Is My CrossFire Setup Working Correctly? [Basic/Advanced Guide]

Great starter's guide !

Could you please add some info on how to diagnose bottlenecks when running crossfire ?

Cause many users blame the multi-GPU configuration when in fact their cpu is inadequate for the task.

Thanks!

 

No easy way to answer that one, but typically you'd look for gpu usage dropping as a sign of a cpu bottleneck. However it gets complicated as this can be caused by the API or an engine limitation in a game.

 

Hi, I just installed a single XFX R9 295x2.
Afterburner shows that my GPU2 isn't working, and GPU2 temperature is showing zero.
Is this normal ?
Below a few screenshots.

 

Oops. A reboot solved partially the problem, my GPU2 is now showing some activity when playing games, and GPU2 Temp now displays.

I still don't see any crossfire options in CCC, but I believe these options aren't available in the R9 295X2 as per the tutorial ?

 

That's correct, there's no option to disable CrossfireX in CCC with a dual card. Instead you must create an application profile on a per game basis within CCC if you wish to disable CrossfireX for a specific title.

You can also disable ULPS via Afterburner if you so desire, it might give you a small performance increase at the expense of slightly higher idle power usage.

I'd also recommend ticking enable unified gpu usage monitoring in Afterburner to get more accurate and consistent gpu usage readings as per the guide.

 

Thanks Matt. Have done so.
One more question, it looks like I cannot play around with the Fan Speed (%) anymore since I installed this new card, see the below screenshot, is this normal ? And also the tachometer graphs of the fans do not show any RPMs, is this normal ?

 

I think that's normal as the fan is controlled automatically.

 

^^ Was the same with my 295X2

 

Alright, thanks Matt/Extraordinary.

 

Thanks guys.

 

is there a way to use msi afterburner WITHOUT disabling ULPS to monitor crossfire cards? cause when i have it enabled... it only monitors 1 card other shows 0

my main card is water cooled with a kraken g10 but 2nd uses the trix fan... and i set it to 65% fan while gaming... kinda loud but gets annoying always switching back to auto when idling.

 

I don't know how relevant this may be for modern drivers (it might have been removed somewhere along the line), but on old MultiGPU cards (4870x2) to really force crossfire off you could either rename the .exe to ForceSingleGPU.exe, or you could climb into the registry where the AMD drivers are and set MVPU to 30 00 00 00 instead of 31 00 00 00 to kill the second GPU.

Just disabling Catalyst AI only disables AFR, not CrossfireX. Times may have changed but it's worth a go if CCC isn't working for some reason or another.

 

You can still monitor some parts of a ULPS enabled gpu 2, but the options are limited. I think it might only be temperature and fan spee, but you'd need to check yourself to be sure.

Catalyst AI no longer exists my friend.

 

Matt, I am using a software called CloneDVD which can rip DVDs into mp4 files.
When I'm running it, my GPUs are not used, only my CPUs, according to Afterburner.
Is there a trick for rippers (like the one I have, or others) to use GPUs in addition of CPUs ? (with the aim of ripping faster, of course).

 

Probably went the same way of the dodo then, along with SuperTiling and SFR.

However ForceSingleGPU.exe must be in there somewhere along with CompatAFR-1x1 (to get games like PES 2013 to scale properly without jerkiness).

Are modern GPU's really all that nice and fast that there is no place for optimisation "tricks" anymore, and things like FP24 to FP16 demotion ?

 

I don't think it's possible I'm afraid.

I think most of those have been removed now, however you can find the SuperTiling and Scissor Mode explanations in the CCC Help Files. They are no longer used though. Present options in CCC are AFR Friendly and Render All 1x1.

• AFR Friendly skips all resource transfers between GPUs, assuming that each frame is independent of the previous frame. (Usually not the case for performance reasons)
• Render All 1x1 is the normal unprofiled/safe app profile, but renders all 1x1 resources every frame in order to eliminate this common dependency between frames and allow the frames to overlap and the app to scale. (E.g. instead of transferring a 1x1 resource to the slave GPUs, it will just render it, which can be faster and eliminates the frame dependency.)

 

Thanks Matt.

 

No problem.

 

Ah, yes it does and still controls Texture Filtering quality like it always has.

To disable AI go to AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Profiles and edit CatalystAI Enabled to Disabled.

Then close MOM and CCC in TM, find regkey {4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} and change Value CatalystAI to 30.

 

You might still be able to tweak it unofficially, but it (Catalyst AI) was removed from CCC suite because it's not really necessary anymore. A lot of the features that were in Catalyst AI were to help game developers, but due to the advancements in the DirectX API they are not really necessary anymore. Even the Texture Filtering Quality and Surface Format Optimization options don't have much of an impact these days although they are still there under "Texture Filtering" drop down under 3D Application Settings.