R9 290 Crossfire Strange Issues

[MEC-777]

Will copy my post directly from the OC.net forums instead of retyping it all out. No TL;DR because the issues I'm having require the full explanation. 

 

Alright, so last night I setup crossfire with two 290's on my system and I had a heck of a time getting it to work properly. There's a lot to say, but I'll try to just condense it down to the most important issues, primarily related to the clocks, clock syncing and CCC overdrive power limit issues/confusion.

When I first installed the 2nd card, during driver uninstall it came up with a warning that it wasn't uninstalled properly. Before I could click on view logs to see what happened, or try uninstalling again, the PC restarted on it's own. Upon restart, when windows loaded, I was greeted by a screen of colorful pixel vomit. So I did a hard shut-down (had no choice), yanked both cards out and rebooted on the Intel graphics. Got into windows, no problem and finished properly uninstalling the AMD drivers. Popped the cards back in, restarted and installed the latest stable drivers (15.7.1).

Now, here's where things got weird. Both cards were running at 470/625 core/memory by default. Upon running a 3D app like Unigine Valley, the clocks stayed at 470/625. I fired up MSI AB and in settings I checked the box to sync the two cards. I had to manually set the clocks to 947/1250 (where they should have been) and hit apply. Boom, the clocks went to 300/1250 on one card and 300/150 on the other. That's more like it. Overdrive in CCC was NOT enabled at this point.

Then I tried running Valley again and for some reason, only one card (the reference card) would fully ramp up to 947, the other (the HIS) was hovering around 800-900 but wouldn't ever fully reach 947. This, of course, caused not ideal performance. I then opened overdrive and for the HIS card only, I set the power limit to +50 and boom, it now also ramps up and stays at 947 with the reference card. But why should I have to do this? The cards are synced in MSI AB.

Then, I was setting up a custom fan curve to control the hairdryer, and after clicking OK, then running Valley again, now only one card ramped up to 947 and the other sat at 300! What the heck is with that!? Through trial and error (because I didn't know what was going on) I disabled overdrive, then re-enabled it and set the power limit back to +50 again and boom, both cards ramp up to 947 again.

Crossfire is enabled in CCC as well as the option to "run crossfire even in programs that have no crossfire profile" is also enabled.

And now, just this morning (I left the machine on overnight to download some updates) after waking the PC up, after a few minutes, the displays shut off and on several times as windows made the "device disconnected/reconnected" sound numerous times in a row. When the displays finally came back on after a few seconds of this, MSI AB showed no readings except voltage (for either cards) and the two GPUz panels I had open (one for each card) showed nothing, no readings on the sensors. Tried restarting MSI AB, still nothing. Restarted the PC and everything came back as before - full sensor readings and all.

So now... what the heck is going on??? Is this all normal issues with running crossfire? Have I done something wrong?

I would GREATLY appreciate any assistance with this.

Tried running The Witcher 3 and with Vsync, it's horrible. Vsync off is much better (running up in the 70fps range at 1440p, high settings - hairworks off), but it's still not "smooth" like it was with one 290, same settings in the 50fps range. Haven't yet had a chance to try any other games yet.

Please help! lol  Thanks.

 

Both cards run perfectly on their own and I was able to OC them both to 1050/1350 without any problems - scored 13,999 in firestrike. I just don't understand the odd clocking behavior and why I have to set the power limit in overdrive to get the one card to not throttle itself - and why, if I don't do that, the cards don't stay synced.

[MEC-777]

No replies yet eh? 

 

Well, doesn't matter anyways - I believe I fixed the issue. Don't know what the issue/cause was in the first place, but I reinstalled MSI AB, changed a few settings, created a new custom fan curve profile and everything seems to be working as it should now.

 

 

Mods, feel free to delete thread. 

[App4that]

Odd question since you fixed the problem. Where the **** do you find Vsync? I've looked everywhere and never found that setting. I have a sapphire 290.

[MEC-777]

Odd question since you fixed the problem. Where the **** do you find Vsync? I've looked everywhere and never found that setting. I have a sapphire 290.

