How to verify if CrossFire is working or not

[CreepieDeCrapper]

Thanks gersson, doing this now. BRB.

 

[UltimaBoB]

I have new HIS 1950XTXs - crossfire edition and standard.

6.10 Beta would support 1, but would not recognize them in crossfire. I didn't do 3DMark though so manybe it would use them but just not say "ennabled" on the Control Center.

I never tried the modded 6.9s - I just decided to use the drivers that came with the cards since they are brand new cards - first ever sold in Korea apparently!

Those drivers work though I do not know how to tell what drivers they are (what catalyst version etc..). I figure I will just wait until 6.10 comes out and try those.

 

[CreepieDeCrapper]

Well gersson, I think we're getting somewhere now! I think it's your ini file that helped the most. Everything else was already set and running as you suggested (I wiped all my mods earlier today and my CCC settings matched yours). Still, though, I went through and removed my old video drivers as suggested and re-installed them. The LowPolyGrass mod you gave me is also installed (although when I used it before, it didn't make a difference).

Anyway, I'm now getting *mostly* low/mid 30's, which is great. It hits a 40-something here and there and will dip into the mid/high 20's but overall it's definitely smoother. Are there any mouse adjustments in your ini file because that seems smoother as well? Dungeons are anywhere between 40-70, too, so that's an improvement. The only other thing I did today which I think helped a bit too is set my Windows pagefile to a fixed size of 2560mb. To compare apples to apples, we should test running at the same resolution (1280x800 if you can) to see what our averages are. If you have the time, let me know what your results are and what area you tested and I'll try the same to see how we differ/compare.

Now I hope that the enhanced texture mods and Natural Environments don't kill my FPS I really love those things.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

You are not using ATI Tray Tools or ATI TOOL, correct? Crossfire users shouldn't use it!

Tried running 1280x800 @ the waterfront district of the imperial city. I got average 60 fps with dips to what seems 50-55 fps...

OOPS I FORGOT TO TELL YOU THAT YOU NEED OBLIVION MOD MANAGER TO ENABLE THE GRASS MOD!

http://timeslip.chorrol.com/obmm_download.html

Once you get it select utilities on the right
Choose archive invalidation
Tick:
Directly edit BSA archives
Select all the "File types to include"
Don't select ignore normal maps
Pick edit BSA entries...
Pick Generate Archiveinvalidation...
hit update now.

If you get this you may eventually want to download: PolyGone

 

[CreepieDeCrapper]

Actually, I have been using ATITool, but only to control fan speed to keep my GPU temps down. I'm not using it for any OC'ing or any other configuration, only for fan speed control. Is it still bad to use in this way? I do have OBMM, but didn't know I had to use it to enable the LowPolyGrass mod. I'm trying now.

Edit: Ok, after using OBMM to 'enable' the grass mod, I don't notice a difference at all from my previous testing. Again, I think your ini file is really what has helped me the most so far.

Regarding the Waterfront test @ 1280x800, I was averaging mid 20-40's with dips into the teens. Back in the wilderness with lots of trees and grass, I averaged upper 30's to mid 40's (again, this is at the lower resolution).

I noticed that the grass no longer sways in the wind, I'm guessing that's a result of having activated the grass mod in OBMM, or was that an ini tweak? I can't remember if it was swaying or not prior to the OBMM configuration.

Thanks again for all your time and effort, gersson. I'm definitely in better shape now than I was previously. I'd really like to use ATITool, however, so I can control fan speeds. One of my cards gets over 90 C w/o it.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

DONT! That's your problem. You have to individually set speeds, voltages for your cards in ATI Tool. If you didn't know this, you are probably running 1 or BOTH in 2D mode
::SHUDDER::

If you want to make your cards cooler, get the Accelero X2 with a fan blowing into your cards -- I get 62*C load with that.

 

[UltimaBoB]

do need to use driver cleaner pro EVERY time you change your ATI drivers.

The tech changed my drivers 5 times lookie for the right fit and just removed programs and then deleted - should I be cleaing up his mess pronto?

