Crossfire Two Identical Radeon R7 250 Graphics Cards

[GunmetalGod]

First off just let me say hello as I'm new around here. Thanks in advance for any assistance as well.


My system:

Motherboard: MSI A75MA-G55
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APU: AMD A6-3650 (2.6 GHz, 4 cores, 512 MB VRAM)
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RAM: 16 GB Dual Channel DDR3 (4, 4GB Sticks)

OS: Windows 7 64 Bit

Power Supply Unit: ATX TL 500 Watt (Not sure what its efficiency rating is)

I have two of these graphics cards installed: R7-250A-CLF4
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My Question:

I have already perused this site quite a bit and have been trying to figure this out for awhile, but I haven't found a definitive answer. I further realize that the general opinion on this site seems to be to not crossfire two low end cards and that this card has been specifically mentioned in such related threads. In my case, however, I bought my system on a budget initially with no discrete graphics card and have been slowly upgrading it as I acquire the funds. So I already had one of these cards and when I wasn't able to set up Dual Graphics with my APU I thought I would wait and buy another to see if I could Crossfire them as it appeared that my Motherboard and this particular card are Crossfire compatible. I also found a chart that seemed to indicate that it is best to Crossfire two cards that are of the same chipset. These are two identical cards. The system appears to be running fine and I have dual monitors set up and everything seems cool, except that the option for Crossfire does not appear in Catalyst Control Center. I know I must be doing something wrong, and this is a learning process, but I can't, for the life of me, figure out what's up. Mainly I would like to know if I can enable Crossfire with this setup and, if so, how to proceed.

Thanks again, and please let me know if I need to provide anymore information.

 

[clutchc]

I don't think you will find CF with those low end cards to be to your liking. Especially considering the 2nd PCIe x16 slot is only x4 lanes electrically on your motherboard. However, if you want to go that route...
Uninstall the gfx driver first. Then install the 2nd card. Install the bridge. Then boot to Win and install the driver again. If CCC doesn't automatically offer to enable CF, go to CCC and do it manually.

 

[Quixit]

If the Crossfire option isn't showing up you need to remove the GPU drivers, restart and then reinstall them. 250 cards don't have crossfire bridges so it should just work without them.

It's a shame you bought that card, next time I recommend you sell your GPU on eBay and pick up one better one. Dual GPU setups only really makes sense at the top end because unless you're getting > refresh rate in frame rate it's not going to be very smooth.

 

[GunmetalGod]

I don't think you will find CF with those low end cards to be to your liking. Especially considering the 2nd PCIe x16 slot is only x4 lanes electrically on your motherboard. However, if you want to go that route...
Uninstall the gfx driver first. Then install the 2nd card. Install the bridge. Then boot to Win and install the driver again. If CCC doesn't automatically offer to enable CF, go to CCC and do it manually.

Thanks for responding, but I'm a bit confused as, according to the chart at this link: [http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Crossfire-Chart.aspx] I do not require a bridge to crossfire these cards. So do you then advise that I simply uninstall CCC and the second card, reinstall the second card, and then boot up and reinstall CCC?

Also I appreciate and sincerely note your initial concern/recommendation.

 

[GunmetalGod]

If the Crossfire option isn't showing up you need to remove the GPU drivers, restart and then reinstall them. 250 cards don't have crossfire bridges so it should just work without them.

It's a shame you bought that card, next time I recommend you sell your GPU on eBay and pick up one better one. Dual GPU setups only really makes sense at the top end because unless you're getting > refresh rate in frame rate it's not going to be very smooth.

By GPU drivers I assume you mean CCC? Also yeah I'm beginning to feel like maybe I should've just waited and saved up for something else and a new power supply, but oh well. I still want to try Crossfire at least once though just to check it out and see for myself whether it will work for me. Thanks for responding by the way.

 

[clutchc]

I don't think you will find CF with those low end cards to be to your liking. Especially considering the 2nd PCIe x16 slot is only x4 lanes electrically on your motherboard. However, if you want to go that route...
Uninstall the gfx driver first. Then install the 2nd card. Install the bridge. Then boot to Win and install the driver again. If CCC doesn't automatically offer to enable CF, go to CCC and do it manually.

Thanks for responding, but I'm a bit confused as, according to the chart at this link: [http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Crossfire-Chart.aspx] I do not require a bridge to crossfire these cards. So do you then advise that I simply uninstall CCC and the second card, reinstall the second card, and then boot up and reinstall CCC?

Also I appreciate and sincerely note your initial concern/recommendation.

You're correct. I forgot that low end card doesn't require the bridge, nor have the edge connector for one. Yes, just ignore the part about the bridge.

 

[GunmetalGod]

So I uninstalled CCC, rebooted, reinstalled CCC, rebooted, and...nothing.

I also removed and reinstalled both graphics cards, and...nothing.

