Crossfire 4850's acting ..... strange

[Narynan]

Last night I upgraded to Crossfire 4850's. The game I am currently spending my time with is a new copy of Titan Quest. NOT the biggest game in the world I am aware, but it's what I am playing throught story mode wise right now.

After finishing up with that I decided to throw in some UT3 to see the increases in some newer games. Things were looking fine and I was noticing a solid FPS increase with everything maxed out. Then about 4 - 5 minutes into the game.... boom it dies. And by die I mean hard lock, and reboot.

Temps were fine, fan speed was at 57% and they were crusing at 57C. Had a maxed, 62fps (didnt remove the FPS cap). I decided to plug the cards into the modular options of my PSU to see if having them on seperate rails helped, it didn't. So I fired up the games and tired again, and it died. Again, and again... and again. 4 times total before I decided to disable crossfire. Played the same map, and everything.... worked fine just like it did before hand.

I am using 8.8 cats, and have the game patched to 1.2. I know I have more testing to do in the games before I can really tell if the card is bad, or if Crossfire is just hating UT3. I googled around and found some issues like this, but no fixes.

Anyone else running 4850's and having any issue with this game? Or issues at all that I should be aware of?

 

[KIAman]

Originally posted by: KIAman
Here is my experience so far. First with my hardware.
E8500
DFI X38 Mobo
8GB Ram
2xHD4850
Windows XP 64

1. Uninstalled CAT 8.7
2. Driver cleaner in safe mode
3. Installed CAT 8.8
4. Reboot lasts 1 min before screen go blank and both HD4850 fans spinning 100% then shutting off after another 30 seconds
5. Reboot, go to safe mode, check for hardware conflicts, none found
6. Figure, I need to reinstall windows anyways, so completely reinstall windows
7. Install chipset drivers, XP SP2, .NET3.0, Windows updates, etc. etc. etc.
8. Install CAT 8.8
9. Reboot lasts 1 min before screen goes blank again and same as #4 above
10. Figure, crossfire is killing it
11. Take out 2ndary card
12. Reboot last 1 min ... same as #4 above
13. Maybe it is my card, so swap in the other card instead
14. Reboot last 1 min... same as #4 above
15. Thinking maybe it's my memory or bad bios settings
16. Over a span of 2 hours, tinker with bios settings and do memtest, all check out fine
17. Thinking bad mobo, install 8400GS and associated drivers and all tests are good
18. Thinking bad PSU, removed mobo from case and did an open air install with only the HD, GPU and HSF plugged in
19. After reboot from CAT 8.8 install, same as #4
20. Go outside and scream several times and have neighbor's call the police
21. Go to sleep (it was around 2AM by this time)
22. Wake up (6AM)
23. Put everything back together and install CAT 8.7
24. Computer runs perfectly
25. Drive to work (7AM)

Total time spent: 8 hours
Lesson learned: Wait several weeks after a new release before installing

Try uninstalling 8.8 and installing 8.7.

Worked for me.

 

[Narynan]

Same issue was going on with 8.7

I uninstalled, and cleaned those drivers, and am having the exact same issues, within 8.8

But 8.8 is what I am currently running so I figured I would post only those.... and I forgot.

I cant really give more information as to what is going on. I dont know if its going to happen in COD4. I dont know what will happen is Spore, or UT2k4, or Diablo 2, or, well anything else. So there is a long way to go.

Once again, the problem resolved itse;f when I disabled CF. But thats not the reason I own 2 video cards, you know, to not use the 2nd one.

Im really just looking for good suggestions for when I get home, so I have somewhere to start.

 

[nitromullet]

Have you tried running the new card by itself for a bit? Perhaps it's a bad...

 

[Narynan]

Didn't have that chance, but I am going to give that a shot. I know the current card is good and running strong, so I am just going to pull that one, and try just the new one for an hour and see how it runs.

Interesting enough, I managed to dig this up on toms, doesn't say much, but I DID find someone with a similar problem, and his specs.

I still get the usual freezing in UT3 as I did with my 2900s. Once I turn off "crossfire" the problem goes away. Perhaps it's a driver issue. Not sure yet.

Gigabyte P35-DQ6 | Intel E8400 @4.18 Ghz |Swiftech Apogee Drive, 3 Rad | Corsair XMS6400 | 2x147 GIG 10k SCSI Raid 0 | ATI 4850 Crossfire | Cosmos Storm


Interesting thing is that we dont really have the same hardware. Only thing me and this guy have in common, Crossfire 4850's and the Corsair memory, though mine is XMS2.

 

[KIAman]

Also, do you have Catalyst AI off or turned on but in advanced mode? I've heard either situations with crossfire can cause instability.

Also, what tool do you use to determine the 2nd fan speed and temps? All the tools I have does not show the correct info for the 2nd card no matter what. I have both my cards OC to 740/1100 load and 200/500 idle with a fan profile of 45c/80c but my 2nd card shows some funky 625/950 no matter what.

 

[Narynan]

Well this has just became a GIANT pain in the ass. I got home started up my computer. It started loading me up in XP, and CCC starts loading as normal. Then after the profile loads, I get a green screen, a hard lock, and a restart. This happens about 4 times before I decided to boot into safe mode and remove all forums of CCC, ati and whatever from my system.

I use driver cleaner, CCleaner, and software remove, to get everything off. I do it twice for good measure. And then I made what I think was a mistake. I removed a file from my computer that was ATI based, had the same kind of profile information, but was not being removed. So I deleted the bastard. It wasnt really hiding and it was in the same area that my custom profiles were hiding, so I was like lets get ride of this crap as well.

Booted back into normal mode, installed 8.7, rebooted, and I have no access to CCC at all. It does not boot up in my hot bar net to my clock, and when I click on the CCC icon from the right click menu, it gives me an error that its in basic mode, and needs to go advanced mode or exit. I click advanced mode, and nothing happens. I can do this 20 times, and nothing happens.

Wash rinse repeat. Install uninstall remove. x4? x5?

I dont really know, but now I have no access to my CCC, which is making crossfire useless to me. I am using ATT to get around, but it has no controls over the 2nd video card, so it gets hot as hell, and to me thats unacceptable coinsidering it sits right above my PSU, and I dont want it dumping all that heat into my Zalman PSU. It's probally not real good for it.

So, here is where I am at. Right now, I am happy because I can get crossfire going in ATT and use it that way, even though GPUZ is telling me that under load that 2nd card is just WAY to damn hot.

So where do I go from here? Return my 2nd card and just use the one 4850 with ATT? Return both cards and upgrade to a 4870 for less and use ATT for just the single card?

Return everything and get a 260, which i dont want because long term I WANT TO USE DUAL VIDEO CARDS. Grumble grumble.



Cliffnotes version

1) Remove all trances of ati, washed and now having no response from CCC no matter how many reinstalls I get.
2) Using ATT for fan fix, only works with one of the two cards, and 2nd card is HOT, as always.
3) What do I do? Cant use CCC, ATT does not fix the bill. Upgrade to a 4870 and use ATT? Shot the thing? Trouble shooting is going to be a big time pain in the ass.

 

[Narynan]

well i have come to the decision that I am going to return but the 4850's, and get a 4870, that will at lease run with ATT tools.

freaking ati is pissing me off though, not TO much difference in price between this and the OC'd 260. And I wont have 1/2 the head aches.

I guess thats one thing for me to coinsider, I have always had a problem with ATI software, but never really with the nVidia stuff. But... i love those ati cards.

 

[shangshang]

sorry for the pain, but I think your post demostrated perfectly why dual video card solution, whether SLI or Crossfire, is not all smooth sailing yet.

 

[QuixoticOne]

That sucks. I'm not looking forward to the problems with my own CF setup in the next few weeks.

I can't believe their drivers and especially the BIOS is so messed up and the fan control / power management doesn't even work right on many peoples' cards.

I suppose you could use RBE to reflash your card with a custom fan / temperature table and not have to worry about CCC to do that for you so at least the temperatures would have been better.

But obviously you do want CCC to work for various other reasons...so... pain in the rear. You could always have reinstalled your system motherboard / chipset drivers too since they're ATI based to see if that would help... or have loaded back to a OS restore point or done a 'repair' on the OS.. but usually that causes other problems and lost programs / settings /etc.

 

[Narynan]

I guess the main complaint I have right now is the fact that every rock I turn over I am finding another something to make this whole issue not worth it. I am going into the store tomorrow returning both 4850's and going single card. Maybe a 4870, maybe not. The whole CCC thing is really irking me. I cant figure out why the it wont work.

Quixotic, I am trying to figure out which chipset drivers it is that you are talking about that are ATI based? Is there something hanging out on my MB that I should be looking at?

PS, I am currently at whits end with this whole thing, and with my current track record, I do not believe that flashing my bios is the thing for me. As tempting as it sounds, I am not interested in REALLY F'ing something up and then having a warrenty issue.

 

[Narynan]

Alright so what should I do about this card deal. I am currently just looking for sugestions.

I am thinking of either going with

1) A BFG CO'd 260, because I am just freaking tired of dealing with ATI and this card headache...

2) Returning 1 4850 and just dealing with the single 4850 which I can tune to my liking in with ATT.

3) Returning BOTH 4850's going with a 4870, which I can ... see above.

Heading to the store at 10-12 tomorrow. So give me your 2 cents. I would like to hear some feedback.

 

[QuixoticOne]

I can't blame you for not wanting to flash to 'fix' (ok, band-aid) the fan/temperature/power savings issues. A consumer should never be forced into such 'surgery' to fix an obvious defect that the product should never have had to begin with. It is too much hassle to begin with that it is broken, and worse if you do get a failed flash or warranty problems or not-quite-working results from the process.

I don't blame you for looking at the 4870 or 260 or whatever.. the price difference isn't that huge, and the performance difference is satisfying especially given the hassle and bugs and instabilities and lack of performance scaling issues that are sometimes / often resultant of using CF.

