstalling Vista x64 Ultimate right now (had x64 XP but it kept crashing for some stupid reason) and I will see what happens.

As far as the ATI symbol on during 3D Apps, I've never heard of that or seen that. Is that bad? Not saying I don't believe you I just wonder if that's why b/c I've never seen anything like that show up before.

 

[SpinachEater]

No, it isn't really information that is out there and it isn't enabled by default. They announced the option when it first appeared in one of the driver updates a while back.

If you right click on your Control Center tray icon, and mouse over your first graphics card, you will find it in the crossfirex option.