I'm having major problems with my HD 7950 Crossfire setup. I'll just try and give a quick summary.
Specs: i5 3570k, 8 GB DDR3, Sapphire Dual-x 7950 & MSI Twin Frozr III 7950, Asrock Z77 extreme3, corsair tx650, crucial mx100 256 GB & WD caviar green 1.5 T, windows 8.1. Everything is at stock clocks.
when I first received my second card (the MSI) I used the native 6+2 pci-e pins on the power supply and used two molex to 6-pin adapters for the sapphire card. everything worked fine.
I then went on vacation for 2 weeks, when I came back yesterday there was no video signal sent to my monitor when booting up. I messed around with it for a while and eventually managed to get it to work properly, which I assume was because I didn't have the pci-e power connectors inserted all the way. I ran the metro 2033 benchmark for 1.5 hours and everything worked perfectly.
Today, I started having the same problem with no video signal. i switched the pci-e ports that the cards were plugged into and it was able to boot; however, the AMD drivers claimed there was a problem with the crossfire bridge preventing crossfire from being enable. i completely uninstalled the drivers and installed the 14.6 rc2 beta drivers, which allowed me to enable crossfire. however, when I now launch a game my PC completely freezes up; I shut it down using the power button, and when i boot it up again immediately afterwards it boots to a very low resolution log in screen and immediately freezes, whereas waiting for a while results in it booting normally.
I doubt it's a power supply issue because of how perfectly the metro 2033 benchmark was run last night. I suppose I could try some different driver versions, but I really don't have any ideas on the problem at this point.
I tried to uninstall the 14.6 beta drivers, as well as install the 14.4 drivers, and both times my computer went to a black screen and I had to shut it down manually.
Edit: I did try installing 14.4 a second time and it managed to be successful this time. However I still suffer from all of the problems. Would it be worthwhile to try reinstalling windows?
I've been doing some more testing, and I can't get my second 7950 to boot when I'm only using it. I assume that it's dead since I have tried multiple pci-e slots and I'm fairly certain all of my connectors are seated properly. My other 7950 works perfectly on its own and I have absolutely no problems with it. I assume the second one is dead?
Yeah, looks like it. If it doesn't work by itself, there's something wrong. Perhaps a power surge caused something to go haywire?
Well, I wasn't able to get my second card to work at all connected to my monitor over DVI. However, I moved it to my TV and connected it to that over HDMI where it ran perfectly fine. Now I'm running crossfire with both cards and everything seems to be working well.
So is it probably just a broken DVI port?
Yea, seems like the port is broken. Did you try swapping the position of the two cards? Maybe also use the card in another computer and see what happens
Except then this morning it wouldn't detect my graphics cards at all, and when reinstalling the AMD drivers it would completely lock up.
I'm leaning back towards in being a power supply problem but I just can't be sure. I have tried both cards individually in both slots and they work fine, or at least they were yesterday.
Well, here's the most recent update on the situation:
I am currently solely running the second card I bought that works questionably. The last two days I have been able to get it to work and then I played some games or several hours and everything worked perfectly. However, both yesterday and this morning, the card would not work when I turned on my PC. However, it worked again after reseating the card in the pci-e slot.
Why would this happen?
When I install the card it seems to be pretty solid, so I don't know if vibration would really be the issue.
Do you think moving to a more solid surface might help reduce the amount of vibration affecting the card (if it is indeed the problem.)? I also suppose I should try usinig my old card that has worked fine on its own the entire time. I doubt it will have the same problem, but I haven't tested it recently.
Edit: Also, the card I'm having problems with is an MSI card that needs one 8- and one 6-pin power connector, whereas my working Sapphire card only needs two 6-pins. Could that be somehow causing the problem? I don't really see why it would, especially since I've been able to run both in crossfire perfectly at times.
That is alot of assumptions and no test of theory.
Indeed, I am really grasping at straws at this point. But I have no idea why it will not work with the MSI card. Admittedly, I bought it used, so it's possible it's dying, but it just doesn't seem to me like that would be it. I would think there would be some signs (graphical glitches, artifacts, etc.) when it is running, but here aren't. It either works perfectly, or not at all.
I just decided to put my Sapphire card in, stress it for a while, shut down my computer, and then come back several hours later to see if it works properly or not.
Ya, I feel for you. Sometimes the littlest things cause big problems.I have personally seen vibration cause a whole host of issues that at the time seemed like gremlins did it. Maybe your pci e slot is damaged in some way.
Well, I did accidently the break the "lock" or whatever it is on one of the pci-e ports. I've tested both of my pci-e 3.0 ports with my working card and they work perfectly, but I haven't left it in long enough to see whether it works or not after shutting down.
Back to the vibration though - how do you go about mitigating that?
Clean fans, felt tabs for lamps , making sure everything is sercured correctly. Ground yourself and run your hand around inside of your case while its running to get a sense of what is causing vibration and where.