6870 crossfire problems

outlaw00000

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Mar 23, 2012
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I'm having HUGE problem's with my HD radeon 6870. I just got a HIS IceQ to go along with my sapphire reference model, both of them are the same card so I figure it wouldn't matter if I got a different brand with a nice cooler. But once I tried to crossfire them all hell broke loose. At first it ran fine booted into windows automatically detected the crossfire everything was fine. Then I tried to run The Witcher 2 on ultra to benchmark it the moment I load the saved data the screen start shaking oddly and then I got a 116 BSOD. So I figure "eh its probably just a driver problem so I reinstalled the drivers and got it to run the witcher2 I even played it for about 30 minutes. After that I thought I was safe but once I tried to run dungeon defender...BSOD. Getting frustrated I did some research and it turns out people were having problems with catalyst 12.3 and crossfired 6800s they were suggested to roll back to the 12.1 drivers so I did that. Now I'm having different problems altogether, when I try to load a game the drivers crash and recover constantly. So I played around with the drivers some more and got it to work...again. So I tried running furmark to stress it and to see if it would crash. It didn't crash but my second gpu wasn't going under any kind of stress it was at 0% load. SOOOOOO play around with it some more (it was 3 AM god knows what I did) and got both GPUs to stress but guess what drivers crashed and recovered. So now I'm its one of 3 things: a bad card, an insufficient PSU, or AMD's **** drivers. I'm going to test the new card on its own to see if its faulty but if thats not it...any ideas?
 

outlaw00000

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Mar 23, 2012
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Oh and I almost forgot heres my specs

i7 2600k @3.4Ghz

Asrock z68 extreme 4 gen3

Kingwin lazer 750W

Sapphire(reference model) hd radeon 6870 1gb, HIS IceQ hd radeon 6870 1gb

GSkill RipjawX RAM 4GBx2 @1866MHz
 

trapper

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Jun 23, 2005
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[strike]What is your current GPU? I'd guess that thats your problem based upon what you've said has happened.[/strike]

You posted your PSU right as I was asking about it. That PSU, if running properly, should be fine. To test if that is the problem though do you have a 2nd PSU you might be able to use to see if your PC runs games at that point?
 

ringzero

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Dec 7, 2011
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I just hooked up Crossfire on two 6870s on Catalyst 12.2. So far no problems. I've only opened a couple of games, though, and I'm on a Seasonic 850W.

Did you enable Crossfire in Catalyst? Did you check the voltages and temperatures of your components? I think quite a few Crossfire issues were addressed in 12.2, so I guess you could try that one, but it's hard to imagine 12.3 would've broken things so much.

Does updating drivers revert Catalyst to defaults? If not, I'd try that, then enable Crossfire in the utility, then try a few more games and monitor temperatures.
 

outlaw00000

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Mar 23, 2012
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Temps are all good never going past 70C on load (When it worked) I did notice that the new one has a a factory overclock to it would that make a difference? I'll try upping the volts a little to see if that help and I'll try 12.2 since I haven't tried that one yet and yes I do have crossfire enabled
 

ringzero

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My understanding is that it should automatically downclock both of them to the lowest setting between the two of them, but it's still a distinct possibility. I've never OC'd a GPU before, so I don't know exactly how, but you could try matching them. I'd first try pulling back on the factory OC. If that helps, then if you want you could try OCing the reference one.
 

wigss

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Apr 3, 2012
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Yeah to be honest i think its just Amd being shitcunts i have 2 asus hd 6970s only about 5months old in a completely new rig. Bf3 has worked amazing until 12.3 drivers just get BSOD with "attempt to reset the display driver and recover timed out" , i tried to rollback to 12.2 cause that was flawless for me at least, but it rolled back to 12.1 and it just crashed no BSOD but I don't remember having issues with 12.1 when it was the most up to date.Alot of post about this recently so I hope its just the drivers not faulty hardware, still have 6months warranty at least.
 

outlaw00000

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Mar 23, 2012
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I just ran the new card on its own today (feel like a dumbass for not doing it sooner) i didn't have the chance before because of work, turns out its just a faulty card, it was still doing the whole driver crash and recovery bs while my sapphire card ran fine so i sent a rma to newegg and should have a replacement soon. Sucks it was a faulty card but atleast its a simple fix.