Crossfire 7970 clocks issue

Velox

Gawd
Joined
Dec 13, 2000
Messages
904
I am having a very strange issue with my Crossfire setup. I had just installed a new motherboard, fresh install of windows, and everything was fine for exactly one day. I noticed yesterday that my framerates became very low, so I checked MSI Afterburner and noticed that my secondary GPU is stuck at 500Mhz. It does not appear to be ramping up to 3D clocks, nor is it idling down to 2D clocks.

I have tried disabling ULPS through MSI Afterburner, as well as manually.
I have tried enabling ULPS
I tried uninstalling MSI Afterburner
I tried disabling/re-enabling Crossfire
I tried re-seating the secondary GPU
Using a single card, it runs fine in both PCIe slots.
This is a fresh install of windows (From Tuesday)
I am using Catalyst 14.9 WHQL. These are the only video drivers I have installed, so it can't be an artifact from older drivers
I am using the latest motherboard/chipset/etc drivers.

I remember having this problem before, but I don't remember how to fix it. At this point, I have to admit to being at a loss. Any ideas?

System specs:
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77 Pro (Latest BIOS)
CPU: Intel Core i7 3770k (stock clocks)
GPU1: Gigabyte 7970 (secondary)
GPU2: Asus ROG Matrix Platinum 7970Ghz (primary)
Resolution: 5880 x 1080 (Eyefinity, all through displayport)
Power Supply: Corsair 850w
 
I had a 7970 and 7990 in Tri-fire and every now and then this would happen to one or two GPUs.

Using MSI Afterburner, I made a overclock preset for 1000/1500mhz. Whenever the GPU(s) would get stuck in a low power state I would just apply the preset and the clocks would reset to normal. Not sure about 14.9 being buggy. It hasn't happened since I sold my 7970 and I run just the 7990 now in another computer and, yes, it's running 14.9.
 
One odd behavior I found was that after disabling crossfire, the secondary GPU would clock back down to the 300Mhz idle clock.

I re-installed the drivers, and that seemed to fix it for now. It's rather disappointing that I need to re-install the video drivers two days after a fresh Windows install. Hopefully, the 14.9 drivers don't have any issues with ULPS, as it got re-enabled, and I'm a bit gun-shy about changing any video settings for fear of breaking the drivers again.
 
I have never disabled ULPS, but I have never had a reason to. I love the fact that my dual GPU card shuts down completely and uses no electricity when not in use.
 
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