Alienware 18, Crossfire and Skyrim

So I've had my Alienware 18 with R9 M290x in crossfire for a few days. I loaded up Skyrim, vanilla no mods other than the extra DLC content Hearthfire and such.

As soon as I start the game fullscreen with crossfire enabled, I get horrible white strobing (its good I don't get seizures man!). Running the game with crossfire disabled stops this, as well as running it windowed.

Even after I shut the game down (while squinting in pain, my eyes!) it looks like my laptop's monitor flickers for a bit like the refresh isn't quite right. This does go away tho after a few minutes.

I'm on a fresh install of Windows 7, I tried the graphics drivers from Dell first, then the latest from AMD's website. Same problem. From a post on Steam's forum, I'm currently downloading the Catalyst 14.4 drivers to try, supposedly they fix some flickering, but from what I've seen other peoples issue with this is misc bits of environment flickering, not the whole screen strobing like mine.

I know its possible to play this game with crossfire enabled. I see enough people posting that they run it no problem. Did I get bad vid cards?

 

Mkay, so now I'm strobing yellow instead of white. Progress? Meh.

I've set Vsync on. I've used Radeon Pro to cap FPS at 60. I've tried setting crossfire profiles to Skyrim and GW2 (which I read somewhere fixes the yellow strobe).

Nothings worked.

 

Ok, so I tried running the Unigine Heaven benchmark and get the same results as trying to play Skyrim.


Crossfire = yellow strobe/flicker.


No crossfire = runs fine.





On the phone now with tech support, and thank god I got a good one. He's not making me redo all the troubleshooting I've already done.


Two new cards and a crossfire cable are on their way with a tech to replace them.

 

Running Ungine Heaven benchmark:



Running Skyrim:



Crappy cell phone video, I'm currently too lazy to install a screen capture program.

 

Probably a bad cable. When I had my 7970M x 2 XFIRE a few of the pins were bent on the Xfire cable.

 

Considering its not always the same flicker...and ONE time Skyrim actually ran with out the flicker, I'm inclined to agree.

 

I'm with Zero989. My guess it's a crapped out crossfire cable

 

I had this same issue on my 18xr2. When xfire was enabled i got this horrible strobing effect but when disabled it was fine. My machine is under warranty but i don't want anyone ripping it apart from Dell unless it is a major issue like motherboard. So in attempt to fix it I ordered a fire cable (new) off ebay for $19. I putt in last night and it fixed the problem. My machine is new only a few weeks old and under warranty for a couple years but I don't want them touching it unless the cost is to high out of my pocket.

It seems fire cables are very sensitive compared to sli cables..Weird...

Now the 7970m's are coming out for some more serious fun. I wanted to verify they worked ok before taking them out. Yay...