Choosing primary card in crossfire?

[Maserati Fox]

Hey guys, this is my first post but I've been browsing here for a while. I recently upgraded too two MSI Lightning 6970's. I monitored the temps and noticed that the top card runs wayyyy to hot. At idle, and me manually changing the fan speed to 55%, the card runs at 58°C. The bottom card is much much cooler at 35°C at 30% fan speed. Unfortunately there isn't much space between the cards and I think that's what's probably causing the higher temp. I understand that the top card will generally always be warmer cause of the direction of heat dissipation but for it to be that hot makes me worry. At load playing BF3 it went above 90°. Would their be any way in establishing my bottom card as the primary in crossfire? I think that would alleviate a lot of the temperature issues. Also in case you guys need any details my case is a haf 932 (with stock fan setup), and an ASUS Rampage III Gene. Thanks again guys, I appreciate the help.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

just move your monitor cables to the bottom card that makes it the primary card. easiest trick to see if you can fix the temps is take a small section of paper and fold it up a few times and stick it between the right front corner of the cards(where the fan is if you are using a reference card) it will seperate them enough to get the top card more fresh air.

 

[Maserati Fox]

I just tried that but unfortunately no luck :/ . The cooler on these cards are pretty massive so there really isn't much I could do to space the cards out. I was thinking of adding a couple case fans to keep it cool but I figured I'd try and switch my bottom 6970 card to the primary first and see how that effects the temps. Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[N1GHTRA1N]

Are you using more than one monitor on the primary card?

I have the same cards and with more than more monitor active I idle in the 49-51C range. With a single monitor active the card drops to 150MHz Core and 250MHz mem and idles in the 37-41C range. The bottom card always runs 150MHz Core and 250MHz mem when idle and runs in the 31-34C range.

When using Furmark for 20Mins on burn in test the top card hits 88-91C and the bottom card is 78-81C. When playing most games the top card is in the 75-82C and bottom card is in the 69-73C area. However BF3 is a monster, it actually makes my cards run hotter than Furmark at times. I typically find that my top card will be in the 83-87C for BF3 and the bottom will be 74-77C area. However sometimes it goes higher, might have to do with how long I play. I dunno. For example top card hit 95C tonight and bottom was 81C. These cards at stock should be safe to 105C so there is still some room to work, also the MSI Lightning uses better parts so might be able to go even higher.

BF3 is crazy, I don't understand it. For example I could run Prime95 for 24hours with my CPU at 3.7GHz but I'd get the occasional blue screen in BF3, clocked back to 3.5GHz and the problem went away. Only BF3 would give me this error. Also most games run my CPU temps in the 65-68C range. However Prime95 would hit mid 73-75C and rarely go higher. I understand the heat from the video cards will make the CPU hotter too but BF3 can sometimes make my CPU hit 80C, tonight it topped out at 78C.

I'd like to see them stop render the score screen at the end of matches, this would give the cards some time to cool down. I seriously doubt I need both my GPU's running at 99% during a simple score screen. I get 150-180FPS in that area and it seems so stupid. Cap it at 30FPS and be done with it. All that fancy smoke it is rending is dumb.

Also I think change the bottom card to primary will only help if you aren't using more than one monitor and if you are idle. When playing games both cards get a workout so it won't matter.

Here are my temps for the day, idle to a two hour BF3 session, back to web surfing

 

[Maserati Fox]

I'm only using a single monitor configuration. My bottom card idles at 250 mhz core and 150 mhz memory when I check it out in GPU-Z. Yea I don't understand BF3 either, my primary card was hitting temps upwards of 95 C when I decided to give it a break and see if I could do anything to lower the temps. I snooped around BIOS and I couldn't find anything in there about my crossfire config :/ . I knew crossfire configs could be a pain in the ass temperature wise but I didn't know it would be this bad lol. I guess I may end up just adding a few fans to any possible place i could fit them haha. Thanks for the input btw, reassures me a little bit to know I'm not the only one with this problem.

 

[N1GHTRA1N]

I don't like seeing 90C+ either but the cards can handle it. They are good to 105C, in fact mine hit 106C once when the fan was locked at 50% and I didn't realize it. I've had not problems with it. My old 4870's would hit 110-112C playing BF3 Beta.

 

[N1GHTRA1N]

Here is an example of my system running the Crysis benchmark looped 20 times. Bottom card never went beyond 74C. It is amazing how much hotter the CPU and GPUs get with BF3. Most games run about the same as crysis or cooler. This was with 2560x1600 16xQ AA.