Crossfire perma full power

[adrianbargen]

I recently purchased two 6850s. I noticed one major difference between them and my 4850s I don't like. Only one card runs at its full potential most of the time. some of my older games doesn't seem to get it to kick in, and the ones that do barely get it to warm up. by older games i mean like WOW or EVE. I can really feel the difference in crysis and ffxiv. I run GPU-Z and it doesn't seem to pull the power nor does it ever seem to want to turn the clock-speed up where it should be.

Is there a way to get them to run full power all the time?

crosshair formula III board
phenom II x4 955 clocked to 3.6
8 gigs ddr3 1600
2 western digitals in raid 0
both slots running 16x

not a top end system but shouldn't be bottle-necking by any means.

my dual 4850s shouldn't be getting better framerates than my overclocked 6850s in anything, if anything they should have nearly doubled. 3dmark11 i do great, 3dmark06 i actually do a little worse.

 

[adrianbargen]

I should probably mention i'm running an antec 750 watt with 4 rails each card on its own.

 

[iceclock]

they should both run at full potential, its not like ur using a stronger gpu with a weaker gpu and crossfiring them, than urpc would scale down the stronger gpu to the level of the weakerone, but this is not the case if im not mistaking

 

[adrianbargen]

no, the cards are identical. I have a feeling it has to do with the fact that outside of games it shuts one card down. There is the power saving crap. Then there was something i read about after driver like 8.5 or so games not requiring dx10 won't use crossfire. when i used riva tuner with my 4850s the cards would stay at the clock i set it no matter what. with overdrive it will still clock down you just change the max clock so it will get up to that level. seems like it bounces around alot according to gpu-z. one card stays on top clockspeeds the other bounces around all the time like there is some bullshit power saver thing. tried riva with these cards and for some reason i can't get it to work, maybe having to do with riva not being up to the 6k series idk.

 

[iceclock]

i dont know, but in theory both should run at 100% capacity

 

[adrianbargen]

thats exactly why its driving me crazy. in 3dmark06 they should be doing alot better than the 4850s but they do the same or a little worse. I think i was getting higher framerates in 3dmark11 than in 06 lol.

 

[ubercake]

I recently purchased two 6850s. I noticed one major difference between them and my 4850s I don't like. Only one card runs at its full potential most of the time. some of my older games doesn't seem to get it to kick in, and the ones that do barely get it to warm up. by older games i mean like WOW or EVE. I can really feel the difference in crysis and ffxiv. I run GPU-Z and it doesn't seem to pull the power nor does it ever seem to want to turn the clock-speed up where it should be.

Is there a way to get them to run full power all the time?

crosshair formula III board
phenom II x4 955 clocked to 3.6
8 gigs ddr3 1600
2 western digitals in raid 0
both slots running 16x

not a top end system but shouldn't be bottle-necking by any means.

my dual 4850s shouldn't be getting better framerates than my overclocked 6850s in anything, if anything they should have nearly doubled. 3dmark11 i do great, 3dmark06 i actually do a little worse.

Are you running with drivers 11.1 or 11.1a?

Have you downloaded the latest Catalyst Application Profiles (CAP)?

 

[z06psi]

I had a lot of problems with 11.1 where it would not crossfire.

 

[ubercake]

no, the cards are identical. I have a feeling it has to do with the fact that outside of games it shuts one card down. There is the power saving crap. Then there was something i read about after driver like 8.5 or so games not requiring dx10 won't use crossfire. when i used riva tuner with my 4850s the cards would stay at the clock i set it no matter what. with overdrive it will still clock down you just change the max clock so it will get up to that level. seems like it bounces around alot according to gpu-z. one card stays on top clockspeeds the other bounces around all the time like there is some bullshit power saver thing. tried riva with these cards and for some reason i can't get it to work, maybe having to do with riva not being up to the 6k series idk.

When you're in 2d mode (ie Windows desktop) only one of your cards should have any sort of load be active unless you're not crossfire and each card is controlling monitors individually. In your crossfire options when you right click on the AMD catalyst icon in your service tray, you can choose to show the crossfire logo when crossfire is active.

 

[ubercake]

I had a lot of problems with 11.1 where it would not crossfire.

11.1a is the key. I couldn't even get 11.1 to work at all with anything but a single-card configuration.

AMD calls it a hotfix, though it's a full-blown overhaul of the junk they released as 11.1, but works with crossfire setups.

Note... the HDMI Audio part of 11.1a failed to install, though I don't use HDMI audio with this PC. I don't know if this would happen for everyone with a crossfire set up, but that's the only footnote to my 11.1a install. 10.12 worked without a hitch.

 

[adrianbargen]

Are you running with drivers 11.1 or 11.1a?

Have you downloaded the latest Catalyst Application Profiles (CAP)?

didn't even know about 11.1a and never looked into the application profiles, maybe because before i never actually needed them. Thanks for the tip i'll get back as soon as i find out if that makes a difference.

 

[z06psi]

HDMI audio also failed. I use the display port though.

 

[ubercake]

HDMI audio also failed. I use the display port though.

Yeah. I'm using the DVI connection from the video card and audio from my motherboard, so no problem here either.

 

[adrianbargen]

yeah, i think updating to the 11.1a and getting the profiles helped, i also overclocked em both up to 875 without a hitch. Mostly to see how hard its working if at all by the temp and can definately tell its being worked. Running it hard they both clear 70c wich is getting pretty damn hot. I guess i just expected a much more significant boost in performance going up a whole generation in tech. seeings how the 5k and the 6k are fairly close and the 5k smoked the hell out of the 4ks.

anyway I guess they are working as intended. And anything i throw at it plays smoothly no matter the settings so all in all i gain the new dx11 perks and gained a few frames so even if it isn't what i expected its still better in every way.

thank you for you help, i would have never known about the 11.1a and profiles otherwise and it did improve with those.

 

[adrianbargen]

Best answer selected by adrianbargen.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey