Hello! First some background:
About 1 year ago I purchased the following parts to build my PC:
Case COOLER MASTER Storm Sniper SGC-6000-KXN1-GP Black Steel, ABS Plastic, Mesh bezel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Motherboard GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard
CPU Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor BX80601920
CPU Cooler COOLER MASTER V8 RR-UV8-XBU1-GP 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler Intel Core i7 compatible
PSU OCZ StealthXStream OCZ700SXS 700W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Supply
Memory OCZ Platinum 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Low Voltage Desktop Memory Model OCZ3P1600LV6GK
GPU 1 DIAMOND 5850PE51G Radeon HD 5850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
GPU 2 SAPPHIRE 100281-3SR Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) 1GB 256-bit DDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card w/ Eyefinity
Primary Drive OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Secondary Drive Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Addon 1 Nippon Labs Delux 3.5" Internal All In One Card Reader/Writer with USB2.0 & eSATA Ports Model ICR-BB
Addon 2 Sony Optiarc 24X DVD/CD Rewritable Drive Black SATA Model AD-7240S-0B - OEM
Addon 3 LITE-ON 24X DVD Writer Black SATA Model iHAS424-98 LightScribe Support
Extra Fan (Bottom) Rosewill RFA-120-WL 120mm 4 White LEDs LED Case Fan
To be specific, I initially purchased the 5850 card, and decided to buy a second video card, the 5870, when it went on sale a few months later. I thought that I could use it as my main card, crossfire it with the 5850 for games that supported it, and use it on it's own for games that didn't support crossfire.
I recently purchased the Witcher 2 from the Steam Summer sales, and to my disappointment, the "auto detect" options placed me at medium spec. I tried bumping up the settings to high spec, but there were noticeable frame rate issues.
I decided it must be a problem with my graphics cards, so I wiped the drivers, reinstalled the latest drivers, and still had no luck. I then downloaded the unlocked bios for both the 5850 and 5870, flashed the BIOS and tried to over clock the 5850 a bit to be on par with the 5870. This caused huge stability issues, the computer would just freeze while on the desktop, so I reset the clock settings to stock and ref lashed the original bios to the GPUs.
I then tried to overclock my CPU by following this guide
I was able to over clock my CPU to 3.8ghz using a BCLK of 200, a multiplier of 19, and an effective memory rate of 1600mhz. After testing for about an hour using Intel Burn Test, the system appeared to be stable (When I had tried earlier with 4.0ghz, the burn test caused BSOD's).
I saved the configuration to one of my available BIOS slots, and reverted to the optimized settings to try working on my GPU issues.
I then went back to my GPU testing with FurMark, with 1920x1080 resolution and 0x msaa, the stability test didn't crash my computer, however my cards did reach about 90c-95c. I then tried with 2x msaa, which caused the computer to restart itself about 10 seconds into the test.
I tried each card individually, while they were in individually, neither of them crashed on even the most rigorous FurMark stability tests. I then tried putting both cards in (5870 on top, 5850 on the bottom) without cross firing them. I noticed that while the system was stable, the active GPU (5870) was getting extremely hot (90c-95c), which I believe is because the 5850 directly below it was, in effect, suffocating it.
My intuition tells me that while the heat could be an issue, it appears that the stability issues are more likely being caused by the amount of electricity that these cards, when used rigorously in combination, is too much for my computer to handle.
Is there any way I can test this assumption? Is there any way I can fix it? Has anyone else had this issue before?
Below are some images of my configuration:
http://imgur.com/xPu8i&ojg9d&Vde1e&y58xG&nhUa0&7BBFm&tJVZW
(Note: this is an image gallery with many images, click the numbers above to toggle through them.)
I've tried switching the cards around when in crossfire, I've tried rolling back to the 10.5 version of the software, I've tried updating to the latest 11.6 version of the software, I've tried using different crossfire bridges, I've tried using them together, and one at a time on both crossfire busses, etc. I've noticed that FurMark causes my computer to restart after the cards reach about 85 degrees celsius, which is usually 10-15 seconds into the stability test.
PS: Sorry for the text wall, this might have been WAY too much information, but from everything I've googled from people having remotely similar issues, the number one problem is that the op doesn't provide enough info.
