Unimpressed with my XFX 6870 crossfire... something wrong here?

R

roach9

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 17, 2012
Messages
147
Hi all,
I am running with:
W7+Ultimate
Asus P8P67-Pro ATX
2x XFX 6870 (one reference version, one revised)
Intel i5 OC'd to 4.2GHZ
Eyefinity (3xU2311H)

Prior to my crossfiring, I had a reference version 6870 that I OC'd (in the BIOS). Upon getting the new 6870, I reverted back to original BIOS and speeds. Set up the crossfire and everything seems to be running well, but when I play SC2, I get screen tears, something that normally happens when I have V-sync off. I have tinkered with SC2 settings to no avail.

When I try to OC, using MSI Afterburner, I cannot get anything past stock settings with artifacts. When I BitCoin mine, I wake up and there are artifacts... these go away within 30 seconds of turning off my miners.

Anyway, this doesn't seem normal to me, but I cannot pin-point the issue. I did a fresh reformat when I installed these guys, so I do not think I'm having driver issues...

How can I test them both out?

Thanks a LOT for help!
 
Does artifacting tend to indicate whether it's a software or hardware related issue or is it a completely ambiguous symptom?
 
Artifacts can happen due to overheating or a defective card though it is not limited to these factors. Testing each card individually with furmark or similar program would be a good idea. you can monitor your temps with CCC but I prefer to use GPU-Z.
 
Are you unimpressed due to artifacts or because the performance is poor?

XFX cards have poor cooling, especially the non-reference designs. I would not over clock them.

Screen tearing is a phenomenon that has only recently been addressed with kepler: adaptive vsync.
 
roach9 said:
Does artifacting tend to indicate whether it's a software or hardware related issue or is it a completely ambiguous symptom?
Click to expand...

Artifacts is probably 99.9% the hardware is failing or overheating. Sometimes downclocking the GPU may help.
 
Its harder to overclock in crossfire / sli, your temps will be higher especially on the upper card. This is just a fact of life for crossfire or sli. Single card overclock will rarely equal a dual card overclock.
 
qbanb8582 said:
Artifacts is probably 99.9% the hardware is failing or overheating. Sometimes downclocking the GPU may help.
Click to expand...

Interesting.

Thanks for all the replies. It seems like the artifacts are caused by hardware problem, namely heat. This, I would assume, is XFXs fault as neither of my cards are overclocked.

Will be interesting to see how they address this...

On the screen tearing note; why is that before, when I was running one OC'd 6870, I never had any screen tear and arguably, all of my games ran smoother... once I crossfired, it was the first time I had seen screen tears. :S
 
roach9 said:
Interesting.

Thanks for all the replies. It seems like the artifacts are caused by hardware problem, namely heat. This, I would assume, is XFXs fault as neither of my cards are overclocked.

Will be interesting to see how they address this...

On the screen tearing note; why is that before, when I was running one OC'd 6870, I never had any screen tear and arguably, all of my games ran smoother... once I crossfired, it was the first time I had seen screen tears. :S
Click to expand...

Are you using vsync? Since your framerate is probably above 60 more frequently now, you will get tearing. One other thing to note is that aftermarket cooled cards are a poor choice for xfire / sli, they dump the heat into your case and that of course
causes the upper GPU to get too hot sometimes. What I would do is really spend some time fixing the air flow in your case to optimize it. The heat is probably causing your artifacts.
 
Yes, V-Sync is enabled. :S

I don't have any aftermarket cooling on my GPUs. I have a Bitfenix Shinobi, outfitted with every possible fan option and minimal cord obstructions. Airflow ought not be blamed for this one.
 
qbanb8582 said:
Artifacts is probably 99.9% the hardware is failing or overheating. Sometimes downclocking the GPU may help.
Click to expand...

Wrong, I have seen it many many times online, usually has to do with user error when installing or driver issues. First thing you try is uninstall,driver sweeper in safe mode, then re install latest drivers.
 
Adzsask said:
Wrong, I have seen it many many times online, usually has to do with user error when installing or driver issues. First thing you try is uninstall,driver sweeper in safe mode, then re install latest drivers.
Click to expand...

As I said in the OP, this is coming off a fresh reformat.
 
Are you using a DP with 2 DVI? Isn't that a common cause of tearing with AMD cards and eyefinity?
 
Yes, that is my setup.

MiniDV + 2 DVI.

Are there any fixes at all for this? I'll do some searching.
 
roach9 said:
Yes, that is my setup.

MiniDV + 2 DVI.

Are there any fixes at all for this? I'll do some searching.
Click to expand...

You might ask in the AMD side but I know a lot of eyefinity users complain of tearing when using DVI+DP. I am unsure it there is any fix, I don't have much time to look it up right now at work. I just figured I would throw it out there as a possible cause before you get too disappointed with your setup.
 
i have seen many artifacts with 68/69XX series running bitcoin - they 2 XFX 6950's i had were unstable and problematic - had to RMA them eventually. Try seperating them by creating space between the cards - folded piece of paper works fine. I found a desk fan running all night on my miners worked a treat (4 * 5870's running on a single board).
 
Just a suggestion, I did read OP, I formerly ran CF 6970's and my first driver install was corrupted, and i cleaned it out with driver sweeper and re installed and they ran fine.
 
Just looked at the board the OP has. The PCIe slots are double spaced so the cards should really not be overheating unless there is inadequate airflow through the case.

What power supply do you have?

What temps are the GPUs getting up to?

Have you tried replacing the stock TIM on the cards with something that is actually decent?

If I remember correctly, XFX cards generally have lower quality power circuitry on them then reference design cards.

