How do I know whether Crossfire is working

[Galatian]

Hey,

I recently upgraded from a GTX 670 to two R9 290X watercooled. I completely reinstalled Windows 8.1 and have the newest Beta Catalyst. I enabled Crossfire and I can see the little LED on my slave card going on when I do so. I ran the Beyond Earth Benchmark (multi GPU option in the ini file enabled) in Mantle mode by I seem to get lower scores then the test here on Anandtech and I wonder if Crossfire is really working as intended? Is there any way to check if it works?

 

[MTDEW]

You can install MSI afterburner and use its built in RivatunerStatisticsServer to enable the onscreen display that you can set to show GPU usage,clocks and more onscreen while gaming/testing.
Also, depending on what brand of 290x's you're using, that little red light might actually mean your second GPU is "turned off" when the light is on to save power.

Its called ULPS (or sometimes referred to as Zero core)...think of it as a stand-by state for your second GPU when its not in use.

You may also see people mention that they disable ULPS to solve issues.

BTW: ULPS means Ultra Low Power State

EDIT: HERE is a quick video i found on youtube on how to use MSI AB onscreen display...its kinda old, but it shows what you need to know anyway.

 

[MTDEW]

Also, i forgot to mention.
If your second GPU isn't being recognized by MSI AB or a program like GPUZ when you open those programs from your desktop, that could just because GPU 2 is in its low power state since the second GPU isn't being used at the desktop.

You can use MSI AB to turn off ULPS, click the settings button at the bottom of AB and its listed under AMD compatibility properties...that will keep your second GPU from "turning itself completely off" when not in use on the desktop. (will require a reboot to disable ULPS)

Or you can run a 3D program/test to "wake up GPU 2" before using one of those programs to check x-fire. (GPUZ has a render test that is handy for this)

 

[james1701]

Run 3dMark. The results will tell you how many cards you have, and look for threads with 3dMark scores. That will tell you if you are where you need to be.

 

[Silverforce11]

The simple answer is to run it with 1 GPU first and compare the results.

With R290/X there's no need to play around with extra settings like ULPS, just leave it alone, plug it in and set crossfire on in Catalyst Driver Panel. The driver will wake up that un-used 2nd card when a 3d workload is detected. ULPS is good to reduce power use on idle or normal windows usage.

 

[Galatian]

Well that would explain why I seem to get erratic behavior on the sensors when I try to run HWInfo 64. It crashes quite often when trying to get the sensor data. Sometimes it works though but it won't show all the date on the second GPU. When I run a game though it will start showing the correct setting.