Recently I upgraded to dual 7970 HD's in CrossfireX. To say that I've been unsatisfied is is an understatement. I've experienced poor performance and instability from day 1 while running in CrossfireX. Searching the forums I found several threads concerning issues with scaling and instability, but many of the fixes have been tried and just don't seem to apply to my setup. When I say unstable, I don't mean BSOD's or crashes to desktop, or anything like that. The only thing that happens is whatever game I'm in hard locks the system and I can't even get the reset switch to respond, and I get repeating audio through the speakers or headphones. This does not happen with only one card enabled.
I've tried making these things work several times on fresh installs of Windows 7 in two almost entirely different machines. Using fresh installs, this is what has happened with each driver:
Software
Windows 7 Ultimate x64 w/latest updates and patches. All drivers are the latest available at the time of this writing.
Games Tested: Mass Effect 3, Battlefield 3, Batman Arkham City
Applications Tested: Photoshop CS6
Drivers - CrossfireX Enabled
Catalyst 12.4 - Most stable driver, unfortunately CrossfireX rarely seems to work at all. In most cases it runs slower than it did with a single card. Horrible screen tearing issues also abound. Stable for around 1-3 hours at most. Photoshop crashes after two or three minutes unless I disable GPU acceleration.
Catalyst 12.6 - Stable for around 20 minutes to an hour at best. Always followed by a hard lock of the system After rebooting I get an "overclocking failed" message and I have to reconfigure my Eyefinity group and settings. This driver often forces me to unplug and plug in my active mini-DP to DVI adapters in order to get all the monitors working after a restart. It also varies as to which one gives me the issue. Photoshop crashes after two or three minutes unless I disable GPU acceleration.
Catalyst 12.7 Beta - Stable for around 10-30 minutes at best. Always followed by a hard lock of the system After rebooting I get an "overclocking failed" message and I have to reconfigure my Eyefinity group and settings. Photoshop crashes after two or three minutes unless I disable GPU acceleration.
Drivers - CrossfireX Disabled (Tried card 1 and card 2 individually)
Catalyst 12.4 - Perfectly stable. Performance isn't as good as later drivers, but no issues to report. Can run games for several hours without issue. No issues with Photoshop.
Catalyst 12.6 - Rock solid with excellent performance in all games tested. Can run games for several hours without issue. No issues with Photoshop.
Catalyst 12.7 Beta - Rock solid with excellent performance in all games tested. Can run games for several hours without issue. No issues with Photoshop.
Hardware:
Old Configuration
CPU - Intel Core i7 Extreme 980X Overclocked to 4.4GHzv (Tried stock settings too)
Cooling - Koolance Exos 2.5, Koolance CPU-370
Motherboard - ASUS Rampage III Black Edition
RAM - Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz (3 x 4GB Kit, 12GB total)
HDD - Intel X25-M 80GB Gen 2, 1x Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB
ODD - Samsung 22x DVD-R / RW
Case - Corsair Obsidian 800D
PSU - Thermaltake ToughPower 1200 watt
Audio - ASUS ThunderBolt (Xonar)
NIC 1 - Intel 82567V Integrated
NIC 2 - ASUS ThunderBolt (BigFoot Networks Killer NIC E2100)
Video Card(s) - 2x Diamond AMD Radeon HD 7970 (CrossfireX)
Display(s) - 3x Dell 3007WFP-HC 30" LCD monitors (Eyefinity)
Keyboard - Das Keyboard Professional
Mouse - Logitech G700 (Wireless)
New Configuration
CPU - Intel Core i7 3930K (Stock)
Cooling - Koolance Exos 2.5, Koolance CPU-370
Motherboard - ASUS Rampage IV Extreme
RAM - Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz (4 x 8GB, 32GB total)
HDD - Corsair Force GT 120GB x2 (RAID-0), 1x Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB
ODD - Pioneer BDR206 BD-RW 12x SATA Drive
Case - Corsair Obsidian 800D
PSU - Thermaltake ToughPower 1200 watt
Audio - Realtek ALC898 (Onboard)
NIC - Intel 82567V Integrated
Video Card(s) - 2x Diamond AMD Radeon HD 7970 (CrossfireX)
Display(s) - 3x Dell 3007WFP-HC 30" LCD monitors (Eyefinity)
Keyboard - Das Keyboard Professional
Mouse - Logitech G700 (Wireless)
Currently, nothing is overclocked.
