Weird Crossfire x issue With dual R290 xfx core edition cards.

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naota

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Sep 23, 2012
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I have a really big conundrum. :confused:

I have a computer which I have built that has been running fine with the following specs.

AMD FX8350 CPU Overclocked to 5GHz
Asus Crosshair V Foruma Motherboard with the latest Bios Revision
16 Gigabytes of G Skill Ripjaw Memory.
2 Samsung 840 Evo's
OCZ 1250 watt power supply.
Dual R290 XFX core edition video cards in cross fire mode.
Koolance Exos V2r2 watercooling system with additional 140 mm Radiater in push pull configuration with a Koolance 5 1/4 bay reservoir and pump combo.

I recently installed my 2nd R290 into my computer and it was running flawlessly with the core heat sinks and fan. I was getting about 11000+ benchmarks in 3D Mark Firestrike with both cards stock.

I bought 2 Koolance water blocks that are made for the R290s and installed them onto the video cards.

The computer boots up and displays Bios Post on the first card though the HDMI port and the windows splash screen displays fine. when the splash screen is about to go into the login screen the primary display goes black.

The 2nd video card gets video output through the hdmi port and windows 8.1 recognizes both display adapters and is in enable in crossfire.

The video cards with cpu are cooled fine and run at a peak temperature of 50 degree's Celsius under full load.

It was working fine initially until I over clocked the video cards and this is when this started. I have since placed the cards back into stock settings and the problem is still occuring.

in 3d mark I am benching of 12800 on the firestrike test with a 1100 clock with 1400Mhz Memory.

GPUz shows both cards and statistics fine with the exception of the fan speed as there is no fans to report on the video cards anymore.

I have re seated both video cards. Tried the 13.11 Beta AMD Drivers, the 13.12 Video drivers and the same symptoms happen. The primary display will only show the bios post screen and windows 8.1 loading screen in when the drivers are installed.

When I uninstall the drivers using the Driver Delete Utility and install the basic windows drivers it will display on the primary display.

I have tried a fresh install of windows 8.1 and it able to be replicated.

I am going to try installing windows 8 and try testing each card separately to see if it will be corrected.

Has anyone else experienced this before? Am I missing something with the troubleshooting? Any Help will be greatly appreciated. :confused:

What is odd is that the set up is unable to detect additional displays connected in this setup with the AMD Drivers. I am leaning towards a driver issue but I don't want to rule out a possible windows 8.1, o/s or hardware issue.
 
Maybe try something other than hdmi, Im not big on crossfire or multimonitor setups but I know hdmi can't support over 1080p, so it might be confusing the system, also have you tried plugging everything into one graphics card instead of both
 
It is not a multi monitor set up. Its connected to a 1080P Plasma TV as the primary display. It is as if the second card is acting as the primary. I tried a different monitor, different hdmi cables and I even tried a dvi monitor and the symptoms persist. When i get some spare time I am going to try 1 card at a time to see if it is a card issue or if it is something else.
 
it doesn't sound like a actual problem with the card if it is displaying the splash screen on the first card, its probably just that window 8 thinks the second card is the primary, I would do the fresh install you suggested with both cards installed and hdmi in the primary card, and maybe update your bios on your mobo and make sure its set to pcie 1
 
I checked the bios settings and nothing seems out of place in the bios. I am running the most recent version of the bios for the Crosshair Formula V Main board. I know the cards are in the correct pciE slots. It is just very weird as I have not seen something like this in the 13 years of building and repairing computers.
 
I was able to do some more testing. I found out that if I have the hdmi and dvi connected to the primary card both the television and Dvi monitor will work. In Catalyst Control Center it will only recognize the dvi monitor. As soon as I remove the dvi monitor from the video card the HDMI goes black.

I am Thinking that the video card is definitely not working correctly as if the output ports are pooched some how. The next step of testing I am going to do is to try each card separately. I am going to see if I can try to replicate the symptoms in different pci e slots or if I can replicate it with the other video card to see if the original Cross hair Formula V motherboard is on its last leg.
 
The issue is still going on. I have tried the latest AMD Beta Drivers (14.1) though the performance of the cards are good. I am still having difficulties with the display's viewing on the primary pciE adapter. Has anyone had issues where the 2nd video card in crossfire is the primary video card?
 
I have what might be the same issue with a single Powercolor 290 card running an XFX 290x BIOS.
It was booting fine into windows for months and then one day about a month ago, I was greeted with a black screen instead of seeing my desktop (auto login is used normally).
I tried Windows+P keys selecting different left and right arrows to see if it was outputting to the wrong display port but it didnt help.
I powered off with the PSU switch, rebooted and the same thing happened.

This time I pressed the power button thinking it might shut down, but instead it went into sleep mode very quickly.
Pressing it again came out of sleep mode and gave me the login screen and I continued as if the problem hadnt happened.

Numerous things are odd about this.
1st, my machine auto logs in.
2nd,my power button is configured to do a full shutdown, I dont use sleep mode ever.
3rd, I was already getting black screens in 2 other applications when running full screen but not when in windowed mode, namely Unigine Heaven and Need For Speed Rivals. Perhaps they have the same cause. All other programs/games (I have used) work fine full screen.

Prior to this, I used a GTX580 and didnt see any of these problems.
fyi

forgot to mention...
I have an older copy of my Windows on another hard drive that I use for troubleshooting and this one boots straight to the desktop.
So its definitely configuration based in my case at least (not a hardware failure).

