Crossfire problem 5870's

[Morals]

Hello tom's hardware! Just wanting to talk with you and see your opinions, anyway;

I am having trouble crossfiring my Powercolor 5870's, in which case I'm getting the same results if not worse then to disabling crossfire.
I tried replacing the motherboard with an Asus 785 Chipset board with crossfire of x16/x4

System hardware:
AMD Thuban 1055T Overclocked at 3.4GHz
Kingston HyperX 2x2GB 1600 CL8 RAM
Asus M4A89GTD Pro USB3 Motherboard @ x8/x8 crossfire
2x Powercolor 5870's
CM Silent Pro 850W modular power supply

Things I've tried:
reinstalling windows
one crossfire bridge
both crossfire bridges

software:
Catalyst 10.4
Windows 7 pro 64bit

 

[Morals]

Any help?

 

[Maziar]

Hello and welcome to the forums
So is the performance worse in both dual 8x and 16x4x ?
Which games/apps did you test ? and what was the resolution ?

 

[welshmousepk]

how are you testing the performance?

not all games support crossfire, so you can see lowered results in some situations.

you certainly only need one crossfire bridge (don't listen to anyone who says otherwise, its a common misconception but still just as wrong)

 

[Morals]

Benchmarking with crysis / warhead, and 3dmark06.
Edit: Running 1920x1080 resolution.

 

[Morals]

Hello and welcome to the forums
So is the performance worse in both dual 8x and 16x4x ?
Which games/apps did you test ? and what was the resolution ?

extremely similar results on 16/4 and 8/8.
other than whats listed, is there anything you recommend me to test?

 

[Maziar]

Try testing the cards one by one and check their performance in single mode

 

[Morals]

Card #1
Crysis benchmark overall FPS: 40.225
Very high, 1920 x 1080, No AA, 64 bit directX 10.
Warhead benchmark overall FPS:40.59
Enthusiast,1920 x 1080, No AA, 32 bit directX 10.
3dmark06
SM2.0 Score: 6666
HDR/SM3.0 Score: 6833
1920 x 1080
8 Sample AA
Anistropic x16
Card #2
Crysis benchmark overall FPS: 40.715
Very high, 1920 x 1080, No AA, 64 bit directX 10.
Warhead benchmark overall FPS:40.69
Enthusiast,1920 x 1080, No AA, 32 bit directX 10.
3dmark06
SM2.0 Score: 6677
HDR/SM3.0 Score: 6818
1920 x 1080
8 Sample AA
Anistropic x16

 

[Maziar]

And the CrossFire result ?
Also if you can,test another game too

 

[Morals]

Crossfire results:
Crysis benchmark overall FPS: 39.065
Very high, 1920 x 1080, No AA, 64 bit directX 10.
Warhead benchmark overall FPS:44.47
Enthusiast,1920 x 1080, No AA, 32 bit directX 10.
3dmark06
SM2.0 Score: 7419
HDR/SM3.0 Score: 10565
1920 x 1080
8 Sample AA

 

[welshmousepk]

have you tried the single cards in both slots?

perhaps one of the PCIe slots is faulty.

 

[Morals]

What I have noticed is that when I have both cards in, and I try and connect to my DVI monitor from my top display card, I get no signal, it has always been at the bottom.

Not to mention this motherboard did come with a VGA switch card, in which case if you use one video card they tell you to use the switch card in the top slot and run the card in the bottom slot, otherwise it says it will run at x8 I think, I will try and run a single card in top slot soon.

 

[Morals]

update:
Top slot with one video card works fine, benchmarked with similar result / un-noticeable difference...

Very confused at this stage.

 

[Maziar]

Can you try other games ? because Crysis and Crysis warhead have the same engine and judging with 3Dmark isn't very fair so,it would be good if you can test some other games

 

[welshmousepk]

is crossfire actually activated on the system? have you checked to make syre the cards are running on crossfire mode? (it should be viewable in CCC)

 

[Morals]

is crossfire actually activated on the system? have you checked to make syre the cards are running on crossfire mode? (it should be viewable in CCC)

Shows as enabled but still no luck.

Off topic; Today I took the machine in to the local computer shop and they let me try work on a different mobo with i7 cpu, STILL no luck.
And replaced video card with brand new, still no luck.

On topic; This problem must be software related.

Apart from CCC is there anything else I should be looking for?
Any obvious factors in the BIOS? I've tried almost everything.

 

[welshmousepk]

im really quite stumped tbh.

the only thing i can think of is rolling back to an older driver, though im not sure that will help in the least.

 

[Keiki646]

Hello tom's hardware! Just wanting to talk with you and see your opinions, anyway;

I am having trouble crossfiring my Powercolor 5870's, in which case I'm getting the same results if not worse then to disabling crossfire.
I tried replacing the motherboard with an Asus 785 Chipset board with crossfire of x16/x4

System hardware:
AMD Thuban 1055T Overclocked at 3.4GHz
Kingston HyperX 2x2GB 1600 CL8 RAM
Asus M4A89GTD Pro USB3 Motherboard @ x8/x8 crossfire
2x Powercolor 5870's
CM Silent Pro 850W modular power supply

Things I've tried:
reinstalling windows
one crossfire bridge
both crossfire bridges

software:
Catalyst 10.4
Windows 7 pro 64bit

I just wrote a little article about the 10.4 Driver and I also crashes while playing games and watching video
roll back in install the 10.3 driver

 

[Morals]

I just wrote a little article about the 10.4 Driver and I also crashes while playing games and watching video
roll back in install the 10.3 driver

I've tried almost everything you can think of, Including 10.3 drivers, I've even tried 9.12...

and I don't think its bios due to the fact this has been tested on different motherboards...
Maybe the actual cards themselves have incompatible firmware or something?

????
No clue...

 

[welshmousepk]

when you play a game/run a benchmark, does the GPU usage peak on both cards?

is on of them staying at zero load? if it IS, then try switching them around to other slots. does the same card stay at 0?

 

[Morals]

when you play a game/run a benchmark, does the GPU usage peak on both cards?

is on of them staying at zero load? if it IS, then try switching them around to other slots. does the same card stay at 0?

I don't know how to check the loads, I do know though that secondary card always gives GPU and Memory clocks of 0.

Switch them round, same thing now but for the secondary card still, instead of instinctively thinking its the primary.

 

[welshmousepk]

that doesn't sound good.

Have you hunted around in the BIOS for any strange settings that may be affecting the performance?

it sounds like a motherboard issue more than anything. but i can;t think of what would actually be causing it.

 

[Morals]

I've trolled the BIOS for a while thinking and testing every possible feature, not to mention in previous posts changing the mobo/CPU altogether.

Only thing I haven't replaced would be my RAM, but I DOUBT thats an issue...

 

[welshmousepk]

yeah, the RAM won't be the problem here.

like i said, im almost certain its the mobo but that doesn't really help if we can;t fogure out WHY its being a d*ck . (note, that word is not duck)

i can;t really find any other people who have had crossfire issues with the board, so it may be that yours in particular is faulty. since you have already tested both cards in another system and have eliminated them as the issue, it may be time to get in contact with ASUS and RMA the board.

 

[Morals]

yeah, the RAM won't be the problem here.

like i said, im almost certain its the mobo but that doesn't really help if we can;t fogure out WHY its being a d*ck . (note, that word is not duck)

i can;t really find any other people who have had crossfire issues with the board, so it may be that yours in particular is faulty. since you have already tested both cards in another system and have eliminated them as the issue, it may be time to get in contact with ASUS and RMA the board.

That makes no logical sense... why would this happen on other tested boards aswell....

It can't be the motherboard...