 

[CreepieDeCrapper]

Originally posted by: gersson
DONT! That's your problem. You have to individually set speeds, voltages for your cards in ATI Tool. If you didn't know this, you are probably running 1 or BOTH in 2D mode
::SHUDDER::

If you want to make your cards cooler, get the Accelero X2 with a fan blowing into your cards -- I get 62*C load with that.

Yea but then there's the whole warranty issue, plus the actual hardware mod. I tried running with ATITool running, and again with it NOT running... FPS was the same. If I learn how to use it properly, wouldn't I then be 'good to go' ?

Plus, it seems to auto-detect the voltage and memory speeds, I'm only going in to adjust the fan speeds (and I do this per card). Otherwise, I leave it alone. I'll have to read up on it some more to see what it's doing. Not sure how the cards can be running in '2D mode.'

 

[CreepieDeCrapper]

Originally posted by: UltimaBoB
do need to use driver cleaner pro EVERY time you change your ATI drivers.

The tech changed my drivers 5 times lookie for the right fit and just removed programs and then deleted - should I be cleaing up his mess pronto?

I found that just using the regular Windows uninstall method to remove the drivers isn't always effective. It may work, it may not. I highly recommend using Driver Cleaner Pro. It does add an extra reboot to the driver switching process, but it's also a fail-safe way of doing things.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Well my ATI tool suggestion -- I still stand by it...and you won't listen so... All I can say is do what you think is best

 

[CreepieDeCrapper]

Sorry, I'm not trying to be difficult. I'll certainly keep experimenting to utlimately find my best performance. Would you mind expounding on why you think ATITool is a bad idea, though? What did you mean when you said that my cards are probably running in 2D mode by using ATITool?

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Originally posted by: CreepieDeCrapper
Sorry, I'm not trying to be difficult. I'll certainly keep experimenting to utlimately find my best performance. Would you mind expounding on why you think ATITool is a bad idea, though? What did you mean when you said that my cards are probably running in 2D mode by using ATITool?

Long Answer:
ATI tool sets your clocks and voltages to 2d mode. It DOES NOT upclock when a 3d app is started. You need to configure that yourself. Say 625/1450 for an XT @ 1.4 volts. If you DON'T tell it to do this it will simply always stay in 2d mode. Having crossfire further complicates things since each card must be configured to do this. 3d setting have to be individually loaded for each vid card before they operate @ that frequency -- EVERY TIME. Even if all you change are fan speed this is the case. In other words if all you did was alter fan settings, simply by installing ATI Tool, you will never use 3d clocks until you tell both cards to do it.

Short Answer:
Uninstall ATI Tool
ATI Tool+Crossfire=Complicated.

 

[CreepieDeCrapper]

I appreciate the explanation very much, and in fact it makes sense to me. When I looked more closely at ATI Tool settings, I noticed that the memory clocks are not set to what the x1900xt's specs are. I hadn't noticed it before you brought this situation up. Also, I thought that if ATI Tool was closed, then that would effectively disable it. It seems that its settings 'stick' whether it's open or closed, provided it has been run at least once (which it has of course on my system).

I'll uninstall it and see what happens.

(Do you think I'll also need to reinstall the WarCat 6.6 drivers and CCC after removing ATI Tool? I wouldn't think so but you never know. I want to run a TRUE test without ATI Tool since all my previous testing has been done with it.)

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Do you think I'll also need to reinstall the WarCat 6.6 drivers and CCC after removing ATI Tool?

Nope. Just Open UP CCC and set the settings I had told ye before

Just make sure that Ati HotKey Poller and ATI Smart services are set to Automatic
(Start>run: Services.msc)

 

[CreepieDeCrapper]

Ok, just removed ATI Tool and set everything according to your instructions - same FPS. Anyway, I'm no longer complaining as I'm getting much more consistent 30's when walking around outdoors (about 85% of the time). Towns are all over the place though, from 12 to 60! It just depends on what corner I'm walking around, etc. I think BIOS tweaks are next for me. I need to properly adjust my memory timings, I just don't know how yet.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Originally posted by: CreepieDeCrapper
Ok, just removed ATI Tool and set everything according to your instructions - same FPS. Anyway, I'm no longer complaining as I'm getting much more consistent 30's when walking around outdoors (about 85% of the time). Towns are all over the place though, from 12 to 60! It just depends on what corner I'm walking around, etc. I think BIOS tweaks are next for me. I need to properly adjust my memory timings, I just don't know how yet.

