Crossfire Question 4870m

Lately I've been having horrible glitches with crossfire. The Screen tears constantly and it looks like the two cards are not in sync or something of the sort. After messing with the system for a bit I can get it to work for a short time if i mess with the crossfire cable, I'm pretty sure that is what is causing the problem.

Is there a way to use the secondary card as the primary graphics card? This is probably a stupid question... would I have to take off the heat sink of each and switch them? I'm trying to sell the laptop and want to know if I could also just sell the other 4870m rather than order a new crossfire cable. I want to test it to make sure it is the cable that is the problem and not the actual card.

The problem only happens after the cards have heated up a bit which makes this problem even more confusing... Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

According to my resources since this laptop's video card part #'s are different then they would probably not fit if you try to do the change physically. And software wise I'm pretty sure that it is not possible. I think that it would be better to try the cable first and then the cards. If you need pricing info you can send us an e-mail to [email protected] and if you are within warranty we can do the replacement, just send an e-mail to [email protected] with your tag, phone and a brief description of the issue and we'll get back to you ASAP.

 

Thanks for your help, I'm well out of warranty so that won't help. I figured it wouldn't work just by looking at the cards but was hoping that I was overlooking something.

 

Haha, naaah you were right about that. They won't fit.
Anyway use the e-mail above if you need any assistance with the parts, I would go 1st with the bridge cuz it is not that expensive

 

Actually that is incorrect. You can swap the secondary card to the primary slot. You'll obviously need to swap the heat sinks but the secondary will run absolutely fine in the primary slot. Hope that helps

 

+1 Rep. Thanks for the input. Then give it a try taking out everything and swapping the cards, hopefully it is only the bridge the one that got damaged.

 

Thanks a bunch! I really hope its just the bridge that would be great! Plan on trying the switch tomorrow.

Any tips on getting the heatsink off of the cards? I unscrewed the 4 screws on the one side but it wouldn't budge, do I just have to pull hard or is there some secret to getting them off?

 

Sorry a bit late on the reply. After the screws it just a matter of carefully pulling/prying the heat sink from the gpu. Should just come off. Good luck!

 

Alright thanks, it must be just really glued on there because i gave it a bit of force and it didn't even budge. I'll give it another try soon.

 

You can run a 3D program in order to heat them up, then switch off the laptop and try once again to remove the heatsink. Having warm them up should help during removal.

About the card being swapable, afaik ATI/AMD cards can be swapped (even the bios version of both cards are exactly the same, there is not a slave/master bios version). This is not true for Nvidia if i recall it correctly.

 

Great idea cpt on heating the cards a bit to get the paste loosened up. It can be a little difficult to remove also make sure to clean the paste off and apply new paste when you swap.

 

I suffered the Crossfire issue too. The screen tearing is a problem well known.

If you can afford to do it, I'd look at getting a single 6970M or a 6990M and just do with that. :3 You'd seen epic performance boosts with that.

 

Thanks a lot! Heating up the graphics cards with furmark beforehand worked like a charm. It seems that the secondary graphics card is working perfectly... however now I am extremely confused. After switching the cards for some reason crossfire is working correctly again with no screen tearing. I reseated the crossfire cable countless times before this so I don't think that was it. Is there any reason that switching the primary and secondary cards would allow for no screen tearing? Or is this just luck...

I'll run some more tests on it for the next few hours to make sure the problem doesn't come back but for now its working great!

 

eheh i knew it would work done like this many times.

About the cable, maybe removing it completely has managed to make it settle properly. If it works good, leave it like it is, no need to revert back the cards since they are exactly the same

 

I've swapped my 4870s around but it didnt solve the scrolling and tearing issues when crossfire is enabled.

Now waiting for another crossfire cable to rule that one out.

If it doesnt, it's upgrade to 5870s then.