Im pairing an IceQ 5 Turbo with my XFX XXX Edition 5770

[INeedSomeAdvice]

Yesterday I ordered a HIS IceQ 5 Turbo HD 5770 to Crossfire with my XFX XXX Edition HD 5770. I would have ordered another XXX edition but could find none in stock anywhere, and am not brave enough to purchase used electronics. The peoples' thoughts and opinions are welcome........

 

[INeedSomeAdvice]

ETA on the IceQ 5 Turbo is Friday. I'd be glad to give my results.


AMD 965 BE // ASUS M4A78T-E Mobo // 2x2gb Dominator-GT 1600 // TX850w PSU

On a side note I've been thinking about ordering the Corsair H50 CPU cooler, any thoughts on that would be nice.

 

[erdinger]

The two cards should work flawlessly, make sure that both cards have the same clocks otherwise overclock the slower one to the speed of the faster one to get best performance.

The Corsair H50 is a great cooler, still if you have enough space in your case a big air cooler (Gelid Tranquillo/Prolimatech Megahalems) will provide nearly similar performance for less money.

Still if you like the Idea of water cooling your Cpu why not buy it? it doesn't cost that much after all.

Hope I could help you

 

[mactronix]

Should be fine, generally you wont need to touch the clocks the higher one will just down clock to match the lower one. I have no idea if overclocking up to the other one stops it but feel sure that it would have been mentioned on the hundreds of threads about it by now if it was a viable option. All i ever see is people being told what i have just said about the one down clocking.
Your main issue is do they both fit which i assume you have checked already (Double slot cooler on the His for sure). A quick google later and it looks like thats OK so i say you are good to go.

Mactronix

 

[INeedSomeAdvice]

The IceQ 5 arrives tomorrow, and I am becoming very anxious to try out this crossfire. (First time experience). And am worried about a couple things. 1. I'm sure adding this 2nd card will create more heat especially onto the XFX 5770 above it. Is this going to create an overheating issue? 2. The crossfire bridge is going to cover up a couple exhaust slits, which the XFX has plenty of, and a good fan, but i put my finger to the slits to be covered and they do exfoliate a lot of heat. I've read i can add thermal grease to my GPU's but i am not confident enough in my skills to go through the process of removing the case and heat sinks off the cards. Any thoughts or advice? I did consider putting the IceQ 5 in the top slot, but idk.

Im just a self taught dummy, with no qualifications.

Case is CoolerMaster 932 AMD LE. (I know a bit flashy)

 

[OvrClkr]

The IceQ 5 arrives tomorrow, and I am becoming very anxious to try out this crossfire. (First time experience). And am worried about a couple things. 1. I'm sure adding this 2nd card will create more heat especially onto the XFX 5770 above it. Is this going to create an overheating issue? 2. The crossfire bridge is going to cover up a couple exhaust slits, which the XFX has plenty of, and a good fan, but i put my finger to the slits to be covered and they do exfoliate a lot of heat. I've read i can add thermal grease to my GPU's but i am not confident enough in my skills to go through the process of removing the case and heat sinks off the cards. Any thoughts or advice? I did consider putting the IceQ 5 in the top slot, but idk.

Im just a self taught dummy, with no qualifications.

Case is CoolerMaster 932 AMD LE. (I know a bit flashy)

Can you post a link to your XFX 5770?

As far as the HIS goes it will barely increase the heat in your case since it exits all the hot air out of the rear and the fact that the 932 has good airflow with all fans on high. Now if your ambient temp is around 78/80F then yes the card will produce a bit more heat but nothing to be worried about, just make sure both cards stay under 80F. The 5770's run great in x-fire, mainly because they do not produce much heat (low-power draw).

Use Afterburner and create a fan curve to keep both cards nice n cool

http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm

 

[INeedSomeAdvice]

I would have went with another XFX, but they're out of stock everywhere i looked, except ebay, and I'm not brave enough to purchase used...heres the link.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150464&cm_re=hd-577a-zndc-_-14-150-464-_-Product

 

[OvrClkr]

You could have bought this model :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150447&nm_mc=OTC-pr1c3watch&cm_mmc=OTC-pr1c3watch-_-Video+Cards-_-XFX-_-14150447

They need to match

 

[INeedSomeAdvice]

So is the IceQ 5 not going to work with the XFX?

 

[INeedSomeAdvice]

Very pretty picture btw.

 

[INeedSomeAdvice]

AH, or did you mean ascetic value.