I havent tried the AMD Mantle driver so that isnt the culprit, currently using 13.12.
I'm waiting for the next driver release to see if that helps.
If not, I'll have a go at fixing it.
 
Last edited:
naota said:
I have a really big conundrum. :confused:

I have a computer which I have built that has been running fine with the following specs.

AMD FX8350 CPU Overclocked to 5GHz
Asus Crosshair V Foruma Motherboard with the latest Bios Revision
16 Gigabytes of G Skill Ripjaw Memory.
2 Samsung 840 Evo's
OCZ 1250 watt power supply.
Dual R290 XFX core edition video cards in cross fire mode.
Koolance Exos V2r2 watercooling system with additional 140 mm Radiater in push pull configuration with a Koolance 5 1/4 bay reservoir and pump combo.

I recently installed my 2nd R290 into my computer and it was running flawlessly with the core heat sinks and fan. I was getting about 11000+ benchmarks in 3D Mark Firestrike with both cards stock.

I bought 2 Koolance water blocks that are made for the R290s and installed them onto the video cards.

The computer boots up and displays Bios Post on the first card though the HDMI port and the windows splash screen displays fine. when the splash screen is about to go into the login screen the primary display goes black.

The 2nd video card gets video output through the hdmi port and windows 8.1 recognizes both display adapters and is in enable in crossfire.

The video cards with cpu are cooled fine and run at a peak temperature of 50 degree's Celsius under full load.

It was working fine initially until I over clocked the video cards and this is when this started. I have since placed the cards back into stock settings and the problem is still occuring.

in 3d mark I am benching of 12800 on the firestrike test with a 1100 clock with 1400Mhz Memory.

GPUz shows both cards and statistics fine with the exception of the fan speed as there is no fans to report on the video cards anymore.

I have re seated both video cards. Tried the 13.11 Beta AMD Drivers, the 13.12 Video drivers and the same symptoms happen. The primary display will only show the bios post screen and windows 8.1 loading screen in when the drivers are installed.

When I uninstall the drivers using the Driver Delete Utility and install the basic windows drivers it will display on the primary display.

I have tried a fresh install of windows 8.1 and it able to be replicated.

I am going to try installing windows 8 and try testing each card separately to see if it will be corrected.

Has anyone else experienced this before? Am I missing something with the troubleshooting? Any Help will be greatly appreciated. :confused:

What is odd is that the set up is unable to detect additional displays connected in this setup with the AMD Drivers. I am leaning towards a driver issue but I don't want to rule out a possible windows 8.1, o/s or hardware issue.
Click to expand...

I was just about to post about having this same issue. I have 2 Asus R9290DCU2 cards in crossfire. I also have almost the exact setup except for I am on a Formula-Z motherboard. I do have an Eyefinity setup, but it doesn't seem to matter. I am on a clean install of Windows 8.1 with 13.12 drivers. I have tried the 14.1 beta drivers but they are a mess. I am getting black screens after Windows 8.1 boot screen. Also i am having Crossfire disable itself randomly. It stays enabled about once every 5 boots. I am planning on trying Windows 7 but haven't had time to do so.
 
Well it is a weird issue to say the least. I Have tried several re-installs of windows 8.1 and I am able to replicate the symptoms above. The cards will display correctly when using the default vga drivers aka non WQH Drivers from windows or AMD. As soon as I install the drivers It happens.

Next on my list of troubleshooting is to try installing a different version of windows. Perhaps try Linux to see if it happens on another o/s. I am going to try switching the cards around on the motherboard and trying them individually.

I doubt there is a power issue as the power supply is less than 6 months. It worked fine before I tried over clocking it. It has the stock bios on both cards. I do notice MSI afterburner shows weird looking graphs when utilizing the Video cards. I see the graphs shows close to 99 percent utilization then both cards would drop down close to zero and spike back up and it would do it at random intervals.

I have tried it with and without afterburner and the issue happens. My gut feeling is that it is a software issue. I just really don't want have to removing the water cooling blocks and send a card back..
 
OK I tried this over lunch today and did not have anymore black screens. In my BIOS under the boot section there is an option for legacy or UEFI under display boot device. I set it to legacy and no more black screens so far. I did try it over my lunch break so only a few minutes to try it. As soon as I put it back to UEFI instant black screen upon boot. I hope this is the fix I am sick of messing with it.
 
BIGGRIMTIM said:
OK I tried this over lunch today and did not have anymore black screens. In my BIOS under the boot section there is an option for legacy or UEFI under display boot device. I set it to legacy and no more black screens so far. I did try it over my lunch break so only a few minutes to try it. As soon as I put it back to UEFI instant black screen upon boot. I hope this is the fix I am sick of messing with it.
Click to expand...

I'll check that out to see what if that is something that could be contributing to what I am experiencing. For me I don't think it is an issue in the bios as it was working fine before I added the water cooling blocks and overclocked them. But I am always up for suggestions. :p
 
I switched the cards around. I put the card that I bought first into the first PCIE slot and the 2nd card in PCI E 2. The computer boots up now with hdmi video and it seems to be working fine. However, I do believe this video card is hosed because I am still experiencing random lock up's playing BF4. I think it is time to contact the OEM for additional information for possible RMA.

Anyone have any suggestions about why BF4 keeps locking up? I have tried the beta drivers and the non beta drivers and I can only play for like 3 minutes until the game locks.
 
Well It has been decided that newer aka the second 290 card is hosed. My computer keeps blue screening when trying to install the video card drivers. I removed the card completely from the system and it runs fine. Just waiting on the oem to give me the go ahead to rma it.
 
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