7850 Crossfire has failed me this round. Sent 2nd card back. Sticking with one card.

[Don Karnage]

I don't know what I would do if I were you, adam. It's a bit of a messed up situation. It's going to take a lot of patience if you're going to wait for the drivers to improve.

That's the biggest issue with crossfire/sli - the drivers.

No point in waiting. He spent the money. It should work

 

[jacktesterson]

Well, I'm just growing frustrated is all.

At this point going with a single card and returning the 2nd card seems to be the most attractive option. Whether I'm jumping the gun or not, who knows.

I'm visiting the mother for mothers day today. When I get home tonight, I may do one last fresh install of Windows 7 with the CD Drivers with both cards and see how I make out.

 

[jacktesterson]

I'd really like to test this motherboard with another set of GPU's.


Problem is, I don't have another set right now... and unfortunately none of my local friends are PC Gamers.

 

[SickBeast]

Can't you frankenfire a 4850 with the 7850?

 

[Termie]

This is really disappointing. I'm sorry it didn't work for you. AMD did not come through this round. When it works, crossfire is awesome and a price/performance winner. Good luck with whatever you end up with.

I haven't commented on most of the issues experienced yesterday. I had only benchmarked 3DMARK11, so I wouldn't call that a success.

Crossfire is an absolute mess with a lot of games. I see nice scaling in some games, and in others, it actually drops my FPS by considerable amounts. All testing was done at stock, both CPU and GPU. Some games freeze up solid when crossfire is enabled, 10-15 mins into games. (Modern Warfare 3 and Metro for example)

I've tested my cards thoroughly on there own, in both PCIe x16 slots, and they work fine.

I'm not over-reacting, I just don't think its worth the hassle right now. I'm not happy with my experience, and the amount of time (20+ hours) on just trying to get drivers to work.

I'm not the only one experiencing this. OCN has a 7800 Owners thread where people are experiencing similar issues, one guy even having MW3 and Metro freezing up on him same as me.

I just don't want to invest any more time into getting it working. I planned on having fun benchmarking, not spending crazy amounts of time researching problems.

 

[bigsnyder]

Can't you frankenfire a 4850 with the 7850?

Maybe, I still have my 4850 and might try it, but the 512MB vram may be problematic.

 

[zettler]

Maybe, I still have my 4850 and might try it, but the 512MB vram may be problematic.

What does that mean as I am looking to buy a 7850 for my son and he has a spare 4850 right now...

Thanks!

 

[Dark Shroud]

No point in waiting. He spent the money. It should work

Normally I would agree with you but AMD is using a new architecture on a new node process.

If AMD doesn't keep up with CAPs releases and doesn't do much about Crossfire performance in the coming months then I would get very upset.

Personally this is why I'll just spend the extra bit of money on the bigger card instead of going duel cards.

 

[Don Karnage]

Normally I would agree with you but AMD is using a new architecture on a new node process.

If AMD doesn't keep up with CAPs releases and doesn't do much about Crossfire performance in the coming months then I would get very upset.

Personally this is why I'll just spend the extra bit of money on the bigger card instead of going duel cards.

GCN has been out for months. This is just another flaw in a long list of issues with amd drivers. You can all say that they're amazing but they are pure garbage compared to Nvidia's.

 

[jacktesterson]

I'm giving it another go now. Just got home.

 

[blackened23]

Did you disable ULPS? That causes problems in crossfire, you can do it in trixx or with regedit and F3 search for every instance of "enableulps" and make sure every value is 0.....

 

[SickBeast]

Did you disable ULPS? That causes problems in crossfire, you can do it in trixx or with regedit and F3 search for every instance of "enableulps" and make sure every value is 0.....

What is ULPS exactly? I saw it listed in Trixx but I had no idea what it does.

 

[Don Karnage]

What is ULPS exactly? I saw it listed in Trixx but I had no idea what it does.

Ultra
Low
Power
Setting

I think

 

[SickBeast]

Ultra
Low
Power
Setting

I think

Is that what lets the cards idle at 3w? I wouldn't want to disable that unless I absolutely had to.

 

[3DVagabond]

I'm giving it another go now. Just got home.

It's possible something isn't right in the newer drivers. 7870 crossfire was fine in this review. They used these drivers. Maybe try them?

I know they aren't the latest. If they work though they are the ones that I would use.

 

[blackened23]

Is that what lets the cards idle at 3w? I wouldn't want to disable that unless I absolutely had to.

What happens is this: when used in conjunction with certain overclocking software, GPU2 will completely deactivate when you're not playing a game or doing something 3d related. But when you go to play a game, GPU2 will stay deactivated when you try to play a game and you get a BSOD - when you use some OC software AND have ULPS enabled.

This was one of the most frustrating things to deal with, took me a couple of hours to figure it out. It was caused by afterburner. Of course, garbage AMD drivers should make the user experience better than this....there's not even an option to interact with ULPS in CCC...pretty dumb...

Another thought for OP, are your cards reference ? If they're aftermarket cooled you really have to improve the air flow in your case otherwise GPU1 will get HOT HOT HOT....reference really is the best for dual GPU IMO, I really struggled to get aftermarket cards working in sli / xfire...dealing with the temps when all the air is dumped in your case is annoying...

 

[SickBeast]

What happens is this: when used in conjunction with certain overclocking software, GPU2 will completely deactivate when you're not playing a game or doing something 3d related. But when you go to play a game, GPU2 will stay deactivated when you try to play a game and you get a BSOD - when you use some OC software AND have ULPS enabled.

