Need help with xfire Sapphire R7 260X Sapphire R7 260X 2GB 1150MHz GDDR 5 PCI Express

[diamonddust13]

Hi so ill start of by posting my original PC specs (Oct 2009).

Intel® Core™ i7 870 Quad Core Processor (2.93GHz, 8MB Cache) - LGA1156
Windows 7 Home Premium Edition - English
Thermaltake Element 'S' Gaming Chassis + 950W PSU
ASUS P7P55D LE Mainboard - Intel Core™ i5 / i7 - LGA 1156 / ATX
8GB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM - ( 4x2GB )
1.5TB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive with 32MB Buffer
Blu-Ray Re-Writer Super Format & BD/CD/CDRW/DVDRW
2x 1GB ATI Radeon 5870 DDR5 Graphics Accelerator - ***DirectX 11***, DVI, HDMI
Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Sound Card (RTL)
Max 14 USB 2.0 ports (8 ports at mid-board, 6 ports at back panel) - ASUS P7P55D
Network Ready PCIe Gigabit LAN

So the first alteration i made to this was adding a wireless network card that since didnt work very well so it just sits disabled in the bottom PCI slot. (Can be removed if any1 believes this could be causing any issues).

The only problem i had was after a few hours of gaming i would get a corrupted cursor and the only way to restore this was to restart the pc (I was only running 1 monitor at the time). I tried searching everywhere and trying every fix posted and even submitted a ticket to AMD Radeon but to no avail. So I accepted this and moved on.

So 4 months back I decided to upgrade my graphics cards cause i was having performance issues (fps drops) when running dual monitors but the pc was generally running OK no crashes etc.

I went with 2 * Sapphire R7 260X 2GB 1150MHz GDDR 5 PCI Express, the moment i installed them i restored my PC to factory image, and clean installed the newest CCC as specified on the AMD Radeon site. A few days after i got my first BSOD. I downloaded BlueScreenView and it indicated atikmdag.sys to be the driver at fault. I thought it might be a problem with the xfire (as i know generally this can be problematic) so i disconnected one of the cards this seemed to solve the problem for a while but then again after some time i got another BSOD. Then i contacted sapphire and they told me to upgrade my BIOS and do a clean install of the latest CCC which i proceeded to do. This did not solve the problem so they recommended a clean install of windows, I told them i could restore to factory settings but i did not own a windows 7 DVD so I could not do a true format + install. I proceeded to do this and as usual the BSOD came back. Sapphire lastly recommended doing a clean install of windows on a different hard drive as maybe my hard drive my be failing but i explained that i didn't own a secondary hard drive.

The problems that I have are:
1) BSOD generally when I am playing video, either on youtube or video files saved on my computer. Although this has happened once without any video playing.
2) When I fullscreen on youtube, sometimes I get this very weird horizontal line not like any other issue i googled searched. This line isn't colored, it's just like there has been a horizontal split and the images shifted horizontally creating this illusion of a line.
3) Sometimes both my screens just go black and i can't do anything to recover them.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

P.S.1 I would like to have attached my crash dump files but attachments don't seem to be allowed If any1 wants to take a look i could try and upload them on some site or e-mail them.

P.S. 2 I have since come across a windows 7 DVD and now can perform a clean installation of windows but I am trying to leave that as a last ditch solution as re-installing all the programs i need afterwards takes a long time.

[Crisler]

This sounds like a streaming video issue I have seen a lot of lately and have found that installing VLC Media Player helped. I think this could be from a corrupted or bad codec file that VLC replaces.

I am curious, you are mentioning video play back, why crossfire for video?

[diamonddust13]

This sounds like a streaming video issue I have seen a lot of lately and have found that installing VLC Media Player helped. I think this could be from a corrupted or bad codec file that VLC replaces.

I am curious, you are mentioning video play back, why crossfire for video?

Thanks for your reply. I already use VLC and i get BSOD both when playing videos in VLC and windows media player (I was testing to see if it was a software issue).

I got crossfire generally for gaming, I mention the video specifically because that seems to be where most of problems arise which i found very weird. But yeah as I said above i also got a BSOD when i had taken out one of the cards so xfire wasn't running.

[Blín D'ñero]

[...]

I am curious, you are mentioning video play back, why crossfire for video?

^when you have a crossfire system, you don't disable crossfire when watching a movie....

[...]
I thought it might be a problem with the xfire (as i know generally this can be problematic)
[...]

No, generally crossfire works flawlessly. I have crossfire experience with HD3870 CF, HD4870X2, HD5870 CF., HD7970 CF. There have been issues with certain games and crossfire. Never with crossfire as such.

That is, on 1 screen.

Have you mentioned which monitors you're using? because i've your read your post 3 times now but didn't see it, maybe it's my eyes (or mind)...

My 5870 system started off with 1 1920x1200/60 Hz screen. When i connected a second (identical) U2410, forming one Windows Extended Dekstop, i would have disturbances (like your lines) on the left one of the screens.
I solved this by starting an Eyefinity group in CCC. Both screens were DVI connected.

Then with a third identical monitor (and still crossfire) a new issue introduced to me on desktop (2D only): lag when hovering mouse over links, generally a "nervous" mouse cursor.
I have tried this Eyefinity-3x group as DVI/DVI - DVI/DVI - DP/DP and DVI/DVI - DVI/DVI - DP/DVI, but no difference. When gaming it is flawless. Watching movies (and moving the window over the 3 screens) no problem.
It is exclusively a Windows Desktop issue. No matter which drivers. On 13.12 WHQL currently.
No Bluescreens ever, btw.

