ATI issues, imagine that.

[visioneer]

Here's what I'm working with

ASUS EAH5870's Crossfired
AMD Phenom II x4 965
8 GB of GSkill DDR2 1066 RAM
GIGABYTE GA-MA790GP-UD4H AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 790GX AMD Motherboard
Windows 7 64 bit

I bought a 5870 and it ran fantastic. I decided to get a 2nd one so I could cream my pants running benchmarks. 3DMark Vantage and Unigine Heaven run great. Awesome scores. The problem is that when I want to play any game that I own (BFBC2 mostly) I get so pissed off I spend my "game time" trying to figure out why ATI sucks so bad. With one card I can get 60 fps constantly (vsync) but when I'm using CF that happens very very very very rarely and I don't even know what one of the hundred methods I've tried even worked those few times. I've seen double the performance in game with these cards but 99% of the time I have this issue where the frame rate goes from 60, down to 48, up to 62 (which with vsync it should only hit 60?), and then back to 60. That all happens in about two seconds time and it happens in perfect intervals around seven seconds maybe? Even when I'm at the loading screen it goes from 60, to about 58, up to 62, then back to 60. When I'm staring at the ground in game it does the same thing but it goes down to 48 and sometimes 45. Wtf is this? If I can have smooth performance with one card why not with two?

Things I've tried

Uninstall and reinstall drivers/profiles (normally and with driver sweeper)
Disable A.I., Disable CF, Enable CF, Enable A.I.
Moved the CF bridge back and forth
Moved the cards back and forth from PCI slots
Overclocking, stock everything
Used one card at a time

Other notes

I don't have any high temps and no services are spiking cpu usage during the intervals. This is my first ATI build and I regret it so far. I really hope somebody knows something I don't and I can actually feel a little joy out of this decision I made...

 

[deweycd]

What is your power supply, is there a possibility that you have too small of a PSU?

 

[ares1214]

Here's what I'm working with

ASUS EAH5870's Crossfired
AMD Phenom II x4 965
8 GB of GSkill DDR2 1066 RAM
GIGABYTE GA-MA790GP-UD4H AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 790GX AMD Motherboard
Windows 7 64 bit

I bought a 5870 and it ran fantastic. I decided to get a 2nd one so I could cream my pants running benchmarks. 3DMark Vantage and Unigine Heaven run great. Awesome scores. The problem is that when I want to play any game that I own (BFBC2 mostly) I get so pissed off I spend my "game time" trying to figure out why ATI sucks so bad. With one card I can get 60 fps constantly (vsync) but when I'm using CF that happens very very very very rarely and I don't even know what one of the hundred methods I've tried even worked those few times. I've seen double the performance in game with these cards but 99% of the time I have this issue where the frame rate goes from 60, down to 48, up to 62 (which with vsync it should only hit 60?), and then back to 60. That all happens in about two seconds time and it happens in perfect intervals around seven seconds maybe? Even when I'm at the loading screen it goes from 60, to about 58, up to 62, then back to 60. When I'm staring at the ground in game it does the same thing but it goes down to 48 and sometimes 45. Wtf is this? If I can have smooth performance with one card why not with two?

Things I've tried

Uninstall and reinstall drivers/profiles (normally and with driver sweeper)
Disable A.I., Disable CF, Enable CF, Enable A.I.
Moved the CF bridge back and forth
Moved the cards back and forth from PCI slots
Overclocking, stock everything
Used one card at a time

Other notes

I don't have any high temps and no services are spiking cpu usage during the intervals. This is my first ATI build and I regret it so far. I really hope somebody knows something I don't and I can actually feel a little joy out of this decision I made...

Does it studder?

 

[visioneer]

I have a 750w PSU. I did assume it wouldn't be big enough but I read a lot about ATI's power consumption and there have been posts claiming that a 750 was good enough for two 5870's. I have 60A on two rails. I read that you only need 55-60. So it's possible that my PSU is causing these weird intervals?

And no, it doesn't stutter ever.

 

[deweycd]

Try running FurMark and see if you have problems like this. It is really good for stress testing a crossfire system. If you find your having the problem during furmark then it is probably hardware, if it runs great, it is probably a software/OS issue.

 

[visioneer]

Alright I'll give that a shot and thanks for the advice. I just ran heaven and went into free-camera mode so I could stare at a wall/the sky to see if my frames varied then and unfortunately ,yes, they did. So it happens with any 3D application I just didn't notice it in benchmarks until now.

 

[visioneer]

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Yeah I'm almost positive it's my PSU. I only got to 50% on FurMark and my PC died. No BSOD or anything. Just died, power completely drained. What are your thoughts? PSU yeah?

 

[visioneer]

I hope I'm right because I just ordered a 1000w PSU

 

[deweycd]

Yes, this is definatly a PSU problem. You are likely to have no issue with a 1000w PSU as long as you ordered a good brand. For my system with two 5850s I went with a minimum 850W because I didn't want to run into possible problems. I ended up getting a 950W because of availability. In a lot of peoples cases issues stem from the PSU.

 

[visioneer]

I got this one from Newegg because it's $80 off and had good ratings. KINGWIN Lazer LZ-1000 1000W Modular 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC W/ 3-Way LED Switch and Universal Modular Connector Power Supply. Plus it matches my case lights lol even though that doesn't really matter.

 

[visioneer]

Oh and thanks for all the help.

 

[deweycd]

The reviews for this PSU seem positive, eg: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=833&type=expert&pid=8 and you shouldn't have any problems powering your system. I would take out one of the cards so that you don't wreck your system while you wait for your new PSU.

So, is you title of this topic still fitting? Still mad at ATI?

 

[visioneer]

Well I'm not as mad at ATI but I did have a lot of problems with their drivers and still kinda do. The hardware is great, but that's also thanks to ASUS lol so I'm just going to hope for the best and see if they get their drivers more together.

 

[visioneer]

The problem I had with my frame rate jumping up and down was 100% because of ASUS SmartDoctor which you have to use to tweak the voltage of these cards but isn't always necessary. My new PSU didn't solve the issue and I eventually discovered that it was this. If you have this problem too, just use MSI Afterburner for user defined fan controls and small overclocks and if you want to up your voltage use Smartdoctor, close it after you set the voltage, and then open Afterburner. I'm hoping the next driver package fixes this annoying display driver stopped repsonding and recovered crap and the CTD's for no reason during certain games.

 

[visioneer]

The problem I had with my frame rate jumping up and down was 100% because of ASUS SmartDoctor which you have to use to tweak the voltage of these cards but isn't always necessary. My new PSU didn't solve the issue and I eventually discovered that it was this. If you have this problem too, just use MSI Afterburner for user defined fan controls and small overclocks and if you want to up your voltage use Smartdoctor, close it after you set the voltage, and then open Afterburner. I'm hoping the next driver package fixes this annoying display driver stopped repsonding and recovered crap and the CTD's for no reason during certain games.