1/2 cards in potential crossfire doesn't work...

[alizee]

So, I thought it would be a pretty fun idea to upgrade my current system from one 3850 to two (seeing as how they're $130...). But, I get it installed and rerun the Catalyst 8.3 installer and one of the cards shows up as a "Standard VGA Graphics Adapter" and not as a 3850. Here's a screnshot. I've tried the troubleshooting steps here to no avail.

If I uninstall the graphics driver for the Standard VGA Graphics Adapter from Device Manager, it uninstalls the 3850 drivers as well.

Perhaps its because the cards are running different BIOS revisions or because they're from different manufacturors? One is a PowerColor and the other is HIS.

According to GPU-z, the one recognized as the 3850 is running BIOS VER010.068.000.000.026906, the other is running VER010.077.000.000.000000

3850 GPU-Z
Other GPU-Z

I'm running on a 975x Bad Axe 2 with a Core 2 Duo e6300 @ 2.8GHz. Vista Ultimate 64-bit

Thanks for the help

 

[myocardia]

While I'm no expert with either Xfire or SLI, have you attached the Xfire bridge securely, and also enabled Xfire in the driver control panel (AMD calls theirs CCC)?

 

[Sylvanas]

It's a driver install issue- no biggy. Uninstall all ATI software by going to c;/ATI/support/8.3/ setup.exe run that then select the option 'custom' and uninstall everything (the display driver and the CCC should be listed). Reboot, then upon entering windows run Guru3D Driversweeper (right click 'run as admin' for vista) then reboot. Then upon re-entering windows install the 8.3 package...it will reboot then you are set.

Having different vendors and BIOS versions will not affect the operation of Crossfire. I have installed/uninstalled drivers countless times with my 3850's following the above steps and never had a problem. Good luck

Clean your uninstalls with Drivercleaner people!

 

[alizee]

I wish it were that easy, I tried it numerous times. It seems like the device ID is wrong, its supposed to be 1002-9505 and its 1002-9500. I'm trying to figure out what that device ID is for because its not listed on ATi's website. Its wierd because i thought it might be a video BIOS issue and when I tried to flash it to a 256MB 3850 it said it was the wrong BIOS. When I flashed it with the 512MB 3850 it takes, but it gives me garbled video. I haven't tried a 3870 BIOS. I guess I will RMA it, but I don't want to wait...

 

[Sylvanas]

So you flashed a 256mb 3850 with a 512mb (3850) BIOS? Well that would definitely make me think it could be a BIOS issue. If I were you I'd flash both cards with the same BIOS (preferably the latest one from either cards manufacturer). Which card did you get first, I assume your first one worked fine prior to getting the 2nd one (2nd one was the one you flashed...?). I am running the latest HIS Turbo-X BIOS on both my 3850's- the 77 BIOS dated 2008, granted that is for a 512mb card- But HIS have been a pretty easy BIOS to flash.

You'll want to keep an eye on This thread and app when flashing, and get your BIOS from this database. Remember if you want to change Device ID's with a new BIOS you have to force the flash with -f. So format a floppy as a DOS boot disk. Put on it the latest ATiflash (3.49 I think) and the BIOS file from Techpowerups site (you can always rename the file to make it easier to remember- I've had instances where a shorter file name allowed a flash when a long one didn't....odd). And type 'A:/atiflash -f -p 0 HIS.bin' without the inverted commas (or .rom.....whatever the file comes as). I have also had instances where having capslock ON during the procedure only when typing the capitals- caused a failed flash and dodgy checksum....so I'd suggest using shift if you are writing anything in caps . I've Also had instances where opening the file in RBE, saving it as a .rom THEN trying to flash with that was successful when simply downloading the file and flashing it as a .bin was not.

Thats it from me, I'm sure you know most of that stuff but just incase.