 

[OvrClkr]

of course it will work, I just wanted you to know that you have that option =)

 

[INeedSomeAdvice]

So far so good. Installed the card, plugged in the crossfire cable, and it booted right up. Installed the drivers automatically, and CCC activated crossfire mode. I am getting better fps in battlefield bad company 2. I feel the graphics have gotten better, but when I first resumed my game, i did get some screen flickers, but only at first, and about 20 minutes into playing the game crashed.(Max settings @ 1920x1080 with HBAO on). I've never experienced a game crash before with the single GPU, but I did have a chop in the gameplay once in a while and that seems to be gone. I haven't had a chance to slam it with more gaming yet but indeed plan to. Fallout 3 has better FPS as well now. So far very nice and the blue IceQ actually adds a nice colorful touch to the inside of the computer next to the red and black xfx card. Thankfully my ASUS mobo has blue noth and southbridge heatsinks.

On a quick different note, I cleaned and polished my CPU stock HSF as well as the CPU, and applied new thermal grease well I had my computer open, and so far under prime95 temps leveled at 61C @ max load (left on for 30 minutes). Before i was getting very unstable temps @ 70C+, and had me worried. I do have a procrastination problem =)

 

[INeedSomeAdvice]

The first major problems have just occured. I can no longer play my two Steam games. Modern Warfare 2, and Left 4 Dead 2. This is kind of a bite in the arse.


Left 4 Dead to finally ran fine after multiple attmepts to launch the game. It kept crashing on the first screen with a bald guy witha vavle in the back of his head.

MW2 still wont run. It launches but the menu screen freezes up every time, and I have to resort to task manager to close.


AMD help me please!

 

[INeedSomeAdvice]

Is there anything i could do to fix this other than disabling the crossfire?

 

[OvrClkr]

In some games you will always have issues, im not sure if there is a fix that actually lets you play both of those games in CF you might have to google it =)

You should be able to max out both of those games anyways with a single 5770 OC'ed. For now you might have to disable the CF depending on game.

 

[INeedSomeAdvice]

i tried disabling crossfire, and mw2 wont work, i took out my xfx card and mw2 wouldnt work on the Iceq. but works on the xfx card.......im very confused. but the iceq launched my other games...bfbc2, l4d2, fallout3


I uninstalled drivers in safe mode, reinstalled drivers/profiles. And went as far to reinstall mw2. All this after putting a new roof on my brothers barn =(


Side note, thank god for bud light....




Maybe I need to RMA the IceQ....although it works for the other games and in crossfire mode with the other games, the part that confuses me is the xfx alone single GPU will run the game, and if i disable crossfire in CCC, shouldnt that revert the XFX card back to the primary/only renderer?

 

[INeedSomeAdvice]

Ok, so far, ive figured out this, BFBC2 crashes randomly, usually only after 10+ minutes of gameplay, and back to MW2, I've gotten it to launch 3 times since I've crossfired on te 25. I'm leaning towards driver issues, but I am not sure. User interface feedback would be nice. Please help as MW2 is a game I love to play. So is bfbc2 but it usually doesnt crash unless ive played for an hour or 2, (most of the time)

 

[INeedSomeAdvice]

BFBC2 released a patch today, but still no luck with the random crashes. Sometimes I can run the game for hours, other times 10 minutes before the boom. MW2 seems to launch only when it wants to (usually after about 20+ attempts to run the game). L4D2 and Fallout 3 GOTY run beautifully though, and the crossfire seems to be working great. I still believe my issues are driver, and game software related, and hoping that future updates will solve these issues.

ASUS 23" @ 1920x1080

 

[OvrClkr]

My BC2 crashes to desktop with the new patch, and im only using 1 card. Wish I could revert back to the previous patch..

 

[INeedSomeAdvice]

Today I finally set down and uninstalled my 10.6 drivers, ran driver sweeper(first time using it, and wow it removed a lot), and ran ccleaner. Installed back to CCC 10.4, and so far everything is working great. Moder warfare 2 now launches perfectly. BFBC2 isn't crashing at all. And I bought Borderlands yesterday, and I was experiencing screen freezes about every 10 minutes which resulted in a task manager close. With 10.4 so far all of these problems have went away. Should have done the rollback to 10.4 sooner.

Im glad so finally have these problms fixed. Hopefully CCC 10.7 fixes the problems dealt with 10.5 and 10.6.

And thanks for everyones input and dealing with my noob knowledge.