My HD7970 Crossfire setup is not working properly. HELP!

Hi all.

It has been two days that I have been trying to crossfire my 2 7970 and it just doesn't work. Now I am at a point where I have completely uninstalled all AMD stuff, ran Ccleaner and Driver Seeeper. I then reinstalled Catalyst 12.4 and enabled crossfire. When I run in Skyrim, Alan Wake and Hard Reset I get half the FPS or WORSE than on each 7970 alone. I check FPS with FRAPS. I had GPUZ running ok with CAT 12.3 but now it craches my pc when I try to read info on second video card. I disabled ulps. I had 2 entries, set them to 0. For Skyrim on single card i get 45fps with eveything set to max. Alan Wake is the same thing. Also the same with Hard Reset. I read a Guru3d 7970 crossfire review and they show benchmarks that Skyrim and Hard Reset scale at almost 100%. All my tests are at 2560x1600.

I tried with one and 2 crossfire bridges connected and I get the same results. And I have the 8pin and 6 pin connectors on each GPU connected to the PSU. And I tried both PCIE Power Supply locations on my PSU when I did the single card tests so I am pretty confident that my PSU is running ok and should be able to drive 2 GPUs.

I made a little discovery later. I was reading on other crossfire problem threads and I did not try to to test each card on the second pci slot. So for the Asus P8Z68-V Pro GEN3, the top PCIe in blue is rated PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 for single or or dual at x8/x8. The second gray PCIe is rated PCIe3.0/2.0 at x8. Now having a i7-2600k I can only use PCIe 2.0. So I procedeed to test both cards on the gray PCIe X8 mode and to my surprise they performed SIGNIFICANTLY better. In the scenes where I was averaging 45fps in Skyrim I now average 55fps. This is a MASSIVE difference. I went to benchmark in Hard Reset and I get an Average of 100fps. And Alanwake is also on average 10fps more. This is a HUGE difference and this leads me to believe that there is an issue with the PCIe interface.

Does this mean I have a faulty motherboard? I checked my asus drivers and they are up to date. What do you guys think? I am off to bed. Atleast now I am performing like those benchmarks I read for a single HD7970.

As for micro stuttering this is not what I am experiencing. I read up on it and looked at benchmarks and the worst FPS was that of a a single card and the best fps was double what a single card was delivering and then it fluctuated between both values which is not what I experience when I crossfire. I get a constant worse FPS than a single card. And I would say with the new FPS that I gathering from running on the second PCIe slot, they are literary half or WORSE the FPS that I get from my single card.

So back to the question. Faulty MB or PSU(doutfull it is a XFX PRO 1000W Platinum, which is the same as a the Seasonic 1000W Platinum. Or is there something I am missing?


Here are my specs:
CPU: I7 2600K @ Stock 3.4 Ghz (for now)
MB: ASUS P9Z68-V Pro Gen 3
GPU: 2 x Saphhire Refence Radeon HD 7970 3TB
RAM: 16GB 4x4GB Gskill PC-1600MHz
PSU: XFX Pro Series 1000W Platinum

vipernig said:

I made a little discovery later. I was reading on other crossfire problem threads and I did not try to to test each card on the second pci slot. So for the Asus P8Z68-V Pro GEN3, the top PCIe in blue is rated PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 for single or or dual at x8/x8. The second gray PCIe is rated PCIe3.0/2.0 at x8. Now having a i7-2600k I can only use PCIe 2.0. So I procedeed to test both cards on the gray PCIe X8 mode and to my surprise they performed SIGNIFICANTLY better. In the scenes where I was averaging 45fps in Skyrim I now average 55fps. This is a MASSIVE difference. I went to benchmark in Hard Reset and I get an Average of 100fps. And Alanwake is also on average 10fps more. This is a HUGE difference and this leads me to believe that there is an issue with the PCIe interface.

