m17x R2 2x5870 - games run smother with crossfire disabled

Hei guys,

I experience some wiered issues latelly...my m17x R2 with 2 x 5870 hd doesn't run games as smooth as it used to (i did nothing to change the configuration). Now this is not a dramatic fall in performance just enought to feel it. For example in BFBC2 i have just a bit of lag when moving mouse for example and i can feel it it's not smooth as it used to be.

So i restalled the official dell drivers ... still the same. Then i disabled crossfire and voila ... BFBC2 runs excelent just like before.

I saved some 3dmark performance tests from when i bought the unit and all the benchmarks that i run now are identical to the old ones with crossfire enabled (aparently no drop in performance benchmark wise).

Another thing i have noticed is the fans don't run as fast as before when crossire activated ... they never go to maximum except when i have crossfire disabled.

As i said...drivers were reinstalled (dell official ones) and no change ... should i reinstall windows ?!

 

how about your temps?

you can use hwinfo32 and log it, and see what's going on with temps.

 

Normal temps ... gpu max 70 celsius .. also i have noticed that the load on gpu-s are max 35% with gpu-z. It's like the gpu is undercloacked tho the frequecies are normal 700/1000. Very wiered ..... Again ... the drop in performance is small (10% maybe 15% tops) and you can feel it in the mouse move and also when alot of explosions around.

 

so your gpus was not load, it's driver issue I think,which version are you on with which CAP? before I played BFBC2 my dual GPUs loaded up to 99%, you should try with some driver around and your 5870s on new or old Vbios?

AMD Catalyst 11.8 Preview Driver download from Guru3D.com

try this one driver 11.8 preview, i'm on it and run with no issue right now with 11.7 cap1 btw

you can find all CAP version here

Rage3D

 

Ok...i've installed the driver u pointed out ... pretty much the same thing. Gpu-z says first card is working at around 90% and the other around 30% in load. This is very very wiered ... system is running fine, no bluescreens no gliches except this slightly bad performance in games ....

 

it happened on BFBC2 only or all your game behave like that?

I lost my performance one time and I had to reinstall windows, but I lost performance on everything, benchmark, every game...

 

I can only feel it on BFBC2... Red Alert 3, Black ops all seem to run fine. I also reinstalled BFBC2 from steam but it's the same.

 

it's weird, maybe your game setting is changing?

 

I never touched the settings ... this happened so subtile that i only realised at some point in BFBC2 after a while. Anyone ideeas ? I don't wanna reinstall Windows ... too many settings and stuff.

 

have you performed a complete driver removal (not just update your driver)? I had some weird issues like that too...and after doing a complete driver wipe for the GPU's, and installing 11.7 (maybe 11.6...I can't remember) it worked fine again.

 

What I did is removing the old driver from programs than a restart. After that I installed 11.8 as indicated in this thread by dj. To be honest those new drivers were even worse. So I uninstalled them and put back the good old dell drivers. My next step would be to reinstall windows but I would really like to avoid that.

 

Since BFBC2 is running off of Steam, have they performed a steam update or an update to the game recently? I know Steam will try to force the latest patches to the game. Just a thought. Hope you get it sorted out.

 

Any other ideeas i could try before reinstalling Windows (witch i really don't) ?

 

I also have disabled XF recently due to issues. Games run smoother in some cases as well. Really weird and also a waste of £ if you ask me. Hope you get it fixed.

 

Same here, have tried os reinstall, diff drivers, you name it... seems everything runs better with xfire disabled even my WEI score went from 6.0 to 7.5 just by disabling xfire.

 

What i would suggest;
Uninstall drivers.
Remove excess driver-files with DriverSweeper in SAFEMODE.
Reinstall the DELL drivers.
On top of that, install latest drivers from ATI, 11.10
On top of that, install the 11.9 Applicatons profile CAP 4.

Now, try BFBC2. if its still the same, bad performance, let the game run for 15-20 minutes and check the sensors for the temperature of the cards. Are they running above 75 C? I find that my cards start to drop performance over that peak. If so, clean the system fans (remove dust, etc.). If you have done so, repaste the cards with cooling paste.

If this didn't solve your problem, and as you mentioned earlier, you can see an performance boost in other games when enabling Crossfire in them, then its not a hardware related problem. Reinstalling Windows would probably not help, as it would not be the OS's fault that the game is not running smooth.


- Scott.

Edit:
Sorry, didnt see that this is an old post..

 

Choosing crossfire-x was indeed a waste of money. Well, lesson learned ... better go for a more powerfull single chip next time !