Have you tried Eyefinity 2x?

[diamonddust13]

^when you have a crossfire system, you don't disable crossfire when watching a movie....


No, generally crossfire works flawlessly. I have crossfire experience with HD3870 CF, HD4870X2, HD5870 CF., HD7970 CF. There have been issues with certain games and crossfire. Never with crossfire as such.

That is, on 1 screen.

Have you mentioned which monitors you're using? because i've your read your post 3 times now but didn't see it, maybe it's my eyes (or mind)...

My 5870 system started off with 1 1920x1200/60 Hz screen. When i connected a second (identical) U2410, forming one Windows Extended Dekstop, i would have disturbances (like your lines) on the left one of the screens.
I solved this by starting an Eyefinity group in CCC. Both screens were DVI connected.

Then with a third identical monitor (and still crossfire) a new issue introduced to me on desktop (2D only): lag when hovering mouse over links, generally a "nervous" mouse cursor.
I have tried this Eyefinity-3x group as DVI/DVI - DVI/DVI - DP/DP and DVI/DVI - DVI/DVI - DP/DVI, but no difference. When gaming it is flawless. Watching movies (and moving the window over the 3 screens) no problem.
It is exclusively a Windows Desktop issue. No matter which drivers. On 13.12 WHQL currently.
No Bluescreens ever, btw.

Have you tried Eyefinity 2x?

Both my monitors are 1920x1200/60 Hz screens,

Screen 1) Asus VE247H 24 inch. (primary)
Screen 2) Asus VH242H 24 inch.

One of the screens is connected by HDMI and the other by DVI, as i am not currently at home i couldn't tell you which is which.

I would have to buy a DVI splitter to connect both by DVI but if u think it would help i wouldn't mind as they don't seem to be so expensive.

I have never used eyefinity, I will look into this thnx for your suggestion.

[Blín D'ñero]

Splitter? Of course not.

This card? Has 2 x DVI. Use each for one screen. In Eyefnity you cannot combine HDMI and DVI. You can combine DP and DVI.

[diamonddust13]

Ok connected both with DVI and enabled eyefinity, if this does indeed solve my issue this is great but it creates another problem. When i go to maximize a screen or fullscreen a video etc. etc. it snaps across 2 screens which is something i don't want. I looked through CCC but i can't see a setting for this, am i missing something or is there some sort of workaround for this?

p.s. i might be doing smthing horribly wrong, in 2 of my games once fullscreen is enabled the second monitor goes completely black and its like it doesn't exist, and in the third (diablo 3) the desktops are just copies of each other.

[Blín D'ñero]

That is a side-effect of eyefinity i guess when running games / fullscreen movies. Of course no Eyefinity supporting game supports 2-screen eyefinity; that would be 3x screen (1 center, 2 sides).

You want 1 screen staying on Desktop while on the other watching a movie/playing a game? Go back to Windows Extended Desktop then, and continue troubleshooting.

Btw, which drivers are you currently using?

Oh and i would highly recommend MPC-HP x64 over VLC player! Have you tried that?

[diamonddust13]

That is a side-effect of eyefinity i guess when running games / fullscreen movies. Of course no Eyefinity supporting game supports 2-screen eyefinity; that would be 3x screen (1 center, 2 sides).

You want 1 screen staying on Desktop while on the other watching a movie/playing a game? Go back to Windows Extended Desktop then, and continue troubleshooting.

Btw, which drivers are you currently using?

Oh and i would highly recommend MPC-HP x64 over VLC player! Have you tried that?

Yeah seems like i'm gonna have to go back to extended desktop and keep trying to figure this one out :S

I'm using 13.12 CCC.

No I haven't tried MPC-HP, i'll give it a go. Thanks for all your help

[diamonddust13]

Ok so new update, both screens connected by DVI and with eyefinity off, computer just crashed again. I hear a weird noise from the pc and looked down, it sounded like one of the fans was playing up and hitting against the pc case. By the time i looked up both screens were black and i couldn't recover the pc. Could this be a power surge issue? I had checked the PSU (first time i did this in my life) with:
Thermaltake Dr Power II Universal ATX Power Supply Tester



and everything seemed normal.

[Blín D'ñero]

Ok so new update, both screens connected by DVI and with eyefinity off, computer just crashed again. I hear a weird noise from the pc and looked down, it sounded like one of the fans was playing up and hitting against the pc case. By the time i looked up both screens were black and i couldn't recover the pc. Could this be a power surge issue? I had checked the PSU (first time i did this in my life) with:
Thermaltake Dr Power II Universal ATX Power Supply Tester



and everything seemed normal.

Did it smell? If not then it
Sounds like a loose cable to me. Hanging around, touching a fan. Wouldn't explain the crashing. But maybe your cards aren't fitting tightly enough in the slots? Powercables tightly conected to the cards? A cable mess?

[diamonddust13]

Did it smell? If not then it
Sounds like a loose cable to me. Hanging around, touching a fan. Wouldn't explain the crashing. But maybe your cards aren't fitting tightly enough in the slots? Powercables tightly conected to the cards? A cable mess?

It didn't smell, it couldn't be a lose cable interfering with the fan because the fan is sort of guarded off if you understand what i mean, my case sort of has an internal area and then an external area that is guarded and cables cannot fit through. This fan was on the external area.
I hope I explained it well enough.

[Blín D'ñero]

Have you got the PC up and running again?

[diamonddust13]

Have you got the PC up and running again?

Yes all it needed was a reset.