4850 woes, having REAL trouble. Help please

[TridenT]

Let's start out by saying I have:
Asus Rampage Formula X48 motherboard. 4x1GBs of DDR2 800 ram, Core 2 Duo E7200, 1TB HDD, CD/DVD drive and two Radeon 4850 video cards.

I am not sure HOW to do crossfire 100% correctly, but I was under the assumption I had it going. But according to GPU-Z I don't have it working. I have two little crossfire bridges on my cards, not sure if I am only supposed to use one and if they are supposed to be on a certain direction. (Help please)

According to GPU-Z, which might be wrong, my second video card is running at 993mhz on the core and is idling at 80C. >_> It also says that I have crossfire disabled even though I put on enabled in the CCC. It then says that my other card is running at 625mhz on the core but 1mhz on the memory, WTF?! So I am doubting GPU-Z is working correctly. Anyway, I am getting scores in games lower than what I expected. (140fps in HL2, comparable to ONE 9800GTX) So I am wondering how to fix this and WHAT drivers to get. I currently have 8.6 installed I believe. I am very new to crossfire.

Thanks.

EDIT: Also in CCC it says my cards are running at 500/750. Wtf?

 

[ronnn]

Likely the ccc is correct and is showing accurately the 2d clocks. 80c is hot, make sure your case has good airflow. Think it would take a fair amount of luck to get a core that runs at 933mhz.

 

[TridenT]

Originally posted by: ronnn
Likely the ccc is correct and is showing accurately the 2d clocks. 80c is hot, make sure your case has good airflow. Think it would take a fair amount of luck to get a core that runs at 933mhz.

Weird. I also got P5996 in 3DMark vantage. Is that really bad for this setup?

 

[runawayprisoner]

GPU-Z is infamous for detecting wrong parameters on these new cards.

Next thing for you to remember is that... that idle temp is NORMAL. I'd bet my a$$ that 100% of people who are selling their 4850's, 4870's in the for sale forums have no clue why their cards are so friggin' hot, but it's truly normal. The only work around is to fix the fan speed (either via BIOS or drivers modding) or get an after-market cooler. Seriously, don't underestimate this. It might well fry your other components when you least expect it.

Next up is... I'm not sure about crossfire, but it should work... when it does. Don't expect it to work all the time. If it does not work at all, then it might be a driver issue. Try to use the hotfix drivers set, or the 8.7 beta set.

As for the 500/750 clocks, those are the idle clocks for the card. It's perfectly normal, as when you don't play games or anything, you don't need more than that.

But your 3DMark Vantage point is a tad low (compared to my setup) indeed... is the E7200 overclocked or not?

 

[Hauk]

That Vantage score is low, like crossfire isn't enabled. I score 10+ with very similar setup..

 

[TridenT]

E7200 not OC'd but I should be getting higher score regardless, right? I tried the 8.7 beta, but after I restart it says something about my graphics cards not being supported or not being valid... It's total bull. Idk what to do.

 

[Piuc2020]

I wouldn't worry about HL2 scores, that engine runs well on anything and you are likely CPU limited if you are hitting 140FPS.

 

[TridenT]

I think I was hitting CPU limits because I OC'd to 3.2ghz and I got 152 or so. Anyway, stock E7200 heatsink stinks. It was hitting almost 80C when I did orthos at 3.2ghz. I was like, OMG.... Back at stock. heh

I installed the hotfix 8.6 drivers. Any suggestions? I still think crossfire isn't working. I don't know what to do..

 

[roguerower]

Reference my post here: http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2204329&enterthread=y

 

[taltamir]

the default clocks for the 4850:
idle: 160mhz
decoding a video: 500mhz
3D gaming: 625mhz

Turn off the computer, remove the cards, and then check them individually.
Most earlier version of the bios will not properly scale down the clock, so if it is not going down to 160 when idle, you should upgrade the bios. Either way you should probably modify it with new fan settings as well. One both cards, INDIVIDUALLY (ie, do each card by itself).
When done, place both cards in together, boot up, and enjoy. Don't worry about gpu-z, it is pretty early in its development after all.

If you want two of those in one case, do consider after market cooling.

 

[Jessica69]

Your Vantage score is weird, as has been said. With this system: Q6600 @ 3.4GHz on a Maximus Formula, 8GB DDR2-1000 RAM, and a single 4850 video card using the Hotfix CCC drivers , I got a Vantage score of P7571....not the best score around (I ran the bench with several browser windows left open and a document open in MS Word....), but respectable. Yours.....dunno, seems a little low.

 

[runawayprisoner]

Vantage scales with quad-core processors, that's why he got a low score. Sincerely, even at 3.8GHz, the E7200 has a hard time passing 7000, unless the 4850 is also overclocked. What's important here is the GPU score, not the overall score. Let's hear the overall score?

As for crossfire with Half Life 2, I have done a bit of research, and found out that crossfire 4850 does not work with Half Life 2 for some reason.
For now, just run 3DMark Vantage, and if your GPU score is 10000+ (GPU score only, not the overall score), then crossfire is running fine.

 

[TridenT]

P9180 is my score now... Really dissatisfied but whatever. Hopefully new drivers will make me hit 10k.
GPU Score 11264
CPU Score 5902
GPU Test 1: 32.14FPS
GPU Test 2: 33.88FPS
CPU Test 1: 776.10 PLANS/S
CPU TEST 2: 8.85 STEPS/S
Feature Test 1: 1294.03 GTEXELS/S
FEATURE TEST 2: 6.79 GPIXELS/S (Shouldn't that be higher?)
FEATURE TEST 3: 35.24 FPS
FEATURE TEST 4: 16.01 FPS
FEATURE TEST 5: 28.75 FPS
FEATURE TEST 6: 97.29 FPS

Stock settings for crossfire 4850s. I had my CPU running at 333x9.5 w/ DDR2 1003(or somethin') 5-5-5-16. (Only 3GBs used out of the 4 because of vista32) Plan to upgrade to 64bit soon. Just need to get the disk.

Is this good enough? I'm sad my CPU score is so low, can't do much about it. System fails to boot at 400x9.5, and I don't know why.