Sapphire 7950 Crossfire help?

[BennyF]

Ok, I'm having some major issues with my new system, mainly the Graphics cards. In CPU-Z and games they are showing as 2 1GB cards rather then 2 3GB cards.

They are showing as 3GB cards in the Catalyst though :S

System:
MOBO: ASRock X79 Extreme9
CPU: Core i7 3930k (stock speeds)
PSU: Corsair AX1200
Ram: G.Skill Ripjaws Z 16GB (4x4) 2133
GPU: 2 Sapphire Radeon 7950 Crossfired.

[hartbeatmr]

Good evening BennyF and welcome back

     On some systems I have gotten mixed results using CPUz. You may want to try speccy but on my laptop running W7 I could not use the newest version I had to use and older version and I used 1.01.132 or you may wan to try sisoft. Are you just looking for a laundry list of what you have or do you want real time monitoring?

Hope this helps, Mike

 

[BennyF]

Good evening BennyF and welcome back

     On some systems I have gotten mixed results using CPUz. You may want to try speccy but on my laptop running W7 I could not use the newest version I had to use and older version and I used 1.01.132 or you may wan to try sisoft. Are you just looking for a laundry list of what you have or do you want real time monitoring?

Hope this helps, Mike

 

Well, Basically it's not just CPU-Z, GTA IV is also showing them both together as 2Gb total when it should be 6GB so i don't think it's a fault in CPU-Z

[hartbeatmr]

Hello again

This may help you this seems to eb an issue in the game http://support.rockstargames.com/entries/20069778-issues-with-gta-iv-showing-video-cards-with-over-2gb-as-under-spec

Worth a shot, Mike

[BennyF]

Hello again

This may help you this seems to eb an issue in the game http://support.rockstargames.com/entries/20069778-issues-with-gta-iv-showing-video-cards-with-over-2gb-as-under-spec

Worth a shot, Mike

Did that, But liturally everything is registering both cards as 1GB, just did a 3DMARK test and it read it as a 1GB card as well

[hartbeatmr]

Good evening BennyF

I think I found out was is going on your cards are not supported in sli mode here is the link http://www.asrock.com/mb/vga.asp?Model=X79%20Extreme9&c=2

This is why this is driving us nuts.

Sorry Mike

[BennyF]

Good evening BennyF

I think I found out was is going on your cards are not supported in sli mode here is the link http://www.asrock.com/mb/vga.asp?Model=X79%20Extreme9&c=2

This is why this is driving us nuts.

Sorry Mike

I Don't think that's it as I disconnected both cards and tested them 1 at a time and they still showed as 1GB cards each.

On a side note, DXDiag is reporting them as 1670MB Cards, GPU-Z is reporting them correctly as 3072MB Cards, Catalyst is reporting them correctly as 3072MB Cards.

I'v contacted Sapphiretech so hopefully they can tell me. God I hope it's not the motherboard because I researched it quite hard and found people running 7850 Crossfire setups so i figured a 7950 would be fine on it. You'd think a $380 motherboard would support all GPU's.

[BennyF]

Sorry for double post, above post won't let me edit it.

Just did a 1280x720 test on 3DMark and it would appear my system is actually out doing a lot of the systems on youtube. From Motherboardsorg Sapphire and XFX 7950 benchmark tests they got 12075 and I got 13170.

So now my question changes, could it really be my GPU's affecting my Gameplay FPS? Because from these Benchmark tests it appears my GPU's are actually running better then they should. Perhaps it's because DXDiag are showing them as 1670MB cards, I believe games would read my GPU memory off the same place DXDiag does right?

[hartbeatmr]

Good morning BennyF

    Well MS does have a update for DXDiag it can't hurt to try it http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35 or maybe Sapphire has BIOS update for the video cards? Something has to be doing it. I honestly do not know if W7 uses DXdiag or uses the 64 bit version to tell the game what your hardware is or not.

     Did you check dxdiag 64 bit and see what it says? Just in-case you don't know where it is just run dxdaig as normal and when it opens look for a button on the bottom for 64 bit.

Mike

[BennyF]

It says 1670MB as well.

It would appear they are performing really well in some games (160+FPS in DiRT3 with ALL max settings including AA) but not so great in others (32FPS in Ghost Recon Online High Settings, 40FPS in GTA IV Maximum)

The Frame rates are improving without anything being changed it's just confusing me what is causing this. The real test will be what they hit in BF3 after I reinstall it as I know exactly what they're meant to hit on BF3.

[patio]

Possible flakey PSU...

[Calum]

Have you tried the graphics cards individually?
Also, check your BIOS for any memory remapping or memory hole options.
Is the full 16GB of system memory showing under Computer Properties?  How about in CPU-Z?

[BennyF]

Hey guys, I worked out that for almost everybody the 7950's are showing as 1Gb cards but performing as 3Gb cards. After a quick tweak (Actually lowered the OC editions from 950 to 925MHz) they're hitting 150 frames in BF3, (110-120 during heavy Multiplayer battles). 160FPS in DiRT3, 157FPS in Shift 2 and 182FPS in NFS The Run, and the ultimate test, 703FPS in Minecraft xD

Still a little baffled why GTA IV seems to only run 60FPS no matter what I do.

[patio]

Probably a limit of the game itself...