Next step is to OC your e6400 to 3.0 Ghz
Go ask @ the CPU forum...I'm worn out
My core2duo is @ 3.5 and I immediately saw the CPU bottlenecks disappear.

 

[CreepieDeCrapper]

Yup, that's what I figured. Not sure if I want to OC as this is also my work PC. So it runs every day ALL day and I need this hardware to last for some time to come. Either way I have some system tweaking to do still, but that's for another day and another thread. Thanks for all your hard work and time, gersson. I sincerely appreciate it

 

[LittleNemoNES]

you're welcome. A couple hundred Mhz won't do much if anything to your chip. Aim for x6800 speed.

 

[CreepieDeCrapper]

Not sure if you're still monitoring this thread or not, gersson. But I just ran 3DMark last night and scored 5710 with Crossfire enabled. That looks significantly lower than what you and others have suggested I should get. Also, it literally took 10+ minutes just to open 3DMark06 (the splash screen just sat there forever). During the CPU tests I was getting 0-1 FPS, something seems off here, but I don't know where to start.

 

[nullpointerus]

Originally posted by: CreepieDeCrapper
Yup, that's what I figured. Not sure if I want to OC as this is also my work PC. So it runs every day ALL day and I need this hardware to last for some time to come. Either way I have some system tweaking to do still, but that's for another day and another thread. Thanks for all your hard work and time, gersson. I sincerely appreciate it

If you are patient and do not expect insane overclocks, then overclocking is a relatively safe and stable way to increase performance.

I overclocked without proper testing and corrupted my XP installation. To avoid that, I adopted a new strategy: overclock late in the day, and set the various recommended stability tests to run overnight. If there are no errors when you wake up in the morning, you should be good to go. Try to overclock one thing at a time: CPU one night, RAM the next, GPU the next, and GPU RAM the night after that. My PC has been rock solid since.

IIRC, C2D chips do not need to raise the voltage to achieve very good overclocks, and the chips run fairly cool. Heat and voltage are the two things that will reduce chip life. As long as you keep them in check, your system should last a long time.

 

[CreepieDeCrapper]

Thanks for the advice, nullpoint. I'm planning to at least experiment with some OC'ing but I first have some reading to do. I'm having a hard time finding good newbie tutorials. There's lots of posts from newb's with similar questions that I have, but not really an all-in-one spot with a how-to, especially for C2D.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

CreepieDeCrapper Have you done a full reinstall of Windows?
your 3dmark06 score is in line with a single card. I'm asking the obvious but again, you're not using any 3rd Party appz anymore, right? Make sure Crossfire is enabled in the drivers, of course. Other than that, I've no idea.
I don't think I've asked but you ARE using a Crossfire edition card as well as a regular card, correct?

 

[CreepieDeCrapper]

Haha, thanks for the follow-up, gersson. Yes, I am definitely using a CF Edition card as well as a regular card. At least, that's what the box said! When I open CCC I have the option of enabling Crossfire, which I have done. I need to run 3DMark06 again with lower settings, however. You posted in another thread about setting the video settings pretty low prior to benchmarking.

Also, is 3DMark06 supposed to take 10-15 minutes just to open? That's what has me the most concerned.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Originally posted by: CreepieDeCrapper
Haha, thanks for the follow-up, gersson. Yes, I am definitely using a CF Edition card as well as a regular card. At least, that's what the box said! When I open CCC I have the option of enabling Crossfire, which I have done. I need to run 3DMark06 again with lower settings, however. You posted in another thread about setting the video settings pretty low prior to benchmarking.

Also, is 3DMark06 supposed to take 10-15 minutes just to open? That's what has me the most concerned.

if you mean literrally that long, then yes that is a long time. I just tested it for you and it took 57 secs to load...plus 5 for the shareware prompt.

 

[CreepieDeCrapper]

Yes I mean literally 10-15 solid minutes of JUST the splash/loading screen (the part before the shareware prompt). Also, this is a fresh install of Windows XP Pro with SP2 (and it's legit).