This was one of the most frustrating things to deal with, took me a couple of hours to figure it out. It was caused by afterburner. Of course, garbage AMD drivers should make the user experience better than this....there's not even an option to interact with ULPS in CCC...pretty dumb...

Another thought for OP, are your cards reference ? If they're aftermarket cooled you really have to improve the air flow in your case otherwise GPU1 will get HOT HOT HOT....reference really is the best for dual GPU IMO, I really struggled to get aftermarket cards working in sli / xfire...dealing with the temps when all the air is dumped in your case is annoying...

Thanks for that info.

Something really cool I just saw in another thread was how people are attaching H50 water cooling to these GPUs, and then it just vents out the back of your case. The mounting brackets are only about $10 including shipping.

 

[3DVagabond]

Thanks for that info.

Something really cool I just saw in another thread was how people are attaching H50 water cooling to these GPUs, and then it just vents out the back of your case. The mounting brackets are only about $10 including shipping.

That seemed to work really well on the 580's that were made that way. I'm surprised we haven't seen more products like that.

 

[jacktesterson]

Ill admit the H50 water cooling thing really got me curious haha.

Well I spent most of the night last night doing a clean install of Windows, then installed the CD Drivers, then 12.4 Apps, then all rest of my MSI motherboard drivers.

Anyways, I think the ULPS thing was screwing with me, as I had switched to Trixx and did have that disabled.

Not disabling it seems to have made my system a lot more stable in Crossfire, which was really the thing that bothered me the most. I've experienced no crashes, BSOD or reboots now.

I'm still seeing a few games perform worse in Crossfire then not, but most games are scaling 90-100% now.

So good news, I'm keeping the 7850 crossfire setup now.

Thanks for all the help. Will post some benchies and whatever requests for them.


I decided for now just to keep them at 1175/1375 and my CPU @ 4.4 GHz. These are the sweet spots for max performance at lowest voltages.

In time if I need more, Ill add more.

 

[jacktesterson]

I play MLB2K12 a lot, which isn't demanding I know.... but with Crossfire Enabled.. my G530 + 4850 outperforms it @ 1080p.

Main Rig without Crossfire- Benchmark maxed 1080p- 257 FPS

Main Rig with Crossfire - 57 FPS

G530 + 4850 Maxed 1080p - 77 FPS


Still little annoyances like this. I have to disable Crossfire everytime I want to play MLB2K12. Is there any easy way of disabling Xfire for one game? RadeonPro doesn't work with 7850's.

 

[Kenmitch]

I play MLB2K12 a lot, which isn't demanding I know.... but with Crossfire Enabled.. my G530 + 4850 outperforms it @ 1080p.

Main Rig without Crossfire- Benchmark maxed 1080p- 257 FPS

Main Rig with Crossfire - 57 FPS

G530 + 4850 Maxed 1080p - 77 FPS


Still little annoyances like this. I have to disable Crossfire everytime I want to play MLB2K12. Is there any easy way of disabling Xfire for one game? RadeonPro doesn't work with 7850's.

Found this posted somewhere else. RadeonPro doesn't work at all or you tried this already?

Download and install RadeonPro. Add the game and go to the tweaks tab and choose crossfire off in the CrossFireX section. Trust me its absolutely the best way.

 

[blackened23]

Main thing is to keep an eye on temps while gaming. Open air cooled GPUs get _INSANELY_ hot when crossfire'd or SLI'ed, because all of the hot air is dumped into your case - because the cards are thicker than reference, that means hot air from the bottom will float up to GPU1 and make it a toaster, or vice versa. It took me a lot of time to get msi lightning 580s getting along.

Sad to say those type of coolers are amazing for single card, but reference is better for sli or crossfire. The top card will always get hotter in xfire/sli and especially with aftermarket coolers which are "wider", GPU1 will get insanely hot. Gotta keep an eye on those temps which can cause BSOD's after some time of gaming. This also has implications on overclocking....your best OC on a single card will be better than what you get in sli/crossfire.....you have to be a lot more conservative.

 

[bigsnyder]

What does that mean as I am looking to buy a 7850 for my son and he has a spare 4850 right now...

Thanks!

Crossfire can only use as much ram as the "smallest" card. In other words, the 2GB of the 7850 would be reduced to 512MB since the 4850 only has 512MB.

 

[Termie]

Crossfire can only use as much ram as the "smallest" card. In other words, the 2GB of the 7850 would be reduced to 512MB since the 4850 only has 512MB.

Wait a minute everyone - I think we have to correct this - a 4850 and a 7850 cannot be crossfired, regardless of memory size.

 

[SickBeast]

Ill admit the H50 water cooling thing really got me curious haha.

Well I spent most of the night last night doing a clean install of Windows, then installed the CD Drivers, then 12.4 Apps, then all rest of my MSI motherboard drivers.

Anyways, I think the ULPS thing was screwing with me, as I had switched to Trixx and did have that disabled.

Not disabling it seems to have made my system a lot more stable in Crossfire, which was really the thing that bothered me the most. I've experienced no crashes, BSOD or reboots now.

I'm still seeing a few games perform worse in Crossfire then not, but most games are scaling 90-100% now.

So good news, I'm keeping the 7850 crossfire setup now.

Thanks for all the help. Will post some benchies and whatever requests for them.


I decided for now just to keep them at 1175/1375 and my CPU @ 4.4 GHz. These are the sweet spots for max performance at lowest voltages.

In time if I need more, Ill add more.

Very nice. I'm glad to hear that worked out for you. Now you have a setup that will crush a GTX 680 for about the same amount of money. The only downfalls are crossfire and potentially more power consumption and heat.

I think if I were you I would order the H50 brackets and get that setup going. It dumps the heat outside your case and will be silent.