One monitor is connected via the native dual-link DVI port on the back of the primary Radeon HD 7970. The second and third monitors are connected via active mini-DP to DVI adapters. With a single card I've got to occasionally unplug one mini-DP cable and reseat it, but that always resolves my issue. And it always happens on a cold boot or resuming from sleep mode. But this issue is just par for the course with these types of adapters and has been since the Radeon HD 5970 days.
Both cards have the same exact BIOS. (015.012.000.004.000346 according to GPU-Z)
I've tried both cards individually and both will operate with absolute stability for hours on end. I've also found out about the ULPS issue in the registry. I've tried disabling it. Without disabling that, the second card hadn't been operating at all, or hardly at all it seemed. I had hoped this would lead to a fix, but sadly it didn't. I have also tried one Crossfire bridge, two, and even another one I had laying around to just rule that out. So I've tried multiple Crossfire bridges. PCI-Express lane configuration is optimal as the slots used grant x16 lanes to each card on both systems. Link width reports as x16 Gen3.0 on the new system, and Gen2.0 on the old one.
Temperatures can of course be high, but with the fan speeds under manual control I can keep the temperatures down to around 55c or so. So I do not believe heat is the issue. I've also placed an external fan near the system with the side off just to make certain it wasn't an airflow or cooling issue given the Obsidian's relatively poor air cooling compared to some other designs. Idle temp for the primary card is 49c and 41c for the second. Load temps according to my GPU-Z log never exceed the low 60c range prior to the crash.
And of course for the crowd that blames the PSU before other things, my PSU voltages look good and according to my UPS, the system is drawing only around 600 wats at most. The UPS has an output limit of around 900 watts maximum, but only the PC is connected to it. The monitor and everything else are handled on another outlet. Volt-meter and onboard monitors also show that the PSU's voltages are all well within their normal ranges. I've also tried running the system off the wall directly (briefly) just to remove the UPS as being a limitation. I didn't think my power usage was that high anyway. The PSU is one of the few components aside from the case and optical drive carried over from the previous build to the new one. So I've considered that, but I don't have another powerful enough PSU that's not integrated into another system to try out. I'd also like to point out that both systems are rock solid and stable for everything but playing games and with one card enabled, they are both good to go on that.
What am I missing here? Performance is fine now, but the lockups are pretty damned annoying.
I've tried making these things work several times on fresh installs of Windows 7 in two almost entirely different machines. Using fresh installs, this is what has happened with each driver:
Software
Windows 7 Ultimate x64 w/latest updates and patches. All drivers are the latest available at the time of this writing.
Games Tested: Mass Effect 3, Battlefield 3, Batman Arkham City
Applications Tested: Photoshop CS6
Drivers - CrossfireX Enabled
Catalyst 12.4 - Most stable driver, unfortunately CrossfireX rarely seems to work at all. In most cases it runs slower than it did with a single card. Horrible screen tearing issues also abound. Stable for around 1-3 hours at most. Photoshop crashes after two or three minutes unless I disable GPU acceleration.
Catalyst 12.6 - Stable for around 20 minutes to an hour at best. Always followed by a hard lock of the system After rebooting I get an "overclocking failed" message and I have to reconfigure my Eyefinity group and settings. This driver often forces me to unplug and plug in my active mini-DP to DVI adapters in order to get all the monitors working after a restart. It also varies as to which one gives me the issue. Photoshop crashes after two or three minutes unless I disable GPU acceleration.
Catalyst 12.7 Beta - Stable for around 10-30 minutes at best. Always followed by a hard lock of the system After rebooting I get an "overclocking failed" message and I have to reconfigure my Eyefinity group and settings. Photoshop crashes after two or three minutes unless I disable GPU acceleration.
Drivers - CrossfireX Disabled (Tried card 1 and card 2 individually)
Catalyst 12.4 - Perfectly stable. Performance isn't as good as later drivers, but no issues to report. Can run games for several hours without issue. No issues with Photoshop.
Catalyst 12.6 - Rock solid with excellent performance in all games tested. Can run games for several hours without issue. No issues with Photoshop.
Catalyst 12.7 Beta - Rock solid with excellent performance in all games tested. Can run games for several hours without issue. No issues with Photoshop.
