Weird 4850 CF issue

[CrankyX]

Ok long story short, 4850CF on a ASUS P5Q Pro running XP, q6700 @ Stock, GSkill 1066 4GB kit, Thermaltake 1200w PSU. On a fresh restore running CAT 8.9, With CF enabled, performance is terrible, texture problems, no artifacting per say. Without CF everything runs great. Examples are spore and Warhead. With CF I get choppy crappy framerates and without the framerates are not bad at all. First I thought huh ok i'll swap both 4850's and both CF bridges, did that and still the issue persists. Then I think maybe a driver issue? Went down to Cat 8.8, same issue.

I have a huge feeling it is a bad mobo, While it is brand new I bought this P5Q pro to replace my Abit AW9D-Max that randomly decided it didnt want to power on anymore. I have tested the PSU and it's rock solid. I am hoping that there is some known issue and it's a flip of a switch because I don't want to swap boards again. I don't know what other information to include so any insight would be awesome. Thanks in advance

 

[mikemodano9c]

i have a p5q pro and crossfire 4850's. i prefer xp so i tried crossfire in xp but it would never enable the second 4850 (showed disabled secondary adapter in ccc). i couldn't fix the issue no matter what i did including full format and re-install of windows with 8.8 cats...

i tried vista and crossfire finally worked...so i'm running vista ultimate right now. sucks the drivers are ridiculous not allowing crossfire in xp. it would show two adapters and it would let me enable crossfire but it would never actually use the second card...

 

[CrankyX]

So ot gets even more weird, I am running my setup through HDMI on a 40" Samsung TV at 1920x1080. I got a little suspicious when I ran fraps and it said 60 frames in bioshock but it felt terrible. If I have CF enabled and down the resolution to 1280x720 (ugh) it really looks like it's running at 60 frames... instead of the feels like 22.5 frames. I'm going to hook it up through VGA and see if it helps. The only thing that has changed for me was the mobo, on the old mobo I never had any of these issues.