Does this mean I have a faulty motherboard? I checked my asus drivers and they are up to date. What do you guys think? I am off to bed. Atleast now I am performing like those benchmarks I read for a single HD7970.


So back to the question. Faulty MB or PSU(doutfull it is a XFX PRO 1000W Platinum, which is the same as a the Seasonic 1000W Platinum. Or is there something I am missing?


Here are my specs:
CPU: I7 2600K @ Stock 3.4 Ghz (for now)
MB: ASUS P9Z68-V Pro Gen 3
GPU: 2 x Saphhire Refence Radeon HD 7970 3TB
RAM: 16GB 4x4GB Gskill PC-1600MHz
PSU: XFX Pro Series 1000W Platinum

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Hello vipering,

Very good job on trouble shooting might I add. You actually diagnosed your problems correctly and knew to disable EnableUlps in your registry for crossfire. But to your quesiton, I honestly feel it's your motheboard. I googled your XFX pro 1000W Platinum, and it has 83A on your +12V line and also single rail. You did buy a very good powersupply. Aside from, "I did not do a clean reformat of Windows 7", it does point to a fault motherboard. My old Asus P6X58D Premium motherboard had an issue with my corsair SSDs in Raid 0. It would randomly lockup every two weeks or so. I had the latest firmware/bios and everything and this issue occured. Reading their fourms I found out some users had their issue correced by getting a new motherboard. I upgraded to the Gigabyte G1 Assassin 1 and I have been error free. I would focus on the motherboard for replacement to be honest. Or look for another motheboard brand. Very good post for a new member who didn't open up with a rant and kept it professional

The problem is that your board runs two cards at 8x/8x I believe. My board has 3x PCIe slots as well, but they run at 16x/8x/8x with 3 and 16x/16x with two cards. Might wanna try RMAing your board and or buying a different mobo, test a different PSU just to rule that out.

Thank you Mr Mean for the kind words. Honestly I usually solve all my problems with proper research and me posting was really as last resort. Here are new findings:

Ok I just finished running Unigine Heaven Benchmarks. I tried 3dmark11 but that killed the PC in Crossfire and had errors in single card mode. Can't be sure because I don't know how to use it. Unigine was great and simple. I did multiple test and will detail those thourouly later.

My setting:
Binary:Windows 32bit Visual C++ 1600 Release Mar 7 2012
Operating system:Windows 7 (build 7601, Service Pack 1) 64bit
CPU model:Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz
CPU flags: 3400MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE41 SSE42 HTT
GPU model:AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series 8.961.0.0 3072Mb

Settings:
Render: direct3d11
Mode:2560x1600 8xAA fullscreen
Shaders:high
Textures:high
Filter:trilinear
Anisotropy:16x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction:enabled
Volumetric:enabled
Tessellation:extreme

For the PCIe1 Slot that can run at x16 I get:
FPS:28.1
Scores:707
Min FPS:12.9
Max FPS:60.6

For the PCIe2 Slot that can runs at x8 I get:
FPS:28.6
Scores:722
Min FPS:17.0
Max FPS:62.2

For Crossfire atx8/x8 i get:
FPS: 51.4
Scores:1295
Min FPS:20.2
Max FPS:120.6

Now the first time I ran the crossfire test it was crap and half the performance of a single crad. I enabled Overdrive and left everything stock. This was what yielded the above crossfire result. When I disabled the overdrive in CCC and then rebooted the PC and reran the test I got the same results above for the crossfire.

But Alan wake still runs like crap even with overdrive enabled and Skyrim killed my PC. So this leads me to believe that my PSU is fine. Now it is either a faulty PCIe hardware because the PCI1 rand a bit worse than the PCI2 in the benchamark and as stated above in games there is a significant difference. Or it could be fubared PCIe drivers that are not properly power managing the MB. Now as Mr Mean stated, the final real test is a fresh install but I so don't want to do that. And considering that Unigine worked in crossfire and scaled properly there has to be a way to solve this.