Hardware:
Old Configuration
CPU - Intel Core i7 Extreme 980X Overclocked to 4.4GHzv (Tried stock settings too)
Cooling - Koolance Exos 2.5, Koolance CPU-370
Motherboard - ASUS Rampage III Black Edition
RAM - Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz (3 x 4GB Kit, 12GB total)
HDD - Intel X25-M 80GB Gen 2, 1x Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB
ODD - Samsung 22x DVD-R / RW
Case - Corsair Obsidian 800D
PSU - Thermaltake ToughPower 1200 watt
Audio - ASUS ThunderBolt (Xonar)
NIC 1 - Intel 82567V Integrated
NIC 2 - ASUS ThunderBolt (BigFoot Networks Killer NIC E2100)
Video Card(s) - 2x Diamond AMD Radeon HD 7970 (CrossfireX)
Display(s) - 3x Dell 3007WFP-HC 30" LCD monitors (Eyefinity)
Keyboard - Das Keyboard Professional
Mouse - Logitech G700 (Wireless)
New Configuration
CPU - Intel Core i7 3930K (Stock)
Cooling - Koolance Exos 2.5, Koolance CPU-370
Motherboard - ASUS Rampage IV Extreme
RAM - Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz (4 x 8GB, 32GB total)
HDD - Corsair Force GT 120GB x2 (RAID-0), 1x Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB
ODD - Pioneer BDR206 BD-RW 12x SATA Drive
Case - Corsair Obsidian 800D
PSU - Thermaltake ToughPower 1200 watt
Audio - Realtek ALC898 (Onboard)
NIC - Intel 82567V Integrated
Video Card(s) - 2x Diamond AMD Radeon HD 7970 (CrossfireX)
Display(s) - 3x Dell 3007WFP-HC 30" LCD monitors (Eyefinity)
Keyboard - Das Keyboard Professional
Mouse - Logitech G700 (Wireless)
Currently, nothing is overclocked.
One monitor is connected via the native dual-link DVI port on the back of the primary Radeon HD 7970. The second and third monitors are connected via active mini-DP to DVI adapters. With a single card I've got to occasionally unplug one mini-DP cable and reseat it, but that always resolves my issue. And it always happens on a cold boot or resuming from sleep mode. But this issue is just par for the course with these types of adapters and has been since the Radeon HD 5970 days.
Both cards have the same exact BIOS. (015.012.000.004.000346 according to GPU-Z)
I've tried both cards individually and both will operate with absolute stability for hours on end. I've also found out about the ULPS issue in the registry. I've tried disabling it. Without disabling that, the second card hadn't been operating at all, or hardly at all it seemed. I had hoped this would lead to a fix, but sadly it didn't. I have also tried one Crossfire bridge, two, and even another one I had laying around to just rule that out. So I've tried multiple Crossfire bridges. PCI-Express lane configuration is optimal as the slots used grant x16 lanes to each card on both systems. Link width reports as x16 Gen3.0 on the new system, and Gen2.0 on the old one.
Temperatures can of course be high, but with the fan speeds under manual control I can keep the temperatures down to around 55c or so. So I do not believe heat is the issue. I've also placed an external fan near the system with the side off just to make certain it wasn't an airflow or cooling issue given the Obsidian's relatively poor air cooling compared to some other designs. Idle temp for the primary card is 49c and 41c for the second. Load temps according to my GPU-Z log never exceed the low 60c range prior to the crash.
And of course for the crowd that blames the PSU before other things, my PSU voltages look good and according to my UPS, the system is drawing only around 600 wats at most. The UPS has an output limit of around 900 watts maximum, but only the PC is connected to it. The monitor and everything else are handled on another outlet. Volt-meter and onboard monitors also show that the PSU's voltages are all well within their normal ranges. I've also tried running the system off the wall directly (briefly) just to remove the UPS as being a limitation. I didn't think my power usage was that high anyway. The PSU is one of the few components aside from the case and optical drive carried over from the previous build to the new one. So I've considered that, but I don't have another powerful enough PSU that's not integrated into another system to try out. I'd also like to point out that both systems are rock solid and stable for everything but playing games and with one card enabled, they are both good to go on that.
What am I missing here? Performance is fine now, but the lockups are pretty damned annoying.
Last edited: