Card 1 stuck idling at 500MHz in 7950 Crossfire

In my rig I have HIS Ice Q 7950 Crossfire set up. Both cards are just alike. Last night I upgraded my driver to 14.9 from 14.4.

Today I played Borderlands 2 and everything ran fine. After I closed the game out, I noticed that my card in slot 1 would not drop down below 500MHz and the temp stays at 40c even with 0% activity. The second card drops to 300Mhz and 30c with 0% activity.

I just got a Asus 144Hz VG248 monitor. When I first got it, I couldn't even load up Borderlands without crashing. I tried dropped the settings down to 120Hz in Catalyst Control Center and Borderlands loaded and played just fine. My friend that works at NZXT suggested that I try using two crossfire bridges because one bridge may not be able to handle the 144hz bandwidth alone. Sure enough, Borderlands loaded up just fine at 144Hz.

I am not sure if the new monitor and second bridge has anything to do with the card's core clock being stuck at 500MHz. ::EDIT:: Removed the second bridge and restarted and still the same issue.....

I also tried overclocking to see how high it would go. I gradually got it up to 1325MHz and ran Valley View Benchmark on Ultra HD. After looking in afterburner...The first card set as main never went over 1200MHz, and the second card went up to 1325MHz.

Not sure if I should try and RMA, or if it is something that I can fix. I've tried rolling back drivers, uninstalling and reinstalling afterburner. Setting clocks to defaults. Don't know what else I should do.

Temps have been in check never going over 52c.

Any help or input would be appreciated.

Hmmmm..I tried down clocking the monitor to 120Hz and the core clock dropped back down. Looks like it has something to do with the monitor being 144Hz.

Did you "disable ULPS" in Afterburner?


And this in CCC>crossfire.

Yes, I disabled ULPS in Afterburner and had crossfire turned on.

If ULPS wasn't disabled, the second card would not show any activity at all. My second card runs fine. Actually both cards were running fine.

I just noticed that when I shut Borderlands 2 down, the card seemed to be stuck and wouldn't go into power saving mode. Lowest it would go is 501MHz.

I went as far as to reflash the BIOS and nothing seemed to kick it from 501MHz. It will go up, but usually in power saving mode it goes down to 300MHz.

Could having a 144Hz monitor require the card to work harder during even basic processes, and the being why it will not go down to 300MHz?

This morning I installed a Beta Program called Strobelight supposedly making 3D gaming on certain monitors require lighter loads. After I installed this, my GPU went down to 300MHz.

The only catch is now in CCC my maximum reported refresh rate is 121Hz and I have a 144Hz monitor.

So now I am not sure if it is a GPU issue, Driver issue, or monitor issue.