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Worst Experience Ever

V

Vexamus

n00b
Joined
Aug 12, 2010
Messages
11
to quote that psychotic kid on youtube, "OH MY GOD!!! WHY????"

My computer absolutely hates me.

specs:

i7 980x @ 4.2Ghz
Gigabyte UD X58
24gb ram
Win 7 x64
dual 5770's
bunch of other garbage...

Catalyst 10.7


3 monitors... 2 21" 4:3 monitors and a single 24" 16:9 monitor in the center. (before you jump me I know that only two monitors on one card are available at a time in CFX. That's not what this post is about)

The 16:9 monitor is on the top card (PCI-e 16x 1 on my mobo) with one of the 21" monitors.

I'm damn frustrated with the randomness and just ultra-pain-in-the-rear experience I've had so far. I previously had an SLI setup which worked fine but it was only two monitors, not three.

My issue is as follows:

In NON-CFX mode when I'm doing actual work or something, everything is fine.

It's when I decide I want to play a game and I want CFX turned on. Optimally, I'd like CFX enabled with the first card's outputs active, so that my 24" widescreen monitor is available. I don't even care about the other 21", I just want to play games on my widescreen as it's in the center and is far newer and looks the best.

Problem is I cannot figure out for the life of me how the driver decides which card to enable output on when I enable CFX in CCC. So randomly, when I enable it, I get just the one monitor connected to the second card enabled. I want to punch infants... And then when I disable CFX it changed my primary monitor to the one on the right and I have to go fix it. Once I fix it then that monitor goes dim and the only way to undim it is to restore factor defaults in Options in CCC. OH MY GOD!!!!

SO!

Question for you AMD/ATI gurus out there:

Is there a way to always force which card in a CFX setup gets its output enabled? This is my biggest gripe...

Also is there any sort of driver reset I can do to get undimmed? Even restarting the machine doesn't help. Only resetting factory defaults on the driver fixes it. The dimming that happened AFTER running a game is fixable by restarting the DWM service in Win 7. But that dimming is like 20% brightness and the unfixable dimming is like half brightness.

So very frustrating. Please help if you can.
 
Does it do the same thing with different driver versions? Also, I know this is gonna sound retarded, but have you tried turning off the monitor you don't want on before swaping to CF mode? I know that this is not a fix, but what you're doing would drive me batshit crazy...
 
Omegas said:
Does it do the same thing with different driver versions? Also, I know this is gonna sound retarded, but have you tried turning off the monitor you don't want on before swaping to CF mode? I know that this is not a fix, but what you're doing would drive me batshit crazy...
Click to expand...

Turning off the monitor wouldn't disconnect the monitor from Windows.

I've tried swapping the monitors after CFX is enabled and that works for THAT session but then does go off on randomness the next time I toggle. It does drive me goddamn nuts. After spending 5k on this rig you'd think something simple could be accomplished.

Additionally, it did the same thing with 10.6 and unless someone can tell me for sure that it'd work with 10.xwhatever I'm not keen on playing music video drivers. I'd like an options to force select a card...
 
Have you tried disabling the monitor(s) on the secondary card BEFORE you switch into CrossFire mode? I mean disabling them in the CCC, not just turning the power to the monitor off.

Also, have you tried putting your good monitor(s) on the secondary card, and then your undesired monitor on the first card?


I have quite a few monitors (7) on three 5770s. It's pretty rare that I switch into CrossFire, but when I do, it always selects the top card, which has 3 monitors plugged into it (at least as far as I can remember).



As for the dimming, I've experienced it some on ONE of my cards, and only with driver versions newer than 10.3. *And* it only started happening right after I did a VGA BIOS flash in an attempt to fix that damn Eyefinity blinking issue . . .


Anyways, sorry I can't give anything better than my anecdotal evidence.
 
hrm.. yeah, I guess I could disable that 3rd monitor in windows prior to jumping to CFX... that's tolerable...

Thanks for the idea, man...

EDIT: well yeah, that worked. But as soon as I got into CFX, my two other monitors dimmed after about 3 seconds. Again... looking for infants to punch in the eyebrow. I had to reset to factory defaults and redo the overclock I had on both cards. What... The... Hell?
It shouldn't be this friggin hard.
 
Another thought is that CrossFire might select the card that has the greatest number of monitors plugged into it, which would explain why it always selects my card with 3 and not one of the cards with 2.

I'm not entirely clear which monitors are plugged into which cards from your OP, but if you haven't already, try putting the good 24" and a 21" on the primary card, and then the remaining 21" on the secondary card, and see if CrossFire will then automatically select the primary card and disable the monitor on the secondary card.
 
QuothTheRaven said:
Another thought is that CrossFire might select the card that has the greatest number of monitors plugged into it, which would explain why it always selects my card with 3 and not one of the cards with 2.

I'm not entirely clear which monitors are plugged into which cards from your OP, but if you haven't already, try putting the good 24" and a 21" on the primary card, and then the remaining 21" on the secondary card, and see if CrossFire will then automatically select the primary card and disable the monitor on the secondary card.
Click to expand...

yeah, it's totally random, sometimes it selects the top card which is already setup with the 24 and 21" monitors and other times it selects the bottom card which only has the one 21" on it.
 
Welcome to multi card crossfire hell.

I dont want to go into my situation but lets just say it involved two 5870s, three dell U2410s and two Mitsubishi HC3800 projectors and I had to end up tossing infants off of buildings in order to cope with the aggravation before I ended up giving up all together and buying DVI splitters and selling the second card.
 
Is everyone who crossfires 2 cards, and has monitors hooked up to both, experiencing this hell? This makes me nervous about cross firing 2 5770s, and setting up 3 monitors. i wonder if it'd work fine if all 3 monitors were on 1 card.