As for the chipset driver, I think I had misunderstood a quote to mean that you had an ATI chipset MOTHERBOARD and had deleted an ATI profile file that might be for the motherboard's ATI software as opposed to the CCC. If you only deleted ATI files and the GPU is the only ATI thing in the system then you shouldn't have screwed anything up to the point where a good driver cleaner / registry cleaner / CCC & driver reinstall shouldn't have fixed them.

I suppose if you were going to keep the GPU then there are other things that could be tried to fix the CCC mess, but it seems like you've found a simple way to proceed to solve the CF issues. Hopefully the driver / control panel for whatever GPU you buy as a replacement will work OK.

Originally posted by: Narynan
I guess the main complaint I have right now is the fact that every rock I turn over I am finding another something to make this whole issue not worth it. I am going into the store tomorrow returning both 4850's and going single card. Maybe a 4870, maybe not. The whole CCC thing is really irking me. I cant figure out why the it wont work.

Quixotic, I am trying to figure out which chipset drivers it is that you are talking about that are ATI based? Is there something hanging out on my MB that I should be looking at?

PS, I am currently at whits end with this whole thing, and with my current track record, I do not believe that flashing my bios is the thing for me. As tempting as it sounds, I am not interested in REALLY F'ing something up and then having a warrenty issue.

 

[Narynan]

Well quix, tell me. Given what you know about the situtation, and what you know about cards.... where would you go with this given the 3 choices above?

 

[QuixoticOne]

I think you'll have to do what's best for you. Check the benchmarks in the resolutions you will play for the games you'll play and with the quality settings you'll play (AA, AF, textures,etc.) and see how 1x4850 compares vs 1x4870 vs 1xGTX260 and see what the best deal is for your projected and current needs.

I fully sympathize about not wanting to deal with ATI software.. I've got a CF of 4850's I'm not using yet because of their bad software.. it is a PITA enough just to get ONE card working at a reasonable temperature / fan speed, and they didn't fix that in CAT 8.8 or new firmware.

NVIDIA has their faults, but I think their software quality and portability is superior at this time. Though to be fair they lost a lot of points in my book for having basically ZERO advanced controls (fan speed, clock rates, etc.) / monitoring capabilities (even for GPU temperature) in their driver/control panel. It seems like you need a good 3rd party control / monitoring program either for ATI or NVIDIA's boards, and, sadly, IDK if there IS a version of such a 3rd party program that is fully effective for temperature, fan speed, clocks, SLI/CF control, etc. for either vendor's recent GPUs.

I suppose I'd personally keep 1x4850 and call it good if that kept me happy with IQ / FPS for all my current important games. Beyond that, I'd be tempted to go NVIDIA since it isn't like the 4870 from many manufacturers is without its heat / fan / power saving issues.

 

[KIAman]

So, you removed ATI drivers and also the CCC and installed new drivers and CCC and new CCC won't run?

That's strange. The only time I was not able to run CCC was because I had yet to install Microsoft .NET 2.0 (or in my case, 3.0) Framework yet.

I'm sorry for your pain. I don't know why my CF setup was such a breeze (other than trying out Cat 8.8).

For price/performance, CF HD4850 blows all the other options away.

Also, it doesn't sound like you are an overclocker/tweaker considering you do not want to flash your GPU bios so at defaults, an HD4870 is your best buy for performance (GTX260 if you are willing to overclock).

 

[Narynan]

Yeah, I got .NET 2.0 SP1 / .NET 3.0 SP1 and .NET 3.5. It was weird, it was all running FINE, for about 4 hours, until I went to change profiles, and it froze and then would no longer get me into windows.
The profiles had worked fine before, both of them. I had one with a 30% fan speed, and one at 57%. Both worked, both worked under crossfire. I decided ok, I'm good... so I went to 8.8, and thats when the shit hit the fan. As soon as I the final 8.8 reboot happened, I loaded my old profile and BOOM. That was it. Hard locked, gave me some weird ass green screen, and I was done. The thing is, I up to this morning still could not get CCC up and running. So, I said F it, and bought a 260 OC'd by BFG. Pluged it in, and it's working smooth... except.

Except that It will not let me run my second monitor in its native resolution. And when it does I have the have a black bar on the right side of the screen when is about 1 1/2 inches long.

My primary is a 22in acer, with a 19 in viewsonic as the backup. The acer runs 1680x1050 and the viewsonic runs 1440x900. When I set them to those resolutions the viewsonic has the above blakc bar. But when I set the viewsonic to 1280 x 1024 it looks ok, except for that whole not running in its native resolution look, but no black bar. Running 177.41

 

[KIAman]

Really? I run nvidia at work with a 24" and a 22" and never had that problem.

The only thing I can think of is your scaling settings where it says "Change flat panel scaling" and choose the options to either NOT SCALE or USE DISPLAY'S BUILT IN SCALING.

 

[Narynan]

I think it is because I have the Viewsonic in a VDA /DVI adapter and there for it thinks it a CRT, or an analog signal, and chaning something about it there. So I am going to change up and run it directly DVI to DVI and see if it clears it up.

Now all I need to do is figure out the overclock rating on this thing and how far I can push it. Alright kinda looking at it with Rivatuner.