Question about Crossfire secondary card utilization

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ilumo

Weaksauce
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Sep 2, 2006
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Hey guys... I'm not sure if my crossfire setup is working 100%. What I mean by that is when I'm running benchmarks, playing games, I notice that my 2nd card ( I have 2 290x's) doesnt get hot, in CCC it shows that my 2nd card is only using 300 Mhz, and that the temp doesnt change ( stays around 49C).
I did the 3dmark test, and I get around 13000 for the firewalker test. isnt that in the low range of the 290x x2? Its just very strange that both cards are not getting hot and working 100%.

I have a intel 4670k @ 3.4 ghz.

any input would be appreciated. thanks.
 
It's possible your cpu is bottlenecking the 2nd card. Could you run firestrike again and leave afterburner open to see what the utilization of the second card is?
 
Your CPU shouldn't be an issue. Most likely, the programs that you are using are not properly utilizing both GPUs. Check your AMD Catalyst drivers to ensure both are enabled and also look into fixes to force the programs to use Crossfire. Some programs don't want to use it unless you are using fullscreen or other weird hangups. It's difficult to tell if that's the exact reason though without knowing which games you're testing it with and which version of 3D Mark.
 
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outers said:
It's possible your cpu is bottlenecking the 2nd card. Could you run firestrike again and leave afterburner open to see what the utilization of the second card is?
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not able to do the firestrike test with afterburner visible because its at full screen. Not sure if you can do windowed mode without payign for the advanced version.

In all my other that I can do windowed, I can see pretty clearly that the 2nd card is not being utilized. Going with caveman methods, I can tell that the fan is not even turning on, and that the card is relatively cool compared to the primary, which is spitting air like theres no tomorrow, and you can cook an egg on it.
 
GioG said:
Your CPU shouldn't be an issue. Most likely, the programs that you are using are not properly utilizing both GPUs. Check your AMD Catalyst drivers to ensure both are enabled and also look into fixes to force the programs to use Crossfire. Some programs don't want to use it unless you are using fullscreen or other weird hangups. It's difficult to tell if that's the exact reason though without knowing which games you're testing it with and which version of 3D Mark.
Click to expand...

yes, the drivers were the first thing that I checked. cross fire is definitely on. one weird thing is that when I use CPUID, and i look at the graphics cards, it only lists one of the 290Xs.
 
ilumo said:
not able to do the firestrike test with afterburner visible because its at full screen. Not sure if you can do windowed mode without payign for the advanced version.

In all my other that I can do windowed, I can see pretty clearly that the 2nd card is not being utilized. Going with caveman methods, I can tell that the fan is not even turning on, and that the card is relatively cool compared to the primary, which is spitting air like theres no tomorrow, and you can cook an egg on it.
Click to expand...

Use the Afterburner OSD to show usage and clocks for each card in fullscreen applications. You'll need to have the Rivatuner Statistics Server installed. Here's a guide.
 
outers said:
Have you tested the second card to make sure it works?
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yes I have. they both work individually. but when I have them both in there, I dont think they are wokring at 100%. I've tried both PCIE slots too. no difference.
 
Ozymandias said:
Use the Afterburner OSD to show usage and clocks for each card in fullscreen applications. You'll need to have the Rivatuner Statistics Server installed. Here's a guide.
Click to expand...

I did that with the MSI afterburner, and I saw that the temp for GPU2 never went above 49C, while the GPU1 was going up to 90C and the FAN had to be blasting for it to maintain that temp.

logically, the 2nd card can't be used that much if it doesnt even go up in temp.
 
I remember running into this issue because I wasn't running in full screen. Also I believe something about graphics accelleration in browsers e.g. google chrome and firefox needed to be disabled.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
I remember running into this issue because I wasn't running in full screen. Also I believe something about graphics accelleration in browsers e.g. google chrome and firefox needed to be disabled.
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Thats bizzare. Chrome shut down the crossfire? hmm.
 
ilumo said:
Thats bizzare. Chrome shut down the crossfire? hmm.
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Yeah I'm not sure if they have since fixed that bug but if video accelleration was enabled in the browser and you had a browser window open while gaming it would disble your crossfire because it doesn't kick in until you go into full video accelleration.

It's been a long while since I had a crossfire setup (almost 3 years) so things may have changed quite a bit.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Yeah I'm not sure if they have since fixed that bug but if video accelleration was enabled in the browser and you had a browser window open while gaming it would disble your crossfire because it doesn't kick in until you go into full video accelleration.

It's been a long while since I had a crossfire setup (almost 3 years) so things may have changed quite a bit.
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Thanks. I'll have to do a little more research on this. It's just bizzare that it's running so hard on eone card, but not the other. good news is that the games still run pretty good on a 21:9 monitor :D
 
When I was running xfire 7970s, full-screen was mandatory to get the 2nd card to kick in. Just a limitation of the way it's configured in the driver. Not sure if that's been updated as I went to Nvidia after that and stopped following amd drivers.
 
[L]imey;1041184488 said:
When I was running xfire 7970s, full-screen was mandatory to get the 2nd card to kick in. Just a limitation of the way it's configured in the driver. Not sure if that's been updated as I went to Nvidia after that and stopped following amd drivers.
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how did you know the 2nd card was kicking in? you physically heard the fans whirring? it was getting hotter? or you had some app to monitor the CPU usage, etc?
 
crossfire only works in true fullscreen. not windowed or windowed borderless.
 
Ive used rigid gems (teeny demo) just to check for crossfire performance [alt+enter] the difference is huge.

Fur mark shows both cards in the hud, msi afterburner tracks both cards (temps, volts, usage), unigine heaven benchmarks well, unigine valley also.
 
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