I'm about ready to quit troubleshooting this...I don't know. Crossfire, as far as I can tell, is still not showing up as an option in Catalyst Control Center. As before under Information>Product Summary>Hardware, both cards appear to be enabled. Under Performance I have only Clock Controls and It doesn't appear to be under Gaming either. Thanks to everybody for helping though, and if you have anymore ideas let me know.

 

[clutchc]

So I uninstalled CCC, rebooted, reinstalled CCC, rebooted, and...nothing.

I also removed and reinstalled both graphics cards, and...nothing.

I'm about ready to quit troubleshooting this...I don't know. Crossfire, as far as I can tell, is still not showing up as an option in Catalyst Control Center. As before under Information>Product Summary>Hardware, both cards appear to be enabled. Under Performance I have only Clock Controls and It doesn't appear to be under Gaming either. Thanks to everybody for helping though, and if you have anymore ideas let me know.

Odd. Do you have the monitor connected to the top most card, the one in the first PCIex16 slot? Have you verified that the 2nd card does work?

 

[GunmetalGod]

I have two, apparently identical, blue PCI slots (although from my Motherboard datasheet it looks like there is some kind of difference), and each slot has one of the graphics cards in it. I have two monitors, connected via HDMI to the two graphics cards; one for each card, and they both display just fine. Is it possible that Crossfire is somehow automatically enabled in CCC Omega 14.12 and there just isn't going to be an option?

 

[clutchc]

I haven't used CF since the Omega drivers, so I can't say for sure. But I would doubt they would make that kind of change and not notify us of it.
Try this. Shut down, unplug the 2nd monitor and plug in only the main display to the first card. (PCIe x16 slot closest to the CPU.)
Boot up and run Furmark: http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/
Just run the default "GPU benchmark preset" at whichever resolution you have; 1080p or 720p. We aren't going to run it for the benchmark, I just want to know if the temp graph shows 2 cards and both increase in temp showing they are working together. You don't have to let it run to its completion. Just long enough to know both cards are working and their temps increase somewhat together.

 

[clutchc]

And if I remember correctly, you are suppose to connect both monitors to the card in the 1st slot when using a 2nd monitor.

 

[GunmetalGod]

How would I connect what are essentially two tvs with HDMI to one graphics card? It has only one HDMI port. Even if they were another type of monitor I don't understand how one would accomplish that since each graphics card only has one HDMI port.

As far as benchmarking goes though, your hunch was correct. One card was completely active and the other was completely inactive. I have also contacted AMD about this and am in the process of getting more info from them. Probably won't hear back till tomorrow though.

I don't know if it matters, but FurMark labeled the active graphics card as number 2 and the inactive one was number one. Also for some reason CCC labels my displays the reverse of what seems natural with number 2 being plugged into the topmost graphics card and number 1 the bottommost graphics card. This is when the computer is oriented upright of course.

I'm going to completely remove the bottommost card and boot up and stress test again to see what happens.

Thanks again by the way for your help, clutchc, and for your time.

 

[clutchc]

That may be your problem. When CF is enabled, the 2nd card's video ports are disabled. The reverse I believe is also true. If you install the driver with a monitor connected to each card, I believe CF will not be enabled.

If you are willing to go thru the uninstall/install again for the driver/CCC, you can test it by leaving the 2nd monitor disconnected. Shut down and install BOTH cards. Just use the main monitor connected to the main card in the 1st slot. Boot up install the driver again, and run furmark. See if both cards are now active.

 

[GunmetalGod]

That may be your problem. When CF is enabled, the 2nd card's video ports are disabled. The reverse I believe is also true. If you install the driver with a monitor connected to each card, I believe CF will not be enabled.

If you are willing to go thru the uninstall/install again for the driver/CCC, you can test it by leaving the 2nd monitor disconnected. Shut down and install BOTH cards. Just use the main monitor connected to the main card in the 1st slot. Boot up install the driver again, and run furmark. See if both cards are now active.

You may be right, but I just heard back from AMD and it looks like, even though both cards and mobo are listed as Crossfire compatible, because the VBIOS are different on the two cards Crossfire won't work. They have to be exactly the same according to AMD. Also it appears that because, apparently one of the two PCIe slots is only x4 (They look the same honestly and this info was not clear on the datasheet) Crossfire is not possible because they need to both be at least x8. So it's looking like this is not going to happen with my current configuration. It's all good I guess though. Thanks to Quixit for his helpful reply, and thanks clutchc as well for his numerous responses. Pending a last response from AMD tech support I'm about ready to call this finished. At least for me.

 

[Tommygzy]

I know im late in responding here, but, after upgrading to a new set up, I had two old r7250s and all you have to do is turn everything of, install both graphics cards,"sacrifice" one monitor for the time being,hook one monitor to the card closest to the CPU and open CCC and crossfire option will be right the in the options list, then If your still going down this road get and adapter or something to hook the second monitor up, to use crossfire, you must run all monitors from the top card, otherwise its one card per display with no benefit to your system besides the extra screen. sell both cards,and that should get you close to to something with at least 2gb-ddr5-128bit or better.