Crossfire problem Dual HD6950s

[Miguel Gonzalez]

im having some issues with my crossfire setup, i got my second powercolor 1g 6950 and i have it installed and crossfired but when i ran my benchmark test in f1 2010 i actually lost frames. i was getting 37 avg 35 min on 1 monitor 1920 i ran 2 monitors in an eyefinity group(picking up an active mini display adaptor for the third today) and i was getting avg 35 minimum 30.

after installing and crossfiring my cards i ran the same benchmark on 1 monitor and came up avg 30 fps with a min of 20.
the game handles well except for a i cant really distinguish between 30 and 60 frames honestly but just that fact that im getting less performance out of an extra 250 dollar investment irks me lol somethings gotta be off because that just cant be right. based on your benchmarks and others ive seen around the net a single card should be giving me a good 60 and crossfire can get up to like 120. im a sad panda right now =(

my rig specs:

Mobo: Asus 870GA-54
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1075T
HD: seagate 500gb 7200 rpm 66b/s sata
GPU: 2x powercolor 6950s
RAM: 16gb 1600 Gskill
power: xfx 750w

i havent OCd anything yet been reading over guides and getting the nerve and free time to try it out

all drivers and utilites are up to date
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[Jim Cole]

I have heard of issues like this and it usually isn't the fault of adding a card for crossfire, it is usually the game or benchmark suite not being able to handle the cards correctly. If the game is running smoothly with no glitches or stuttering, then I wouldn't put too much stock into benchmarks.

That being said, when you are looking at the CCC, do you see the check mark for crossfire? If you do then it is enabled. I have also read that the instructions say you only need a single ribbon cable for the crossfire, but there are a lot of folks that swear on using 2 to make sure the cards have enough bandwidth for proper workings.

 

[Miguel Gonzalez]

i finally got my active display adapter and im only getting 12 frames in f12010 across triple monitors. thats unacceptable =\

crossfire is checked in my ccc in fact the game slows down to a crawl if i maximize the game. doesnt do that with only 2 monitors connected.

 

[Jim Cole]

I would suggest that you contact tech support for ATI then as those cards should be more than enough to power what you have. I would think at this point either something isn't installed properly or you have a defective card.

 

[Vito Lombardi]

When F12010 was first realeased I believe it was not yet ready to handle Xfire, a patch shortly came after, mate of mine loaded his F12010 on my comp as he wanted to see it on my triple screen with xfire 5870's, I recall him talking about a patch as he loaded it up.

Worked beautifully, first time full on graphics ect. Unfortunatley, I don't have that game and its patch to pass on to you as he is overseas at this moment, I am sure you will find it on their site, if you have'nt already tried.

Not to concern you However, When my comp arrived from day dot...I lost all my hair trying to find a solution as to why my xfire would not operate according to spec's....It turned out that one 5870 was faulty. I found this by swapping them around and operating them singlely at a time, and in different slots. In doing all this the second one gave up also. After a long battle with the supplier, The MB, two 5870"s, and all new ram was replaced....no one gave me the cause to it all but I suspect it was a faulty MB to start with.

I would follow Jim Cole's advice, and follow your insurance plan.

 

[Miguel Gonzalez]

is there any way to torubleshoot individual pc components? this is the first pc ive built from scratch so honestly it could be anything. i contacted powercolor and they sent me a link to a hotfix, tried it out and it helped a bit but still unplayable frames.

