Sapphire 5970 Crossfire issues

[Violet_Shift]

Hi,

I'm posting this here because I've been looking for advice all over the Internet, and can't seem to find anything specific to my problem.

I'm using a stock Sapphire 5970 @ 725MHz core clocks (I don't have the OC version in other words), and I'm having some strange problems with Crossfire.

In certain games, namely Crysis 2 and Skyrim, playing with Crossfire enabled will cause the screen to flicker - the brightness will rapidly fluctuate, and it feels like I'm staring into a strobe light. Disabling Crossfire will fix this problem, but now that I'm trying to run Skyrim with a suite of post-processing mods, I could really do with the extra performance from my card's second chip (Performance is nice with CF enabled, but the flickering makes the game unplayable, without CF, performance is slow - using SSAO/DDoF mods).

I've hunted around the Internet for fixes to no avail, and a friend of mine has suggested there are problems with the Sapphire 5970's stock BIOS. I've searched around for updates, and I can only find those for the OC version, so I'm not even going to try those lest I brick my card. I'm not exactly comfortable with flashing the BIOS, but if I had a step-by-step walkthrough, I'd probably do it.

I'm using the most recent WHQL drivers, and I've uninstalled all the CAPs (they didn't help).

I'm sorry for asking this sort of idiotic question if it's been asked before, but I'm not exactly well-versed with hardware.

 

[Mjolnir]

It's not idiotic at all..

Honestly; the HD 5970 is a pain of a card.. It's one of those 'oh... that card' kind of card. Always has issues with enabling its internal xfire for a lot of games.. Some more than others; but eh. Have you done a CLEAN install of the drivers? Like, uninstalled completely, restart, then reinstalled?

Also; whilst not necessarily ideal.. Do you still have the driver CD it came with? Try that driver set.. It's older; but if all else fails; perhaps and older driver could gain you some stability.

 

[Violet_Shift]

Yeah, I've had no end of problems with the blasted thing. I've had issues in Deus Ex 3 and a few other games as well. Never again will I buy a dual-chip card; seems they're more hassle than they're worth.

Anyway, I uninstalled the drivers, ran driver sweeper in safe mode, reinstalled, and the same issue rears its ugly head. Honestly, it feels like I only got half the GPU that I paid for. >_<

Not sure I've got the original CD; I never bother with those usually.