For the past few days, weeks–or month–I’ve been harrasing ATI support for my Crossfire problems. In a nutshell, I couldn’t get Crossfire working despite good components and a good set-up. It looks all very good, even the support people are baffled. Everything should be working, but it just didn’t click. The mystery was the Crossfire took effect only 3DMark 2006 and 3DMark alone. Other games had no benefit at all, and Crossfire would work intermittently.
Fast forward a few weeks and frustrated argumentation, ATI support suggested three things:
Here are some of the suggestions given by our testing team:
1) power supply could be the cause as it is not certified for crossfire
2) try connecting monitor to a different port
it should be on the primary board connected to port closest to mobo, but try others
3) try connecting 2 crossfire bridge cables if 1 is connected or try connecting 1 if 2 are connected.
I tackled them one by one, and replied:
Hello,
I tried the suggestions, but as for #2, display would only appear on the primary card. There is no display on the 2nd card. This is confirmed by CCC’s message as Crossfire is enabled. Trying either DVI port has no effect.
As for #3, connecting only 1 bridge–on either places–has no effect. Crossfire cannot even be enabled.
As for #1, I do not think that my power supply is fault. One, it is SLI certified and online sources indicate that it is Crossfire capable as well. It even has 2 PCI-E power connectors for high-end cards. Second, it exceeds the amperage requirement of Crossfire and SLI. It is capable of producing 32A, 38A and 18A of current for 3.3V, 5V and 12V rails respectively. The Hisper 680W (Crossfire certified for HD2600XT) PSU produces the same amount of current on the same rails. I highly doubt it if the Hisper 680W produces more current than advertised because such higher currents can damage the system. I also doubt that if my PSU is overloaded because I only have the bare essentials plugged-in. One HDD, one optical drive, one fan etc. And there is no evidence of overloading because I haven’t experienced a shut-off whatsoever. And if ever it were a PSU problem, it doesn’t answer the mystery why only 3DMark 2006 consistently receives benefit from Crossfire. Games run within the same session do not. Running 3DMark2006 again shows performance increase.
As of the writing of that reply, all my claims were still true. However, I decided to experiment for the heck of it. I shutdown my computer, removed one Crossfire Bridge–leaving one connected–and booted up the system once again. Then voila, Crossfire everywhere. Crossfire in all my games. Albeit not perfect, Crysis, for example, but it was good enough. Reaching ~30FPS at maximum settings in Call of Duty 4 Demo was a great feeling. Rainbow Six: Vegas, running at full spec and hardly a slideshow. I can keep going, but there’s next time for that. I ran tests and benchmarks, everything was stable and consistent. I’ve been having this problem for more than one month, and the solution was right under my nose.
In my defense, when I tried using only one Bridge previously, Crossfire indeed, did not work. It would not even have the option to enable. Somehow throught the weeks and the thorough reinstallations of drivers, Crossfire with one Bridge suddenly became an option. It wasn’t there before. Also, looking at various authoritative literature, Crossfire looked like it did need two Bridges. My motherboard documentation said so, my HD2600XT documentation said so, the “How it Works” video straight from ATI said so, and the pictures online from various hardware sites say so. Logically, why would it not need two Bridges? I was more inclined to believe that Crossfire needed two Bridges and I believed so. Obviously, I bought two Crossfire Bridges, as detailed in my Pantip Plaza entry, and used them. Turns out that that was the problem in itself.
I guess that ends my “Crossfire Not Working” dilemma. Honestly, it was all a whirlwind and I have lost track of how everything fell apart and came together on a software and hardware level. All I know is that Crossfire should’ve worked in the first place, tracing back to the very reason for buying a pair of HD2600XTs: software Crossfire. But everything went awry from there.
But that has passed. Let bygones be bygones.
As for the apology, I do apologize for all the hassles, frustrations and the pissing matches with ATI support. The solution had just been there. But then, I also have my defense as I have outlined above. I don’t think it’s entirely my fault. On the other hand, I can be evil and simply think that that was their job, anyway. They get paid to get into virtual spitting matches against irate costumers… and have contracts to prove it. (Un)fortunately, I don’t think like that. Or at least, not like it tonight.
Let’s just hope for the best and for a fun Crossfire experience.
For the past few days, weeks–or month–I’ve been harrasing ATI support for my Crossfire problems. In a nutshell, I couldn’t get Crossfire working despite good components and a good set-up. It looks all very good, even the support people are baffled. Everything should be working, but it just didn’t click. The mystery was the Crossfire took effect only 3DMark 2006 and 3DMark alone. Other games had no benefit at all, and Crossfire would work intermittently.
Fast forward a few weeks and frustrated argumentation, ATI support suggested three things:
I tackled them one by one, and replied:
As of the writing of that reply, all my claims were still true. However, I decided to experiment for the heck of it. I shutdown my computer, removed one Crossfire Bridge–leaving one connected–and booted up the system once again. Then voila, Crossfire everywhere. Crossfire in all my games. Albeit not perfect, Crysis, for example, but it was good enough. Reaching ~30FPS at maximum settings in Call of Duty 4 Demo was a great feeling. Rainbow Six: Vegas, running at full spec and hardly a slideshow. I can keep going, but there’s next time for that. I ran tests and benchmarks, everything was stable and consistent. I’ve been having this problem for more than one month, and the solution was right under my nose.
In my defense, when I tried using only one Bridge previously, Crossfire indeed, did not work. It would not even have the option to enable. Somehow throught the weeks and the thorough reinstallations of drivers, Crossfire with one Bridge suddenly became an option. It wasn’t there before. Also, looking at various authoritative literature, Crossfire looked like it did need two Bridges. My motherboard documentation said so, my HD2600XT documentation said so, the “How it Works” video straight from ATI said so, and the pictures online from various hardware sites say so. Logically, why would it not need two Bridges? I was more inclined to believe that Crossfire needed two Bridges and I believed so. Obviously, I bought two Crossfire Bridges, as detailed in my Pantip Plaza entry, and used them. Turns out that that was the problem in itself.
I guess that ends my “Crossfire Not Working” dilemma. Honestly, it was all a whirlwind and I have lost track of how everything fell apart and came together on a software and hardware level. All I know is that Crossfire should’ve worked in the first place, tracing back to the very reason for buying a pair of HD2600XTs: software Crossfire. But everything went awry from there.
But that has passed. Let bygones be bygones.
As for the apology, I do apologize for all the hassles, frustrations and the pissing matches with ATI support. The solution had just been there. But then, I also have my defense as I have outlined above. I don’t think it’s entirely my fault. On the other hand, I can be evil and simply think that that was their job, anyway. They get paid to get into virtual spitting matches against irate costumers… and have contracts to prove it. (Un)fortunately, I don’t think like that. Or at least, not like it tonight.
Let’s just hope for the best and for a fun Crossfire experience.
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Posted in Comments, Fixes and Workarounds, Reflections | Tags: ATI, Crossfire, hardware, HD2600XT, PC, tech