 

You can find Vsync options in a number of places. You can usually find Vsync on or off options within the game settings themselves. In CCC (catalyst control center) it's under the "gaming" tab then "3d application settings" it's in the list along with AA, Antistropic filtering, tessellation etc. You can set it to always off, off unless application specifies (what I use), or always on. Note; always on or off overrides application settings. 

 

As an alternative to Vsync, you can try using the FRTC (frame rate target control) which is also in there at the bottom of that list of options, I believe. What this does is attempts to hold the game at a targeted frame rate, so if the game would normally run over 60fps (if you set the target to 60), it will actually only run the GPU(s) as hard as it needs to achieve the target frame rate and no more. This puts less load on the GPU(s), depending on the scenario, which will allow them to run cooler and quieter. But my experience with trying to use FRTC wasn't great because it still exhibited screen tearing in some games vs using Vsync with no tearing.   

[Prysin]

are the bioses for both cards the same?

is your motherboards bios updated to the latest version?

what type of PCIe ports are you using? Gen 2 or 3?

 

 

Ive never had these issues with CF though, not in the 3+ years ive used it

 

Witcher 3 has CF profiles, i know that for sure.

 

 

make sure you run programs in fullscreen. CF doesnt work properly without fullscreen. If you "Force" CF with borderless window, you get issues.

[MEC-777]

are the bioses for both cards the same?

is your motherboards bios updated to the latest version?

what type of PCIe ports are you using? Gen 2 or 3?

 

 

Ive never had these issues with CF though, not in the 3+ years ive used it

 

Witcher 3 has CF profiles, i know that for sure.

 

 

make sure you run programs in fullscreen. CF doesnt work properly without fullscreen. If you "Force" CF with borderless window, you get issues.

 

Both cards are on the same BIOS (switches are in the same position).

 

Yep, motherboard BIOS is all up to date. It's an Asus Z97-E with SLI compatibility - which means the two PCIe gen 3 slots run at 8x/8x with 2 GPUs installed (vs 16x/4x for most other crossfire only motherboards). 

 

Yeah, I'm wondering if there are some settings in The Witcher 3 that need adjusting. Apparently there are numerous fixes out there for TW3 CF performance issues - but I haven't had a chance yet to look into it. 

 

I make sure any and all games I run are in full screen mode (not boarderless windowed). I tried running GTA 5 earlier today and even though there isn't much performance scaling with CF in that game, it did run butter smooth with Vsync enabled. So why TW3 runs like garbage, I'm not sure. Different game, different engine, I understand that but still, it shouldn't be that bad. lol. Mind you, I haven't tried running TW3 since I got things properly sorted out, so will try it again.

[Prysin]

Both cards are on the same BIOS (switches are in the same position).

 

Yep, motherboard BIOS is all up to date. It's an Asus Z97-E with SLI compatibility - which means the two PCIe gen 3 slots run at 8x/8x with 2 GPUs installed (vs 16x/4x for most other crossfire only motherboards). 

 

Yeah, I'm wondering if there are some settings in The Witcher 3 that need adjusting. Apparently there are numerous fixes out there for TW3 CF performance issues - but I haven't had a chance yet to look into it. 

 

I make sure any and all games I run are in full screen mode (not boarderless windowed). I tried running GTA 5 earlier today and even though there isn't much performance scaling with CF in that game, it did run butter smooth with Vsync enabled. So why TW3 runs like garbage, I'm not sure. Different game, different engine, I understand that but still, it shouldn't be that bad. lol. Mind you, I haven't tried running TW3 since I got things properly sorted out, so will try it again.

 

ill start up TW3... i havent played it for a few weeks, but ill see if my R9 295x2 behaves any diffrently. I am currently at the 15.7.1 driver, havent bothered with 15.8 yet.... so ill see if an slightly older driver helps things.

 

UPDATE:

ive installed the latest version of TW3. It seems no matter what i do, ultra settings at 3440x1440p does stutter... however when i turn down the ambient occulsion from HBAO+ to SSAO i get A LOT less (nvidia fucking around again?)..... which is weird, because Nvidias HBAO+ setting has never given me issues before....

 

As for the stuttering, it doesnt help with Vsync... i suspect that whatever was done with TW3s latest version, it broke the CF profile somehow. Just wait for new CF profile to emerge