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Question for those versed in 5000 series Xfire

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Rattle

Member
Joined
May 12, 2005
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Home... again
I had 4870 and 4890 Xfire so I thought I knew my way around the various quirks and things. All in all as a gamer crossfire was always awesome for me.

Today I nabbed a 2nd 5850, aside from the 10.3a driver being complete trash with 1 card or 2, I am loving it on the original 10.3 preview driver.

I have this weirdness though, almost seems like a new ATI Xfire power feature but I cant be sure, does the same on 10.2 and both 10.3 drivers.

Second card when not in a 3d app/game sits in a state of sleep almost... it is in 400/900 clock state using min .950 volts says everything that can read it. When I launch a game it comes right up with clocks and 3d volts and fan speed I set. When Idle though it does this. Is this what its supposed to be doing? my second 4870/4890 never behaved this way. Again once I launch a game it jumps into 3d mode and fan goes to 40% so it works correctly, i just never seen this before.
 

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If so that's great. No need to waste electricity idling an unused card. That was one of my concerns with xfire. Using massive power at all times.
 
actually its *** backwards, the driver is telling me the card is sleeping but every other program shows me its actually at 400/900 instead of 157/300 like the other card is....

its pointless, its actually running a higher clock at .950 2d volts than the 1st card, they just dont show you that, apparently this is new and I got some feedback from 1 person so far with a 5000 series CF setup. Really doesnt cause any problems but it doesnt do anything either aside from make people think their CF setup is fubar AND taking away all functionality of the 2nd card in overdrive while its IDLE. good job driver team.
 
OK UPDATE

for anyone that cares

I noticed while looking at GPUZ and wondering how in the hell 400/900 clocks and all 0's in overdrive for second card is a power saving feature compared to 157/300 on card one, I noticed that GPUZ that was reading second card said "ULPS ACTIVE"

AHA ! I said aloud, using my mad google skills I google "ULPS ATI CROSSFIRE"

Since 10.2 they changed things apparently. ULPS is ultra low power state, actually its the appearance of as far as I am concerned. So anyway EnableUlps in registry has been changed from 1 to 0, now overdrive for card 2 idles and reports everything as it should at 157/300 .950v instead of SAYING 0 for everything but actually sitting at 400/900 clocks and using .950v

How in gods name thats power saving is beyond me... anyway aside from this stupidity CF has been kicking *** for me !
 
I am thinking of picking up another 5850 for Crossfire. Have you done much overclocking yet on your 2 cards? I had 2 4770's in Crossfire but could never get the 2nd card to overclock like the first card. I was using the Asus overclock tool, can't remember the name now. I have had great success with, MSI Afterburner. I am currently stable at 1000ghz core and 1200 mem. I want to be able to hit that on a second card but didn't know if both cards would overclock well in Crossfire.
 
i try not to use any 3rd party apps, afterburner is buggy for me always has been.
I test cards individually, stock 5850 volts is fine on both cards at 850/1200. If i want more juice I flash the 5870 bios from feb that gives 1.175 and then I can go 925/1300 or more on core without any 3rd party apps.
 
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