General Crossfire Installation Questions

[jonathan_phang]

Hey all,

I'ver recently purchased a second 5850 and it should be with me by Tuesday so wanting to get a few qs answered in preparation for the testing (read games playing ) I have had a good google, but have come up with differing opinions from different sources.

• In terms of installation, I would say remove drivers, safe mode, driver sweeper, shutdown, install GPU 1, boot in and complete installation, shutdown, install GPU 2, let windows install drivers again, shutdown, add crossfire bridge, then finally boot into windows and enable crossfire in the CCC? I've heard that you can also just add all (2x GPU and bridge) all in at once... First way sounds more systematic.
• I'm currently on 11.1 already, so in relation to above, I dont need to unistall the drivers do I? ie. just add in the second card (maybe with/without the bridge depending on the answers to the first point)
• Profiles. I notice there is a separate exe for CF profiles on the ATI driver download page. Being on a single GPU setup before, I've never used (or noticed tbh) this before. Now, is this mandatory for CF or are these additional?
• Overdrive. Lets say I use this to OC (in the future, if the need arises - or just because I'm greedy), then does this automatically get applied to both cards? Or is there any magic jiggery pokery needed?

Those are my main points, but feel free to chuck in any CF related pearls of wisdom. My first plan is to test out the first card on its own, to make sure its all fine (it is second hand after all). Do I need to uninstall/reinstall the 10.1 drivers for this test or will it be fine as its all 10.1 after all?

Sorry for all the questions - but might be useful, not only for me, but other CF newbies - this is where I post then realise that there is a giant sticky for this already

Many thanks in advance
JP

[Phage]

Well, you've seen my other thread. 10.12 seems much better than the 11.1 for the 5xxx series. Certainly mine ran a lot better.
I also installed all the hardware at once, so my sequence was,
Uninstall
Driver sweeper
Install 2nd GPU, power leads, and bridge
Boot and install 10.12
Profit !

Heat was an issue for me. There wasn't any clearance between the cards on my Gigabyte mainboard, and I had a few temp related crashes. 10.12 helped with this, as the cards are not maxed all the time, and I installed some homemade ducting a la Blue Peter. (New front fan, plastic funnel, loo roll inner and duct tape.)
http://forums.hexus.net/help-technic...ard-crash.html
No problems now.

Profiles - highly recommended, but not absolutley required.

My cards are OC'd already, so I didn't try that, but the fans are manually controlled through CCC OD. In that case each card is handled seperately. There is a white text box which lists the card detected about 1/3 of the way down in the OD section. This is actually a drop down box and you select each card from there, and set them up individually. My master card is indicated by the model of the monitor after it, "5870 (W2343)" whereas the slave appears as just "5870". Of course YMMV.

[jonathan_phang]

...my sequence was,
Uninstall
Driver sweeper
Install 2nd GPU, power leads, and bridge
Boot and install 10.12
Profit !

Thanks for the info. Ah, so you've done both cards and the bridge at once then. I know youve been on CF for a while, and if youve had no issues with that then maybe thats the way to go for me too

[Phage]

No - no issues with the CF at all. Other than the heat.
I'm fairly sure that you need the bridge from boot.

[jonathan_phang]

The only reason why I've read not to install the bridge is so that you can get the drivers to install properly first before enabling crossfire mode. But if its all going in at once then it shouldnt matter. Thanks for the heads up about the temps, will have to have a check once they are in. I have an Antec 300 so not the biggest of cases, but there is good airflow.

Thanks, JP

[Phage]

Same as my case. I have pics in that link I posted.

[jonathan_phang]

Ah right - hadnt got round to looking at them yet - looks like i might need some DIY work after all then!

EDIT just had read now, will bear in mind about the fan profile and keep an eye on that too. Its never easy to just get something to work and know its working is it!

[Domestic_Ginger]

I would check the condition of your new card solo before going xfire. May help any problems down the line.

A bit of furmark, a few games and 3dmark vantage maybe. Check fan noise and all the temp sensors. Then stress it for a fair amount of time until I was a happy chappy.

I would have thought the 5850 CF would be much cooler. there does not seem to be much difference.