Here's the deal, I'm running 3 7970s in tri fire and often I think it's not working very well, I use 3dmark11 and Heaven to make sure I'm getting the proper scores. I also use BF3 as a good indicator because that game runs like a dream in tri fire, after that if other games are Failing it all goes back it all goes back to our Sub Par horrible drivers from AMD. I can't wait to go back to NVidia cards after this Fiasco with the 7970s.

Marcdaddy said:

Here's the deal, I'm running 3 7970s in tri fire and often I think it's not working very well, I use 3dmark11 and Heaven to make sure I'm getting the proper scores. I also use BF3 as a good indicator because that game runs like a dream in tri fire, after that if other games are Failing it all goes back it all goes back to our Sub Par horrible drivers from AMD. I can't wait to go back to NVidia cards after this Fiasco with the 7970s.

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I understand. But I am getting crashes. I still have GPUz killing my machine when I try to read the second GPU. And now when I do the GPU Render test on GPUz it shows that the second PCI become x1 2.0. And what peeves me is that there are many reports online of people with no problems with the games I am testing. Although now in my case the PCIe seems to be the culprit. Not sure if it is in proper management in Windows, shitty drivers by Asus, Fubared drivers by AMD even though they isntall cleanly after proper uninstall, driver sweeper or faulty MB

Do you happen to have a spare hard drive (even a laptop drive) that you could install a fresh copy of windows on? Ruling a bad install out without having to wipe your main install wouldn't take too long.

It is very strange that neither card can finish 3dMark11, even when in the system alone. I have had an issue in crossfire before where one of the 6-pins came loose, and when that second card came under load the system would crash. Since you have plugged in the cards so many times, that doesn't sound like your problem, however.

Also, have you made sure to install the proper CAP file (and uninstall the old ones)?

I'd also download GPU-Z and check things like temperature and whethere your PCIE bus is running at x8 2.0 like it should be with two cards installed.

If you're feeling really adventerous, you might also want to reseat your CPU and / or ensure that it is not overheating. Are you on the stock cooler? Since you're able to run tests at 2560x1600, I assume you are using either displayport or dual link dvi, correct?

Hope you don't have to RMA anything!

EDIT: I see you already did the CPU-Z thing, so ignore that part

I will retry 3dMark11. I just install and run benchmark or is there any settitng up to do. And there was all these upgrade things it was asking. Yes I have other hard drives to test a fresh install. I will try that later tonight or tomorrow.

I noticed something strange also. The systems takes a long time to shutdown when crossfire is enabled. It shuts down instantly when only one GPU is used. And what about GPUZ dying when I try accessing the second GPU. GPUz works fine when I have both cards installed but crossfire disabled.

My CPU is fine not OC or anything. I have the case open right now so I don't think temps are an issue. And I am in HafX case. Yes running Display port.

vipernig said:

I will retry 3dMark11. I just install and run benchmark or is there any setitng up to do. And there was all these upgrade things it was asking. Yes I have other hard drives to test a fresh install. I will try that later tonight or tomorrow.

I noticed something strange also. The systems takes a long time to shutdown when crossfire is enabled. It shuts down instantly when only one GPU is used. And what about GPUZ dying when I try accessing the second GPU. GPUz works fine when I have both cards installed but crossfire disabled.

My CPU is fine not OC or anything. I have the case open right now so I don't think temps are an issue. And I am in HafX case. Yes running Display port.

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I'm hardly an authority on this, but the only time I've seen that happen is with a bad bios, bad card seating, or bad power hookup. Since they both work fine individually, none of those are probably possible. You could always flip the bios switch, but that is probably pointless.

I'd just do the windows reinstall, as that would pretty much only leave a power supply issue or motherboard. Did you happen to recently flash the motherboard bios with one that has Ivy Bridge / PCIE 3.0 support? I know that was a major overhaul and could be a source of issues.

