290X CF setup not working - please help (X58 users?)

CrazyRob said:
@Rizen
Sorry I'm late to the party on this one, but that Big Bang board has had a history of problems with Multi GPU support. I used to own one myself and had one in a client's machine, and ran into all sorts of problems. Bios updates eventually fixed most of the issues, but they manifested exactly like yours, entire system slowdown (Had the problems with some configurations of multiple 570's, 580's, and 680's in 2/3 way sli).

One thing I could do to get it to work was to actually reduce the amount of system ram. Try running only 2 or 3 memory sticks, and see what that does.

Unfortunately, the private support forum thread with all the beta bioses looks to have been removed. After spending way too much time with online support, RMA's, and their beta bios thread, I replaced myboard with the p6t6 WS Revolution. At this point in time, sadly, I think your best bet is to move on to a new platform. MSI would never officially confirm myproblems existed, but then release a beta bios to fix it 6 months later. As much as I loved that board, it's time to let it go if multi-gpu is your thing :(
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That's interesting. I've never had any problems with this board previously and I ran 580 SLI and 680 SLI with 12GB of system RAM. This is my first multi-GPU issue, but you are right - dropping it down to dual-channel by using two sticks of 4GB for a total of 8GB does fix the issue.

I'm probably going to upgrade to a Haswell box at some point but MSI says they are looking into fixing this for me, so we'll see if that happens before I upgrade. Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it.
 
Rizen said:
That's interesting. I've never had any problems with this board previously and I ran 580 SLI and 680 SLI with 12GB of system RAM. This is my first multi-GPU issue, but you are right - dropping it down to dual-channel by using two sticks of 4GB for a total of 8GB does fix the issue.

I'm probably going to upgrade to a Haswell box at some point but MSI says they are looking into fixing this for me, so we'll see if that happens before I upgrade. Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the board was very inconsistent in which combinations would cooperate. For example, I could run 2x 580's, but not 2x 570's or 3x 580's. My hunch is that they had to write some provision into the bios for each new gpu, that had something to do with video memory shadows. I got tired of waiting for them to play catch up. But I hope they manage to get this sorted out, because otherwise it was a fantastic board!
 
So is this a broad issue with the Big Bang or a x58 problem? I'm about (when in stock) to pull the trigger on a second 290x.
 
The issue the OP has is board specific, as it's not just an issue with 290/x gpu's. However, given the other pages linked, it looks like others have had general problems with other x58 boards as well. Looks like a gamble at this point.
 
I got the EVGA X58 3x sli board. Any issues with that one with the 290's?
 
Bump? Anyone know. Are there problems with the regular 290's or just the x's?
 
I am 100% certain its your motherboard. Up until recently I didnt know a modern MB could cause issues with certain video cards such as no display problem, but it happened. I had a much newer MB, which was a Gigabyte Z77 UD5H MB that would not work with a 290 or 290x cards. It wasnt even 2 years old. Well needless to say I ended up selling it and buying a Z87 board by Asus which solved the issues. Gigabyte's Bios didnt solve a thing, so I didnt want to mess with it anymore.
 
MSI sent me another response but I can't view it since their support website appears to be down at the moment. I'll update shortly.

@Equalizr, 290 and 290X are basically the same card, so it shouldn't matter. It seems to be dependent on your motherboard BIOS and not the X58 chipset itself though, so I don't know. I do have an EVGA X58 SLI board here that I stuck one 290X in and it worked fine, I don't know about 290X CF.
 
Hi everyone, just wanted to provide some closure to this issue.

AMD got back to me and informed me that the issue I am experiencing is due to the motherboard/BIOS and not due to the 290X. From what MSI has told me, this is accurate.

MSI made some attempts to update the BIOS and actually sent me a new beta BIOS to test. However, it did not resolve the issues I am experiencing. Unfortunately, AMI (MSI uses an AMI BIOS on this motherboard) has the X58 chipset in legacy mode, so they aren't providing any further updates. As such, MSI told me there isn't anything else they can do to resolve the problem.

So, while it sucks that this happened, I do at least appreciate AMD and MSI trying to resolve the issue for me. MSI really went above and beyond in my opinion considering this is now a 4 year old motherboard, on a legacy platform they no longer support. So kudos, in my mind.

I'll probably be upgrading to Haswell later this year. For now I'm just running my motherboard in dual channel mode with 2x4GB DIMMs, as that gets rid of the issue as a workaround.
 
Sorry to bring back this thread, but its the users here that I want information from. I have a Rampage III Extreme with a x58 chipset and 4 PCIe 2.0 slots. Only two can be used at x16. This board does not have the NF200 because Asus believed it was a niche market so they released a add on riser card to enable 4-way SLI. However, I am wonder if TWO R9 290's are still out of the question with all the driver updates since this thread was created. Was people having problem because of the NF200, or because they did not have the NF200 on their x58 boards?

Is CF still in shambles? Or has AMD figured out how to fix most of it with driver updates? Should I stick with a single video card setup? Thanks for any updated discussion on what has happened since Jan 2014.
 
Hi there,

My board did not have an NF200. The problem with my motherboard was the way that the X58 AMI BIOS handled VGA memory allocation, according to MSI. They attempted to fix this but since AMI had already went EOL with their BIOS updates, there wasn't much they could do.

It may or may not be a problem on your motherboard, but it doesn't appear to be widespread so I would guess you'll be fine. I upgraded to a Z87 / 4770K setup and it was a significant performance increase, plus it fixed all my issues with two GPUs. CrossFire works fine.
 
I had the exact same problem as Rizen, and i did the same upgrade to solve the problem.

Shoved an old pair of waterblocked gtx580's back on the BigBang as a secondary machine.
 
To let you know I didn't have this problem on a EVGA x58 sli motherboard. Two 290x's ran fine.
 
Sorry for the bump, but I'm also having issues running 2x 290x's in my system too.

Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H with a 3770K and 8GB.

Game responsiveness is choppy at best, with something as pedestrian as CSGO feeling like I'm playing on a TNT2.
 
I would try bumping my PCI Express up to 101 -102Mhz to see if that helps any.. I had to do that on socket 775 with PCI Express 1.1 for 8800GT back in the day..

but as I said before I had no issues with single 290 (windows 8) .. I have ran a R9-280 and 7950 together on my EVGA X58 board without issue and they have 3Gb on ram on board (windows 8.1) and I have 6Gb of system ram ..
 
Change the vga drivers , make sure to clean registry before reinstalling.
 
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