 

[Vito Lombardi]

Hi Mig, I know your feeling when your comp is not working as you want it. I not a tech buff that can be of help here, but you mentioned

"this is the first pc ive built from scratch so honestly it could be anything" based on that i would say,

A) have you assessed correctly that your overall comp specs can take the load, ie: no bottle necks,
B) remove one card entirely from your system and get that going to the max, once done, remove that card and replace with the other. Once happy that both cards work, then you start looking elsewhere ie: perhaps software.
C) Try other programs ie: rfactor, i would not make a decision that something is broke because Fi2010 won't perform

thats probaly as far as i can go to help, other than keep serching for a solution/s .....my limited knowledge in this area would make me take my comp to a specilist.

regards

Vito

 

[Jim Cole]

The suggestion to try one card at a time is a valid and often used technique for troubleshooting hardware. You already know that one of your cards functions well as you have stated that you were getting decent frame rates with the single before you upgraded. Make sure to untick the box for crossfire before you start or you might see other issues when only one card is installed. If you have a lot of ram, you can also reduce the ram to the minimum that is required for the system to perform properly and swap those out one at a time as well and pay attention to the results. This will tell you if your ram is good or bad.

 

[ML2166]

Hi Mig

I am also running 2 X 2gb 6950's through and Asus Crosshair IV Extreme mobo, 8 gig of ram and a 965 Black edition Athlon.

When I was running just the one card, everything ran smoothly, but I needed a second for my graphic work ( do a lot of photoshop work).

When I installed my second card, the very same thing happened to me.

What I did, was completely remove all the drivers for the card, take one card out, and re-install the drivers.

Once that is done, re-boot, let the pc settle and then shut down.

Now install your second card into the pci slot (check to make sure you have them in the reccomended slots if you have more than two) and let the pc pick up the second card and install the drivers automatically.

Check the box for crossfire mode in CCC and re-boot.

F1 2010 isn't sorted for crossfire properly, so don't expect huge gains, but I picked up about 30fps once second card was intalled properly.

Kinda long winded, but hope it helps.

 

[Miguel Gonzalez]

Well my pc was running an unregistered version of windows and I'm not sure it's explicitly to blame but I'm sure it doesn't help so I'm reinstalling a fresh win 7 home premium install and starting from scratch and trying the above one card at a time and see if there's any difference if not I'm sending em back

 

[Miguel Gonzalez]

alright now after a brand new install of windows and troubleshooting everything im still having the same problem. on max settings im getting a max of 35fps min 30 on one screen 1920x1080 max 30 avg 25 on 5640x1080 when crossfired i drop max 30 min 25 on one monitor 25 max 20 min on 3 monitors. rfactor runs fine its the only other thing i have to compare it to. any tools i can use to bench test my graphics to see if maybe it just is the game, which still sucks

 

[Jim Cole]

Did you try both cards as singles? If you didn't then you may still be dealing with a bad graphics card. Give it a try and let us know what happens.

 

[Miguel Gonzalez]

yes i tried them individually and they both performed about the same. in both f1 2010 and world of warcraft. i dont think the problem lies in the cards. im wondering if it might be my motherboard or something =\

 

[Terry Rock]

Make sure you have *16 and not *1 enabled in the BIOS. You should be getting close to 80fps in X-fire at that resolution with those cards.

 

[Jim Cole]

Good call there Terry, forgot about the bios settings. Your motherboard should be set to use at least 8X but would be better running 16 for both lanes, though some older motherboards didn't have 2 16bit lanes.

 

[Miguel Gonzalez]

Make sure you have *16 and not *1 enabled in the BIOS. You should be getting close to 80fps in X-fire at that resolution with those cards.

where is this option the only reference to pci in my bios is the pci frequency in mHz

 

[Jim Cole]

There should be a reference to the PCIe buss settings somewhere in the bios. I would look all over but would probably be under advanced, PCI, onboard chipset, or something to that nature.

 

[Miguel Gonzalez]

my mobo manual says the only two things i can change are the pci-e frequency. under the crossfire settings it says that it recognizes in ati catalyst manager and it doesnt require any changes in the bios. damn i was really excited for a second there >.<

 

[Jim Cole]

what motherboard do you have? Brand and model number and what bios is it running? Pheonix? AMI? etc.

 

[Miguel Gonzalez]

i have an MSI 870A-G54 mobo just ran a live update to the most current bios and drivers. turning some settings down im up to 35 frames 30 min across 3 screens still unnaceptable =\