Yes i did flash the bios of my P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 to 3202 recently. And I did reset to optimised defaults and then tried to disable the power saving features and configured for max power.

vipernig said:

Yes i did flash the bios of my P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 to 3202 recently. And I did reset to optimised defaults and then tried to disable the power saving features and configured for max power.

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I have to wonder if that BIOS flash on the motherboard might be a source of issues. I'd still go ahead with the fresh install on another hard drive first, but if that doesn't work you can purchase a pre-flashed bios chip from Asus to rule that out. A ton of stuff changed in that release.

http://us.estore.asus.com/index.php?l=product_detail&p=3885

It sucks you're having so many issues. I'm running a P8P67 Deluxe with a 2600k at 4.5ghz since the B3 boards were released, and it has been a wonderful experience. I haven't flashed my bios past 2001, but there is no real reason as it isn't 3.0 capable anyways and I won't be upgrading to Ivy.

OK People here is an update.

I used my older ssds that had a relatively fresh windows with ccc11.13 with the drivers from 12.1 only. So catalyst version still showed 11.13. I reran all the benchs on it and 3DMark11 did work on it so did GPUz. My 3DMARK scores on single card in each PCI slot was about 8000 and then 11700 on crossfire. Yeah not great. I reran Unigen and both PCI slots were very closely matched and crossfire scaled ok. The scores in Unigen were a bit better than on the main install with CAT12.4. And Skyrim was running okay with microstuterring from 60fps to 130 fps which is the best result I had so far. So this confirms that my PCI slots hardware wise are fine. Now I udated the drivers on that OLD intall to CAT12.4 by doing proper uninstall, driver sweeper, install driver. And the PCI slots were benching the same in Unigen. So this confirms a driver issue and or registry pollution in my main setup. But 3DMark11 was crashing the PC in the same manner as the main setup and so did GPUZ. Now i downgraded properly to CAT12.3 and 3DMark and GPUz all worked fine. My score now pushed up to 13500 can't remember exactlybut the graphics score was 14900. And again games ran like crap.

So I confident to say that it is not a MB bios issue and more likely issues with CAT12.4. And on the main install I have to admit that I installed AIsuite from ASUS, which is PURE CRAP btw, and it did not unistall properly and I had to use force uninstall with Revo Uninstaller and that just my explain my PCI discreptencies on the main install. Again I got the second 7970 for future roofing my system but it doesn't seem that will be the case because I have been reading now that 6970 still don't crossfire properly and this is really unacceptible. Although I have to admit that with the main install CAT12.4 on on 7970 I get awesome results. I will do furher research but I really feel duped by AMD and ASUS and all these reviews online that say my setup should work. So Yes as always it is the drivers that are the culprit and shame on you ATI and at the team in Toronto. What I did in 3 days should be done at ATI. As a firmware/electronics Engineer myself I never release anything before doing thorough and proper testing. I have a feeling the barely do real world application testing at ATI. And common in this day age having to do a big dance just to cleanly uninstall something is just unacceptable.

So I will go back on my main install and try to fix my driver issues and getting back the first PCI slot to cooperate. And I will see if I will foreward my findings to AMD or not. Again your consumer should never be your unknowngly your Beta testers. I think these cards might both go on Kijiji and I will keep reading on the 680 SLI and see what the feedback was on those. But hey feedback on 7970 seemed good too.

vipernig said:

I understand. But I am getting crashes. I still have GPUz killing my machine when I try to read the second GPU. And now when I do the GPU Render test on GPUz it shows that the second PCI become x1 2.0. And what peeves me is that there are many reports online of people with no problems with the games I am testing. Although now in my case the PCIe seems to be the culprit. Not sure if it is in proper management in Windows, shitty drivers by Asus, Fubared drivers by AMD even though they isntall cleanly after proper uninstall, driver sweeper or faulty MB

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A corrupt OS can also impact stability and outdated chipsets can have an impact also. Remember to use the -overall -overide command for the intel INF updates, so that the intel chipset drivers can override the standard microsoft drivers. ( proper chipset updating with windows 7. http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=326404 )

Holy crap Mr.Mean reading that thread on guru3d and I seem to have drivers dated 2006 and 2010. You have rekindled hope. I will check that avenue and get back report.