[ehhhhhhh]

I've just finished setting up my 6970CF config. I didnt remove any drivers...just popped the cards in with the CF bridges and catalyst notified me about the change and enabled CF automatically..

these cards are awesome btw

[barker967]

I did the same as Ehhhhh, already had 10.12 drivers on my pc, slapped the second card in, put on the crossfire bridges, fired up the pc, waited for the computer to find the new hardware and install it, then checked ccc to make sure crossfire was now enabled. It was and I was happy. Job done.

[jonathan_phang]

Well, after testing the second card I had on its own, and happy that it was fine, installed in CF, but unhappy at the moment with the performance in crysis, so fiddling around with drivers and other things to see what the problem could be. Could be all manner of things - the 8x PCIe speed, the drivers, the CF, the CPU, etc etc. Tired now, so really CBA. Was expecting a relatively decent jump... there has to be something that I am missing... Need to motivate myself to troubleshoot...

[jim]

Crysis performs like a dog no matter what hardware you throw at it.

Are you comparing to tests done on the internet with 5850 CF or just 5850 CF vs 5850?

[ehhhhhhh]

I have crysis benchmark numbers for my single 6970 setup so i can check how it scales exactly with 2 cards.

as I have played it recently ,with the CF setup I could turn everything to the absolute maximum and still have around 50+ fps in-game so it should be a huge boost for you too...

I dont think it's the 8x bandwith, or the CPU.

Have you downloaded the latest CF profiles?

[jonathan_phang]

Are you comparing to tests done on the internet with 5850 CF or just 5850 CF vs 5850?

I was recently playing this game on a single GPU, so the performance levels are fresh in my mind. I wasnt expecting massive improvements, but at least the max fps to be a good 10-15 more with CF

I have crysis benchmark numbers for my single 6970 setup so i can check how it scales exactly with 2 cards. as I have played it recently ,with the CF setup I could turn everything to the absolute maximum and still have around 50+ fps in-game so it should be a huge boost for you too...

Short version: FIXED Long Version: Well, i downloaded the crysis benchmark tool to be a little more scientific and gave that a run and thats when I twigged that I have been using the 64bit version. I gave it a crack on 32bit and its much better. Went back to the game in 32bit mode and on very high (bar a few CPU intensive things like physics) the the averages are much higher, hitting near the vsync limit. The mins are around 25-30 but thats in massive firefights, but theres room for tweaking. But all in all happier that it works in general.

Currently using the 11.2 but will probably give the 10.12s a go, seeing as they seem to be very popular. What are people using to monitor temps/gpu load/FPS. I have got MSI Afterburner but on the search for somthing with an ingame overlay. I believe Rivatuner has some plugins that do that, so will have a hunt another time...

Off to bed now - mission accomplished

[Phage]

Congrats.
I must admit I did my testing with Heaven and 3dMarkVantage. Both showed big gains. I've got the raw numbers at home if you're interested.
How are you seeing FPS in game ? or is it just the benchmark ?
For the temps, I couldn't find anything either. In the end I got Afterburner to log the temps to a text file, and then retrieved them later.

[jonathan_phang]

Cheers mate. As much as I dont usually do the synthetic benchmark thing, using something like Heaven or Vantage at least gives a decent way to show that something is happening. Yeah, the raw numbers would be interesting as a reference, though with your CPU, Im sure that it would be much high numbers (and also that you have 5870s).

FPS in game is currently just with FRAPS, and in crysis, just using the r_displayinfo 1 command. That gives you some more confirmation, as it will state MGPU, along with the executeable type (32/64) etc. Ive had a quick play with Dead Space 2, Crysis and also Metro 2033 to guage increases.

I had a quick search and it seems that rivatuner is able to use plugins to show the temps and usage for each GPU in an overlay in game, which is just what I am after. I didnt really have time to investigate, but will post back when I get round to it. Would be good to see real time info and to see if usage is across both GPUs etc.

Looking forward to playing with the drivers now. Mind you - there are some changes in 11.2 in the settings, with some tesselation settings and Cat AI has changed too. I may do compare run with 10.12 to see which is better at some point.