Crossfire Problem

[Matthews316]

I have an x1900xtx crossfire setup and when I play World of Warcraft with crossfire enabled, I get a picture that sort of looks like a T.V. getting bad reception with antennas (this happens after I have been playing for about 10 mins). When I disable crossfire and play the game, the picture is clear as day. Does anyone have any idea as to what might be causing this. Do I need to RMA one of my video cards? Thanks for the help.


Syestem Specs:
Athlon 64 X2 4800
Asus A8R32-MVP
ATI Radeon X1900XTX and X1900 Crossfire
PC P&C 850 PSU

 

[Digital Viper-X-]

Hmm I thought you could use 2 non xfire cards on RD580 based mobo? not true?(Sorry its a bit off topic)

 

[Matthews316]

I'm not sure, but if you didn't have a crossfire edition card you wouldn't be able to hook up the dongle.

 

[Mysterae]

Is it like thin horizontal streaks and/or small pixels around the screen like a LCD on the fritz? I had this with the DFI RDX200 and X1900XTX-CF, and raising the NB voltage a fraction fixed it. Dunno about your board though, wrmv.

 

[PWMK2]

Hmm I thought you could use 2 non xfire cards on RD580 based mobo? not true?(Sorry its a bit off topic)

Not true. At least not at the moment.

 

[Matthews316]

Is it like thin horizontal streaks and/or small pixels around the screen like a LCD on the fritz? I had this with the DFI RDX200 and X1900XTX-CF, and raising the NB voltage a fraction fixed it. Dunno about your board though, wrmv.

That's exactly what it is. Also, it only seems to do this after I've been playing for about 20 mins or so. I will start to get horizontal lines and pixels around the screen on and off at first, and then it will be constant. What exactly was your fix?

 

[Mysterae]

I first noticed this when playing X3:Reunion, because of the dark space background and the stars - only there was too many stars and some of them were shooting horizontally .

I upped the voltage of the north bridge from the bios of my RDX200. From the default 1.2V to 1.4V, and it cleared it, but this did raise the north bridge temps over 50C at full tilt. System was still stable.

I had the rest of the system overclocked (cpu, ram, both gpu's) pretty high, so the system was highly strung out. I can only fathom that the motherboard just couldn't cope with that much work, and the north bridge needed a little something to help it along. You didn't mention if your system was overclocked at all.

I only settle on a solution if I can reproduce the fault by removing the solution. As always, your results may vary, but let us know!

 

[Matthews316]

I tried increasing the North Bridge voltage from 1.2V to 1.3V, and the horizontal lines still occurred, but they were less frequent. Then I increased the voltage to 1.4V, and I still had a few horizontal lines (pretty much the same results as the 1.3V setting). I'm not an experienced overclocker at all, so my system runs at stock speeds. Should I make some other voltage increases elsewhere? Maybe the PCI-E voltage? Thanks for your help.

 

[-(Xyphox)-]

I tried increasing the North Bridge voltage from 1.2V to 1.3V, and the horizontal lines still occurred, but they were less frequent. Then I increased the voltage to 1.4V, and I still had a few horizontal lines (pretty much the same results as the 1.3V setting). I'm not an experienced overclocker at all, so my system runs at stock speeds. Should I make some other voltage increases elsewhere? Maybe the PCI-E voltage? Thanks for your help.

Could try it, just do not get out of hand, dont want to see smoke

 

[Mysterae]

-(Xyphox)- is of course right, be careful. Monitor your north bridge temps and fan speeds if there is a fan fitted. Does your north bridge even have a fan? If it doesn't place a fan in the vicinity of the heatsink. I think there was a review where the thermal paste of the north bridge was poor, checking that could be another option.

There are other related voltages with the nb such as the south bridge but I'm not famillar with your board. Just go steady.

Try disabling stuff on your motherboard such network ports and sound. These will go through the north and south bridges depending on the design of your board. Cutting down this traffic may help or point you in the area of a potential problem/bug. For example, on the DFI RDX200 there are two network ports (PCIe and PCI). If I use the PCIe port but don't have a cable connected to the PCI port, the board suffers from a crippling stuttering effect while in games. Disabling it cures it completely. The difference is approx 500 cpu points in 3DMark06, around 30% performance hit.