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BSOD crossfire 7970's HELP!!!

Tags:
  • AMD
  • atikmdag.sys
  • Crossfire
  • cf
  • Graphics
  • Blue Screen
  • 7970
Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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July 6, 2014 12:19:42 AM

Current setup
Foxconn p35a-s motherboard
intel core 2 quad q9450
8GB DDR2
1300 watt EVGA supernova g2 psu
Samsung 840 pro 256GB SSD
3TB WD HDD
2 Sapphire 7970 OC boost
3 24" asus monitors

I just got my 2nd 7970 and installed it, every since, my system has been extremely unstable. Sometimes I can play a game, other times I get a blue screen. Every time it's the same blue screen that points to atikmdag.sys. I've scoured the web for 2 days straight and tried every fix suggested and still not having any luck. So far I've ran memtest and passed, tested both cards by themselves in both slots and they both worked fine by themselves in both slots, I've tried the whole renaming and replaced the atikmdag.sys file, I've tried it on two different instances of win 7, (i.e. tried putting my old hard drive before I switched to the ssd in and still got the same bsod, i've cleaned out old drivers completly and did a clean install of the drivers, tried older drivers, new drivers, beta drivers, still no luck same thing. I've made sure ulps was disabled in both the registry and in sapphire trixx. I've changed the tdrdelay in the registry, I've disabled flash, and hardware acceleration, i've tried disabling windows aero, I've tried changing the bios from position 1 to position 2 on both cards, I've tried two different crossfire cables. I'm stuck, sometimes a game will load and play, I got titanfall and tomb raider to play once, but then tried again and they both gave me a bsod. Crysis 3 will barely even load up, I get to the main menu and its so slow and laggy that it freezes up and i have to close it manually through task manager. If I disable crossfire all the problems go away, but that's pointless to do because i bought the 2nd card to get some gains in frame rates. Can someone please help me out with this so I can enjoy my new card. I'm all out of ideas. Hell, I'll even paypal the first person who fixes my problem 20 bucks.

More about : bsod crossfire 7970

July 6, 2014 1:29:53 AM

Is the bios updated? What temps are you running on the two cards under load?
July 6, 2014 6:41:15 PM

Bios has the latest update from their website, it's an older board, so the latest update was 6B3F1P43 which was released 07/02/09 (http://www.foxconnsupport.com/download.aspx?models=en-u...) Cards are showing under 55c under load. Temps shouldn't be an issue I wouldn't think.
Related resources
July 6, 2014 6:50:25 PM

Ok, what about clocks on the cards. Did you have any type of program like Afterburner, Trixx, etc installed before you put in the 2nd card? If so, uninstall any and all of them completely and restart(you can reinstall them later after testing). Also if you've adjusted the 1st card with CCC set it back to default everything before restarting. If you adjusted the clocks on the 1st card with something before installing the 2nd card it may not adjust the 2nd card the same and it can cause issues.
July 6, 2014 6:59:10 PM

Cards were at default clock speed, I had trixx installed, just uninstalled it, rebooted, then opened crysis 3, immediate blue screen. What should I try next?
July 6, 2014 7:06:35 PM

What about chipset drivers? Did they just install automatically when you installed windows or did you install updated ones off of your motherboard's website?
July 6, 2014 7:09:16 PM

They are the ones windows installed automatically, the ones from the mfg website seemed dated, (i.e from 2008) should I install those?
July 6, 2014 7:09:56 PM

Yeah, install the ones from the website.
July 6, 2014 7:26:16 PM

Installed the chipset drivers from the mfg site, they were older than the ones that were currently installed, after installing and restarting, I opened crysis 3 up again, this time the game opened, and I was able to play it but it was super laggy and when the game started instead of opening in 1920x1080 it opened in 1680x1050 res, when I switched it to 1920x1080, I immediately got the same blue screen.
July 6, 2014 7:34:22 PM

I'm running low on ideas. You said you tried 2 different crossfire bridges. Did you try each position with just one and the other spot blank?

What about the clocks again. Is CCC registering them at the same clock? If not reinstall Trixx and force them to be the same and set it to automatically force at startup.

Did you try one card by itself in the 2nd pci-e slot with nothing in the 1st?
July 6, 2014 7:46:51 PM

Yeah tried 2 different crossfire bridges on each spot, even tried with 2 bridges hooked up at the same time, still eventually getting that same bsod. Tried both cards in both slots, individually, everything worked fine with single cards in both slots. Clocks are set at 1000mhz and mem at 1450. GPU-Z shows the clocks the same. The top card is running 47c at idle and the 2nd card is running 33c at idle. I just reinstalled trixx, in settings I have synchronize cards in multi gpu config checked, force constant voltage checked and disable ulps checked. clocks are at default.
July 6, 2014 8:02:01 PM

I think you can rule out hardware being the problem and chock it up to AMD drivers. There are some workarounds though, but I haven't had an AMD card in a while so I'm not completely up to date on AMD drivers and issues. "atikmdag.sys" is a file located in CCC. There are workarounds that involve renaming the file and fixing how CCC accesses it(not the best fix in the world, but it's better than nothing).

Renaming the individual file(this guide is as good as any others):
http://forum.notebookreview.com/windows-os-software/719...

July 6, 2014 8:30:26 PM

Alright, i've tried that one a couple times already, but I just tried it again and no luck.. Man this is soooo frustrating. Is it possible my motherboard is just too old to run a pair of 7970's?
July 6, 2014 8:39:14 PM

Not likely. If all of the hardware has updated bios/drivers, then it's pretty limited to being a conflict between CCC and Windows. What version of Windows do you have?
July 6, 2014 8:57:21 PM

running win 7 ultimate x64
July 6, 2014 9:06:27 PM

I'm not sure what drivers you tried, but you could try an even older version of CCC.
http://www.oldapps.com/ati.php

Also forcing Sapphire customer service onto the phone tomorrow might not be a bad idea. It's likely a problem they come across daily.

You'll probably think I'm crazy for even suggesting this, but ATI Tray Tools hasn't been updated in a quite a while, but it did work with windows 7 and you could control crossfire with it. You could try uninstalling CCC, but leaving the drivers and enable crossfire with ATI tray tools.

Sorry I couldn't help you figure it out, but I think you've covered just about every possible hardware/updating base there is to cover.
July 6, 2014 9:07:21 PM

What CCC version do you have as well?
July 6, 2014 9:43:26 PM

2013.0417.2226.38446 Catalyst version 14.4
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