Problem with CrossfireX and Steam Games

[Lanzeloot]

Hi,

I can't get my crossfire setup to work with any steam game...
I tried on Skyrim, just cause 2, battlefront 2, portal 2 and borderlands 2...
Every time i start the game, it starts to flicker like hell and crash or bluescreen with thread stuck in driver device... i have crimson 15.3, crimson 16.1 don't work at all (causes many probs).
Everything works properly when turning off crossfire. Temps are all on a good level (GPU max 71°C(158 °F), CPU 30°C(86 °F).

Crossfire runs perfectly on Non-Steam games like Crysis 3 and Benchmarks (Unigine Heaven).
I think it could be due to directx 9 programms..

Any Ideas?

Specs:
AMD FX-8320
Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB
asrock 970 Extreme 4
2x Gigabyte R9 280x
Corsair AX750 PSU
Fresh installed Windows 8.1
No overclock.

[Septevar]

i take it your drivers are upto date?

[Lanzeloot]

Yes, all fresh downloaded except of crimson but i tried 16.1 as well but it just made everything worse, so i reinstalled windows and installed 15.3 again. What makes me a bit suspicious is that there are no chipset driver for the mainboard but apparently they're not necessary...

[76561198258988800]

The AMD 970 chipset motherboard definitely requires chipset drivers to operate correctly.

[Lanzeloot]

There is no chipset driver on the official asrock site.. only HDD, audio and network.

[76561198258988800]

ASRock make the motherboard, not the 970 chipset on it.

[Lanzeloot]

Ah my bad.. I found it. But can this be the reason, crossfire doesn't work at any steam game?

[76561198258988800]

CrossfireX works fine on thousands of Steam games.

The problem is isolated to your PC.

[Lanzeloot]

ah crap.. i might have known it. I've no idea what it could be.. but i don't think it's a prob with hardware because it runs well on the other programs. I think of driver issues or something like a wrong selected option.. Are there any settings in steam?

[Beardface31]

Try another crossfire bridge if you can

[Lanzeloot]

Yes i can but it works fine on non-steam programs...

[[☥] - CJ -]

Could be a faulty XFire bridge
You can try reseating the GPUs and connecting the bridge again.

dunno..

If it comes down to it, try a clean driver install with DDU, see if that has any effect.

[Beardface31]

Originally posted by SirCBO:

Yes i can but it works fine on non-steam programs...

I agree it is odd you're only experiencing this with Steam games, but it is worth a shot.

I could be wrong but this may be an issue with the Steam client. Reinstalling Steam or refreshing the files would be worth the try.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3134-TIAL-4638

Attempting the solutions in this link may be helpful:

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7169-TIAV-5361

Good luck

[Lanzeloot]

Okay i'll try it with another Bridge and reinstall drivers later on. Is there a possibility to test the grafic cards (grafic ram) except of benchmarking or is there any software/drivers especially for cf-systems?

I'll give you feedback if it works or not..

Tried with no success:
- Install Chipset Driver (was already installed with grafic driver)
- Update BIOS
- Refresh / Reinstall Steam

Remaining:
- Install all windows updates
- Change Bridge

[Lanzeloot]

Okay i think i found the problem...

1. It only occures on dx9 games. I switched unigine heaven to dx9 mode and it crashes.

2. It's a problem with the pcie x8 lane on my mobo... apparently the 280x CF setup needs two x16 lanes to work entirely (Correct me if i'm wrong)
-> This guy has the same issues:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2910201/280x-crossfire-problems-black-screen-flickering-bottleneck-issue.html

If someone knows another resolution i'd be very happy otherwise i'll save up for a new board and meanwhile i have to turn crossfire off everytime i want to start games with dx9..

Thanks for your help!!

[Lanzeloot]

Finally it works!!
But i can't say what has caused the Problem... I changed some things.
I'll list them maybe someone has the same issues and can use this for solving:

- Installed all Windows Updates
- Changed the slot of the two graphic cards
- Updated VBIOS of them both (Be carefull with this step it can cause a brick of the cards!!)
- Changed heatsink paste and cleaned the pads for the VRAM
- Use one X-fire bridge on first connector (the one near videoconnections)
- Reinstalled everything (Windows 8.1, graphic and mainboard driver, steam ect.)
- Tested each graphic cards in "single mode" with benchmark and artifact test
- Cleaned connections of the pci slot and the cards