Sound distortion with 290X Crossfire

[JR1911]

Whenever I try to play a game with Crossfire enabled on  my 290Xs I get horrible sound distortion and poor performance. The problem disappears if I disable Crossfire and also if I use the 13.11 beta v9.2 drivers. With newer drivers, including the lates 14.1 beta v1.6, the problem persists. This has basically rendered Crossfire unusable for me. From what I've read on other forums this seems to be a common problem. Does anyone know of a way to fix this problem or do I just have to wait for AMD to release new drivers?

 

This is pretty ridiculous, I thought AMD had solved the problems it had with Crossfire but this is worse than ever and quite frankly unacceptable. I've had nothing but trouble with the 290Xs and it's really starting to look like these were the last AMD GPUs I'm ever going to buy which is sad since Mantle and TrueAudio seem like interesting concepts.

[Flyguygamer]

I don't think there is a fix yet. 

[JR1911]

I don't think there is a fix yet. 

 

Looks like that, atleast I haven't been able to find anything that would fix the problem for me. I read somewhere that disabling Vsync would have fixed the problem for someone, but for me it didn't help.

[AlwaysFSX]

Beta. Drivers.

[JR1911]

Beta. Drivers.

 

I've also tried the 13.12 drivers and they had the same problem, so it's not because of beta drivers.

[AlwaysFSX]

I've also tried the 13.12 drivers and they had the same problem, so it's not because of beta drivers.

Aren't those also beta drivers? 14.1 are also just beta drivers for Mantle support.

I'm blind. I have no clue then... Terrible driver support?

[jdrage97]

try to see if your drivers are up to date

[Nrøjbrot]

i am experiencing the same problem with my 290's...

[TERAFLOP]

What does sound have to do with crossfire ? this is one weird bug.
I'm surprised none of the review sites mentioned this if it's really that common.

[kaneandtaker]

Since you mention sound, use DVI instead of HDMI?

[JR1911]

What does sound have to do with crossfire ? this is one weird bug.

I'm surprised none of the review sites mentioned this if it's really that common.

 

What I read from a thread in the AMD Support forums the problem seems to be that something causes a lot DPC latency and that causes the sound to stutter. Someone over there also mentioned that disabling something called 'precision timing' or similar in the BIOS solved the problem for him, I'm going to try that once I get home from work.

 

 

Since you mention sound, use DVI instead of HDMI?

 

I'm using DVI.

[JR1911]

The problem definitely seems to have something to do with DPC latencies. Here's the results of a quick test I did starting Witcher 2 with Crossfire on/off.

 

Crossfire on:

 

Crossfire off:

[JR1911]

Okay, problem solved . It seems that disabling Vsync DOES solve the problem, but simply disabling it from CCC isn't enough, you have to disable it in the game config files also. After a quick test both Witcher 2 and Mass Effect 3 work fine with Vsync forced off.