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4870X2 auto 2nd Core shut-down

V

VERTIGGO

Senior member
A lot of people have been talking about this on the AMD forums. I've narrowed it down to this:

When the 4870X2 is run on a PCI-E 1.1 mobo (in my case P5K Deluxe) often times the driver reports a PCI 2.0 x1 slot, and [on board] crossfire is disabled. When booted in the x4 slot, it reads as a PCI 2.0 x4 (which is incorrect as well), but never does the x16 slot read as PCI-E 1.1 x16 or PCI-E 2.0 x16.

GPU-Z reports a PCI 2.0 x16 slot (which is wrong) and that crossfire is disabled when in the main slot (x16), and enabled when in the black slot (x4).

Running Vista 64 with 4GB DDR2-880

Any other findings?

I'm going to bench running in the x4 slot...
 
i don't believe the pciE slot being 1.0, 1.1 or 2.0 has anything to do with it or the way 'round.
Have you flashed your MB's BIOS to the latest? Where are you reading that it is PCIe x1 slot?

what are your setting in CCC? Especially where is Cat AI set to?

and what does CCC report in information center under Hardware?

try checking further before you move it to an even more restricted slot; unless you just want to see it reported as 4x

The 4X slot is gonna be bad for your X2 .. 😛
- talk about choking your chi .. GPU bandwidth

is this just a specific issue with your MB and X2?
- kinda sad to find out now

rose.gif
 
Yes mobo is 0902, the latest. When I first installed Left 4 Dead, I was wondering why it wasn't running much faster than my 3870x2, and then noticed that Alt-Tabbing right after level loading supposedly flushed textures and when I did that the frames would come back up. Here is what I'm getting:

4870X2 installed in blue (main) slot, CAT AI standard:

CCC Information:
Graphics Bus Capability PCI Express 2.0
Maximum Bus Setting PCI Express 2.0 x1

GPU-Z:
Bus Interface PCI-E 2x16 @x16 2.0
ATI CrossFire Enabled (2 GPUs), Sideport off

Left 4 Dead fps (2560x1600 2xAA,16xAF Maximum): 30s-40s



4870X2 installed in black (secondary) slot, CAT AI standard:

CCC Information:
Graphics Bus Capability PCI Express 2.0
Maximum Bus Setting PCI Express 2.0 x4

GPU-Z:
Bus Interface PCI-E 2x16 @x16 2.0
ATI CrossFire Enabled (2 GPUs), Sideport off

Left 4 Dead fps (2560x1600 2xAA,16xAF Maximum): 60s-100s



Now the "texture flushing" trick seems to do nothing, but with the GPU in the wrong (x4 electrical) slot it performs very well. I guess I can't complain with good performance on an x4 slot, but the reports are all wrong in GPU-z and the CCC, and it should definitely work even better in an actual x16 slot. The other thing I wonder is why it used to seem arbitrary when it would run full speed and why it suddenly stopped reading the x16 slot as such.
 
Any ideas? ATI is giving me the same "reinstall the drivers correctly" bull that support always responds with. I've tried several drivers in XP and Vista 64bit and the problem is the same.
 
Ok, so I pulled the Cat 8.11s and installed directly from the Visiontek cd. At first there was no change (even after reboot), and it was still turning off the seond core because of the PCI-E 2.0 x1 misinterpretation. However, I checked again and either because of a few more reboots, or God knows what, it now reports PCI-E 2.0 x16 (which is still incorrect since I have 1.1) and it began to chew up and spit out Left 4 Dead like it used to. Who knows why, but tomorrow I'll try updating to 8.11 again and see if it was a fluke in the system.
 
Well it just shut off again, with Catalyst 8.6. I'm at a loss and while a new driver may fix it, it seems related to, but not dependent on driver version.
 
you must not have the deluxe wi-fi. 0902 is the newest listed on ASUS.com, and its from July of this year
 
More developments... I updated to the Catalyst 8.12 drivers and no juice. However, it seems from my experience that whenever I reboot the driver reports PCI Express 2.0 x1 and whenever I shut down for 5 minutes or more and cold boot it reports the correct PCI Express 2.0 x16. This is by no means a fix, but I have a way to live with it.
 
Couldn't help but notice your topic, so I registered to offer a tip. 😛

I have the exact same board and card as you, and have the exact same issues. By any chance, are your RAM sticks stuck into the yellow slots? If so, use the black ones and see if you still have issues. If they persist, I'd suggest trying to fill up all the DIMM slots with four sticks. Please tell me what happens. 🙂
 
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