Ok so I think I have this figured out. For some reasong driver sweeper was not actually removing the drivers or a backup was being recreated. So I was sweeping in normal mode because the first time it did not work properly in safe mode so ran it in normal mode and it seems to have worked because on the next boot up the sweeper scan showed no left over drivers. So I switched back to my main win install and proceeded to do further test. Did driver sweerper in normal mode but for the heck of it decided to check in safe mode again. And lo and behold this time the drivers were still there. Did the sweep again and this seems to have corrected my uneven PCI performance with a single card. So I installed the 12.2 drivers and for some reason these install Catalyst 12.3 and 8.950.0.0 driver. So I crossfired and this time skyrim worked and it managed to keep better constant 60FPS and above. This looked promising. Went to run 3DMARK which gave me Overall score of 12693 and graphics of 15480. This is starting to look good indeed. Alan wake was crap. And Hard Reset scaled ok but there was noticible microstuttering from time to time. Decided to retry Skyrim and my PC crashed. When I rebooted I noticed with GPUz that the Second card was going into ULPS. I was like WTF. It turns out that I had not properly searched in the registry and there were way more keys that I had previously set to 0. So I set like 10 or more keys to 0. The card doesn't go into ULPS. Rerun Skyrim and it runs fine and so does Hard Reset.

So I decide to regive 12.4 a try. Redo the driver install dance and double check in safe mode that driver sweeper worked correctly. Now I redisable ULPS and lo and behold GPUZ is working. It had crashed again previously so there is a problem there with GPUZ and CAT12.4 with ULPS with my chipset I atleast. So I now proceed to try Skyrim and it is not running correctly, shitty performance because the second GPU even though it is not in ULPS the CORE clock stays at 500Mhz and the memory clock stays at 150Mhz. So I am guessing the crossfire is not commanding the second card to come out of 2D mode. I also made sure my chipset drivers were up to date and they were. The only drivers that were from 2006 were the Intel PCI bridge an firmware thing. And 3DMark doesn't kill the PC in CAT12.4 but obviously the scores will be crap because the 2dn GPU will stays in low clocks. SO there you have it folks. AMD releasing crappy drivers again and in my case my hardware seems to have issues with ULPS. Because from my research it seems you only need to disable ULPS when you want to overclock your crossfire.

I will retry tomorrow with the 12.3 install...or technically later in the day since it is 5AM and I really need to go to bed.

Edit. Just renabled ULPS and Unigen ran fine. It stuttered like crap when when it was disabled. But Skyrim crashed to Desktop instead of obliterating the PC and I did not ever bother 3DMark and GPUz as they will most likely obliterate the PC. So yeah when I wake I will redo my tests with 12.3 drivers. What CCC with report this time.

Ok here is a new developpement. With the Cat12.2 with ULPS on when I launch a game the second PCI lane stays at x1 instead of going to x8 so I am basicly running at x8/x1 instad of x8/x8 which explains the crappy framerate . And I desided to stick with 12/2 because 12.3 the second card stays in 3d mode and it drawing 48A which is huge if I idle my system. But The Alan Wake finaly scaled with the CAP install but i did not like the flakiness of 12.3. And I detailed the issues of 12.4 above. And it seems that it is a know issue that 12.3 second gpu satys in 3d mode all the time and in 12.4 the second GPU stays in 2D mode all the time. And apparently now, in 12.2 with ULPS enabled the second PCI slot will stay in x1 when it wake up. So I am nearing a stable point and will see next month what AMD releases.

This is really unacceptable BTW and I would really give a huge reaming to my employees responsible for this.