FWIW, my Visiontek 6870s both overclock to 940/1150 in CFX mode. Same as when running a single card.
 
Roach9, the problem is almost certainly that the cards are right next to each other, and the lower one is simply overheating the upper one. I know it shouldn't be this way, but I've learned my lesson with crossfire/SLI, and I'm not going to put a 2nd card in my computer until I get a motherboard that has three PCI-E slots, and separate the cards with an extra slot or two. Basically, even many 'decent' cases simply cannot keep the graphics cards cool when they're right next to each other, and your CPU and P/S are trapping the heat above the top graphics card and even generating their own additional heat. You need a top-ventilated case and one that allows you to put your P/S on the bottom, and even then, you might still need to separate the graphics cards.

If you want to test this, try pulling the cover off of your rig and putting it on its side so that the motherboard is laying flat. The two 6870s will then be exhausting heat up and away from themselves instead of the lower one cooking the upper one. As was also suggested, remove any overclock from the cards just to confirm that they will work properly under ideal conditions.

Good luck.
 
af22 said:
XFX cards have poor cooling, especially the non-reference designs. I would not over clock them.
Click to expand...

This statement is just not true, the non-reference XFX 6870's with dual fans are quiet and cool. I think you may be referring to the XFX non-reference 7970 and 7950 cards which seems to run a hotter than most other non-reference designs.
 
anubis44 said:
Roach9, the problem is almost certainly that the cards are right next to each other, and the lower one is simply overheating the upper one. I know it shouldn't be this way, but I've learned my lesson with crossfire/SLI, and I'm not going to put a 2nd card in my computer until I get a motherboard that has three PCI-E slots, and separate the cards with an extra slot or two. Basically, even many 'decent' cases simply cannot keep the graphics cards cool when they're right next to each other, and your CPU and P/S are trapping the heat above the top graphics card and even generating their own additional heat. You need a top-ventilated case and one that allows you to put your P/S on the bottom, and even then, you might still need to separate the graphics cards.

If you want to test this, try pulling the cover off of your rig and putting it on its side so that the motherboard is laying flat. The two 6870s will then be exhausting heat up and away from themselves instead of the lower one cooking the upper one. As was also suggested, remove any overclock from the cards just to confirm that they will work properly under ideal conditions.

Good luck.
Click to expand...

I had no overheating issues running two non-reference XFX 6870's dual fan cards right next to each other in crossfire for well over a year before I recently bought a GTX 670. As with all dual video card solutions, case cooling is important. I'm using an Antec 1200 v3 case. My cards would idle around 38-40c, and load temps were in the mid 70's.
 
anubis44 said:
Roach9, the problem is almost certainly that the cards are right next to each other, and the lower one is simply overheating the upper one. I know it shouldn't be this way, but I've learned my lesson with crossfire/SLI, and I'm not going to put a 2nd card in my computer until I get a motherboard that has three PCI-E slots, and separate the cards with an extra slot or two. Basically, even many 'decent' cases simply cannot keep the graphics cards cool when they're right next to each other, and your CPU and P/S are trapping the heat above the top graphics card and even generating their own additional heat. You need a top-ventilated case and one that allows you to put your P/S on the bottom, and even then, you might still need to separate the graphics cards.

If you want to test this, try pulling the cover off of your rig and putting it on its side so that the motherboard is laying flat. The two 6870s will then be exhausting heat up and away from themselves instead of the lower one cooking the upper one. As was also suggested, remove any overclock from the cards just to confirm that they will work properly under ideal conditions.

Good luck.
Click to expand...

Bitcoining artifacts are fairly common to certain AMD drivers if I remember correctly, and that isn't really a "normal" intended use for a GPU anyway. Also, 6870's don't OC well compared to the 6850, and artifacts when overclocking means the card doesn't like that speed/voltage, most likely the cards he has just aren't good clockers. If they were artifacting at stock clocks under normal usage I would look at heat as a remotely possible culprit but in his case I highly doubt that is the issue at all.

Running cards next to each other isn't really as bad as you're making it out to be, if I could run quad SLI hot running fermi chips with stock coolers and not have any of them go over 80*C then I doubt his 6870's with slots between them are baking each other.
 
I concur, and for the record, my non-reference XFX 6870's weren't steller overclockers either, even as single cards before I chose to crossfire them. I got a small increase out of them, but nothing to brag about. That being said, I never had any issues with them, temperature or stability.
 
anubis44 said:
Roach9, the problem is almost certainly that the cards are right next to each other, and the lower one is simply overheating the upper one. I know it shouldn't be this way, but I've learned my lesson with crossfire/SLI, and I'm not going to put a 2nd card in my computer until I get a motherboard that has three PCI-E slots, and separate the cards with an extra slot or two. Basically, even many 'decent' cases simply cannot keep the graphics cards cool when they're right next to each other, and your CPU and P/S are trapping the heat above the top graphics card and even generating their own additional heat. You need a top-ventilated case and one that allows you to put your P/S on the bottom, and even then, you might still need to separate the graphics cards.

If you want to test this, try pulling the cover off of your rig and putting it on its side so that the motherboard is laying flat. The two 6870s will then be exhausting heat up and away from themselves instead of the lower one cooking the upper one. As was also suggested, remove any overclock from the cards just to confirm that they will work properly under ideal conditions.

Good luck.
Click to expand...

The motherboard has double wide PCIe spacing... the cards cannot be right next to each other.
 
Oh no. Don't tell me you didn't increase fan speed!

Depending on the fan and actual temps, I run my cards from 55 (OEM Reference) to 75% (Sapphire style) and keep 60-72C.

Are you underclocking the memory while mining? That saves a huge amount of power.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top