Sorry to hear about your struggles. Sounds miserable.
 
MISMCSA said:
Is everyone who crossfires 2 cards, and has monitors hooked up to both, experiencing this hell? This makes me nervous about cross firing 2 5770s, and setting up 3 monitors. i wonder if it'd work fine if all 3 monitors were on 1 card.

Sorry to hear about your struggles. Sounds miserable.
Click to expand...


works fine when all the monitors are on a single card.. its when you split the displays between 2 cards that it screws up..


as far as the op'ers problem i have a feeling it has to do with what it detects as the primary display then enables the display on the card that the primary display is connected to.. have you tried swapping the display to the secondary dvi port? (should be the dvi port closest to the hdmi port) then making sure the display on the second card is extended to it but is not set as the primary display.. thats about the only thing i can think of.. though with 21" 4:3 displays im not sure why you just dont grab a passive DP to vga plug and connect it that way instead of splitting the monitors between cards..
 
Have you tried Hydravision? It might just be a wild goose chase (I'm sorry, I only have one card, right now... 4 more days :D) but it's ATi's multimonitor management application. Only the second tab/page means anything, I think.


It's at the bottom of any ATi driver download page (there is only one page, lol).
 
The primary card should be identified in Overdrive.
You should be able to create a profile using profile manager that will accomplish exactly what you are after............

I admit my Crossfire and my Eyefinity involve having all my monitors connected to the outputs on the primary card only, but the profile manager and the display manager should be able to get you there.
 
Profiles don't do dick, and there is no option anywhere that I've seen in 10.7 for flagging a card as primary. This is such bullshit. I'm just going to leave one of my monitors disabled until this and the goddamn grey screen bullshit gets fixed. GAH!
 
Would you mind if I send this thread to ATI under a support ticket??:D
 
Hopefully the upcomming drivers can help you, but maybe you just need to get more ram.
 
Nah, he needs more cores. ( I believe both he and I are joking )

Ok, does either of your 5770's have DP? If so grab either a VGA/DP or active HDMI/DP adaptor and hook-up all monitors to one card.
 
Omegas said:
Nah, he needs more cores. ( I believe both he and I are joking )

Ok, does either of your 5770's have DP? If so grab either a VGA/DP or active HDMI/DP adaptor and hook-up all monitors to one card.
Click to expand...

No he needs the one with the more GBs.:eek:
That's a good idea, but not the way it should work for only wanting to use the one 24" monitor that's one the master.

I'll ticket ATI and see what they say.
 
Vexamus said:
Do they actually respond, Magoo? Thanks for putting it forward, mate.
Click to expand...

Yes they do.
I've gotten some good and bad replies in the past.
Unfortunately, the main ATI support ticket page is gone.....I haven't looked for it in a while.....I'm going to keep looking though...I will find an answer for this.
 
maybe you're being punished for the crazy combo of SLI 5770 and over-clocked 980x. :)

Drop the 5770's and grab a gtx 460. Heh heh.

I have been SC2'ing extensively on a Mobility 5830, which is a 5770 with DDR3, 500MHz stock core clock and 0.9v vCore. Runs great. I always play over-clocked to 725/1100 from 500/800.


By the way, the game is quite CPU heavy. Many times I can set all high, ultra textures... then set everything low, low textures and get EXACTLY the same frame rates for some situations. This is a common occurrence on my i5-540M system (runs 2.8GHz dual core, 1067 MHz dual channel DDR3) (essentially same as desktop i7 1156 chips but dual core) with the gimped 5770.


So, seriously, feed the game a stronger single card. with all the physics and AI goings on, alot of communication between the CPU and GFX cards is nessisary, and thus, communication between GFX cards if they are SLI'd. Dropping performance, studdering, uneven frame rates.... IMO.
 
Umm - so....

Why do you have 5770s when you have a 980X and 24gb? Come on dude, get a 5970.
 
okashira said:
maybe you're being punished for the crazy combo of SLI 5770 and over-clocked 980x. :)

Drop the 5770's and grab a gtx 460. Heh heh.

I have been SC2'ing extensively on a Mobility 5830, which is a 5770 with DDR3, 500MHz stock core clock and 0.9v vCore. Runs great. I always play over-clocked to 725/1100 from 500/800.


By the way, the game is quite CPU heavy. Many times I can set all high, ultra textures... then set everything low, low textures and get EXACTLY the same frame rates for some situations. This is a common occurrence on my i5-540M system (runs 2.8GHz dual core, 1067 MHz dual channel DDR3) (essentially same as desktop i7 1156 chips but dual core) with the gimped 5770.


So, seriously, feed the game a stronger single card. with all the physics and AI goings on, alot of communication between the CPU and GFX cards is nessisary, and thus, communication between GFX cards if they are SLI'd. Dropping performance, studdering, uneven frame rates.... IMO.
Click to expand...

Two HD5770 scale very well, just a bit above a single HD5870.

X58 has 36PCie lanes, anyways. Why not use them, lol. Save up for a better card in the future (perhaps HD6000 or Fermi refresh).
 
SeaFoam said:
Umm - so....

Why do you have 5770s when you have a 980X and 24gb? Come on dude, get a 5970.
Click to expand...

Because it's not a gaming machine. I'm a cinematographer and work with HD video all day long. Sometimes, I like to play a game or two. In this case, the latest and greatest video card wasn't a priority.
 
wait a 980x with 5770's? ;)?

ah i was beat to it lol. luckily my 5870 crossfire just worked. all monitors behaved as if i still only had one card. so thats good. sometimes crossfire doesn't immediately start up, so i just exit the game and try again. metro 2033 for example, i know when crossfire is working because at 3600x1920 its a slideshow on high settings with 1 5870 working, playable with both working properly.
 
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