6950 crossfire - negative scaling in ALL games

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Yuusha

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May 5, 2012
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Hi.

I've had my two XFX Radeon 6950s for more than half a year now, and since I got them, I've never gotten crossfire to work. I've tried it again and again each time I downloaded new drivers, but eventually gave up and just used one of my cards.

Whenever I turn on crossfire, I get negative scaling, no matter the game. Some examples of games I've tried are Battlefield 3, Shogun 2 and Metro 2033. I'm using the latest drivers and application profiles.

When running the Shogun 2 benchmark, I get around 92 FPS when not using crossfire. When using crossfire, I get around 86 FPS.

I've tried running Furmark, and surprisingly, I get extremely good scaling there. My FPS is pretty much doubled, but I can't reproduce this any games.

I've tried disabling ULPS. I've also tried completely uninstalling anything related to AMD and then reinstalling. I've tried flashing to the latest BIOS version for my motherboard. I've made sure everything is connected correctly. No matter what I do, I can't seem to solve this problem, but it really sucks to just have my second GPU just sit there and do nothing...

An odd thing I noticed is that Speccy tells me that crossfire is disabled. According to the control center, it's enabled, and GPU-Z says the same thing.

Some specs:

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
RAM: 8 GB DDR3
Motherboard: ASUS M4A78T-E
GPU: 2x XFX Radeon HD 6950 1GB
PSU: Antec TurePower 750W

So... does anyone have any ideas?
 
Earnie

Earnie

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Jun 21, 2005
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cards are in blue and black pice slots,power is connected to both cards and bridge is installed,caps installed?
I know that board is x16/x8,but as far as i know that should still be ok.
With my current setup(6950's)I'm getting great scaling(BF3/fear3/BFBC2)esp in BF3.The only thing i can suggest is:
1-Uninstall ccc and profiles,shut down
2-remove second card,restart
3-install ccc 12.2,12.2 caps1(these seem to be the best drivers I've used with the 6950's).restart
4-shut down,install second card,retest.

edit*
2 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots (single x16 or dual x8)
 
Y

Yuusha

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May 5, 2012
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Blue and black PCI-E slots = Yes.
Power connected = Yes, two PCI-E power connectors to both.
Bridge installed = Yes.
Caps installed = Yes.

I followed your intstructions, but sadly I get the same results. :(
 
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Yuusha

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May 5, 2012
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I'm not sure I feel entirely comfortable overclocking that far, especially since I'm using the stock cooler. I tried overclocking to 4.0 GHz with AMD Overdrive, but my computer crashed immediately. I guess that's because I need to raise the voltage as well. I'm not too good at this overclocking stuff.
 
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Yuusha

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May 5, 2012
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Seems a bit odd to me that it would be a CPU bottleneck... isn't the 1090T one of the best AMD CPUs at the moment?

Anyway, as for a budget... right now, $0. But by the end of the month, I guess I could sacrifice $300-400 to get this fixed.
 
Y

Yuusha

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May 5, 2012
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I tried overclocking the first three cores to 3.9 GHz, and it made no difference in the Shogun 2 benchmark.
 
Y

Yuusha

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Although it may be worth noting that the "current speed" doesn't seem to go above 3.2 GHz, it's just the "target speed" that's set to 3.9 GHz... so I guess I've done something wrong.
 
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Yuusha

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I managed to reach 3.6 GHz on the first three cores by disabling the other three, but this actually reduced my FPS in the Shogun 2 benchmark from 88 to 80 :(
 
Earnie

Earnie

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It's not a cpu bottleneck,my 6950's in crossfire with an 1100T run BF3 at 1920X1200,ultra,cards avg 90-100% usage as well as the cpu.I usually run the CPU at about 3.9 or 4.0Ghz.

Go into your BIOS,change the multiplyer to 19 and try that.
 
Y

Yuusha

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May 5, 2012
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I've set the multiplier to 18, anything above that causes either a BSOD or garbled screen on boot. And with the multiplier set at 18, I get reduced performance. Although I disabled the last three cores, but I don't see how that would have any effect, since Shogun 2 doesn't use more than two cores.
 
Earnie

Earnie

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you dont want to disable any cores,just up the multiplyer.
 
Earnie

Earnie

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seems you have my back again,forgot about that.
 
Earnie

Earnie

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just outta curiosity,what is the cpu score in the windows experiance index?
 
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Yuusha

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If I don't disable any cores, I can't get the multiplier any higher than 16.5, which is just 3.3 GHz.

I'm not playing in windowed mode, that would be a sin :p

The score I get in Windows Experience Index is 7.5
 
Earnie

Earnie

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that alone is telling me that the cpu is probably dying,it just should not do that.I've had the 940,955,965,980,1090 and now the 1100T,they have all o/c'd with just the multiplyer easily.
 
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Yuusha

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May 5, 2012
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Dying? I've had it for one and a half year. During that time, I've never overclocked it (although I've tried, and always got this same result) and I've never had any major problems with my computer except for the fact that I can't get crossfire to work.

I tried keeping MSI Afterburner on while running the Shogun 2 benchmark. Both GPUs are at around 50% the whole time.
 
Earnie

Earnie

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It is a bottleneck.
And BF3 will work on a pentium D....
Click to expand...


I disagree!BF3 plays better with more cores.

all 6 cores of my 1100T are at 100% with crossfired 6950's at 90-100% in BF3,That tells me in this particular game,there is No bottleneck(With my current setup).


50% usage could be attributed to that game itself.
The only cpu I ever had to replace(warranty)was a 1090T,2 months old,thats why i asked about the WEI,Mine dropped to 3.5 one day.
 
Earnie

Earnie

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this a good program for monitoring everything also.
http://openhardwaremonitor.org/
 
Y

Yuusha

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May 5, 2012
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I've taken a look at that before, but there doesn't seem to be a way to see CPU/GPU usage over time... only the current usage and min/max value. Am I missing something?
 
Y

Yuusha

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I ran Shogun 2 and messed around with some graphical settings to stress it out a little. The game started stuttering like hell, and didn't stop even after I set the settings back to my old ones. Anyway, here's the max usage for all my cores and the GPUs from OHW:

Core #1: 87.7%
Core #2: 49.2%
Core #3: 70.8%
Core #4: 61.5%
Core #5: 53.8%
Core #6: 70.8%

GPU #1: 99.0%
GPU #2: 59.0%
 
Y

Yuusha

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May 5, 2012
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Alright, I guess I'm buying a new CPU, then... but I'm probably going for something a bit more powerful than the 2500k, since that's a very small upgrade from the 1090T. I'm considering the 2700k.
 
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