7950 Crossfiring Dilema

Chewiemuse

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Mar 14, 2012
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10,510
So I have two MSI 7950, one is a twin frozr the other is just a regular factory overclocked 7950

for future reference here are my hardware specs

FX-8150 AM3+ Processor (Overclocked to 4.2 GHz)

Sabertooth990fx M\B

Thermaltake gt10 Winter color.. white? lol

2x4 G-Skill Sniper High performance RAM

2x 7950's

Now I have two questions,

First off I bought this card (the Twin Frozr)at frys, open box... stupid me eh? anyways, I plugged it into PCIe slot one on my motherboard, I set up the drivers and what not, and as soon as I jumped on metro 2033 with the highest possible res and settings it was amazing, I was getting 75-100 FPS, but very early on about 5 minutes into testing out the card it shot from 50-60C to 90-100C, I quickly shut down the game and let the card cool down, now I have manually overclocked this card to about 970 MHz with 5% voltage added to it, just like I did the other MSI card which I have had for 7 months and have had no problems with it, and so I tested it again, only a little hit to the FPS about 70-90 but still I had heat problems, now they were not as bad as before, they were about 60-75, but it seemed like if I didnt stop playing the card would reach over 80.

I dont understand how this can happen seeing as its supposedly supposed to be the best thermal for a video card on the stock or something like that, and also that my other 7950 only peaked 60C, and I am using the catalyst with the msi afterburner for my on screen display.


My other question is, when my two cards are crossfired or running as crossfire, the secondary will... shut off when idol, it wont show any readings and the fans will turn off, now Im wondering if this is a feature, or a faulty card? it was doing this before the heat malfunction.

for now Ive moved the frozr to the 2nd PCIe slot and put my old card back in the 1st PCIe slot.

Thanks for a speedy response everyone!
 

maxh22

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Apr 23, 2012
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Most likely this is happening because the thermal paste wasn't applied correctly onto the gpu.

The same thing happened to my Gtx 670, then I RMA'ed it and got a new one with no heat issues.

Maybe this is why the item was open box ,someone must have realized it ran too hot and returned it :??:
 

Chewiemuse

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Mar 14, 2012
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hmm well see, IM testing it righ tnow it seems to be stable now, I played for about 30 min on it and it only went to a max of 65c, still high but not card threatening, I may send it back just in case though.
 

maxh22

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Apr 23, 2012
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It could have been a software glitch then?

Stress test the gpu for a few hours and record the temps. 65 is average and safe