About 1 year ago I purchased the following parts to build my PC:
Case COOLER MASTER Storm Sniper SGC-6000-KXN1-GP Black Steel, ABS Plastic, Mesh bezel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Motherboard GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard
CPU Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor BX80601920
CPU Cooler COOLER MASTER V8 RR-UV8-XBU1-GP 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler Intel Core i7 compatible
PSU OCZ StealthXStream OCZ700SXS 700W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Supply
Memory OCZ Platinum 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Low Voltage Desktop Memory Model OCZ3P1600LV6GK
GPU 1 DIAMOND 5850PE51G Radeon HD 5850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
GPU 2 SAPPHIRE 100281-3SR Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) 1GB 256-bit DDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card w/ Eyefinity
Primary Drive OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Secondary Drive Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Addon 1 Nippon Labs Delux 3.5" Internal All In One Card Reader/Writer with USB2.0 & eSATA Ports Model ICR-BB
Addon 2 Sony Optiarc 24X DVD/CD Rewritable Drive Black SATA Model AD-7240S-0B - OEM
Addon 3 LITE-ON 24X DVD Writer Black SATA Model iHAS424-98 LightScribe Support
Extra Fan (Bottom) Rosewill RFA-120-WL 120mm 4 White LEDs LED Case Fan
To be specific, I initially purchased the 5850 card, and decided to buy a second video card, the 5870, when it went on sale a few months later. I thought that I could use it as my main card, crossfire it with the 5850 for games that supported it, and use it on it's own for games that didn't support crossfire.
I recently purchased the Witcher 2 from the Steam Summer sales, and to my disappointment, the "auto detect" options placed me at medium spec. I tried bumping up the settings to high spec, but there were noticeable frame rate issues.
I decided it must be a problem with my graphics cards, so I wiped the drivers, reinstalled the latest drivers, and still had no luck. I then downloaded the unlocked bios for both the 5850 and 5870, flashed the BIOS and tried to over clock the 5850 a bit to be on par with the 5870. This caused huge stability issues, the computer would just freeze while on the desktop, so I reset the clock settings to stock and ref lashed the original bios to the GPUs.
I then tried to overclock my CPU by following this guide
I was able to over clock my CPU to 3.8ghz using a BCLK of 200, a multiplier of 19, and an effective memory rate of 1600mhz. After testing for about an hour using Intel Burn Test, the system appeared to be stable (When I had tried earlier with 4.0ghz, the burn test caused BSOD's).
I saved the configuration to one of my available BIOS slots, and reverted to the optimized settings to try working on my GPU issues.
I then went back to my GPU testing with FurMark, with 1920x1080 resolution and 0x msaa, the stability test didn't crash my computer, however my cards did reach about 90c-95c. I then tried with 2x msaa, which caused the computer to restart itself about 10 seconds into the test.
I tried each card individually, while they were in individually, neither of them crashed on even the most rigorous FurMark stability tests. I then tried putting both cards in (5870 on top, 5850 on the bottom) without cross firing them. I noticed that while the system was stable, the active GPU (5870) was getting extremely hot (90c-95c), which I believe is because the 5850 directly below it was, in effect, suffocating it.
My intuition tells me that while the heat could be an issue, it appears that the stability issues are more likely being caused by the amount of electricity that these cards, when used rigorously in combination, is too much for my computer to handle.
Is there any way I can test this assumption? Is there any way I can fix it? Has anyone else had this issue before?
Below are some images of my configuration:
http://imgur.com/xPu8i&ojg9d&Vde1e&y58xG&nhUa0&7BBFm&tJVZW
(Note: this is an image gallery with many images, click the numbers above to toggle through them.)
I've tried switching the cards around when in crossfire, I've tried rolling back to the 10.5 version of the software, I've tried updating to the latest 11.6 version of the software, I've tried using different crossfire bridges, I've tried using them together, and one at a time on both crossfire busses, etc. I've noticed that FurMark causes my computer to restart after the cards reach about 85 degrees celsius, which is usually 10-15 seconds into the stability test.
PS: Sorry for the text wall, this might have been WAY too much information, but from everything I've googled from people having remotely similar issues, the number one problem is that the op doesn't provide enough info.