REALLY HOT Radeon 6870 in Crossfire

[Pearlallica]

I have two 6870's, so last night I thought I'd merge them into the same system and see what kind of performance increases crossfire would yeild. I have a full tower case with about 9 or 10 fans. A single 6870 is about 50C when idle. When I go crossfire, the cards are incredibly close to one another - so much so that I had to put a little piece of cardboard in between just so that the top card's fan wouldn't snag the bottom card! So as I was saying, in crossfire, the top card hits 90C without the little piece of cardboard, and 80C with the cardboard -idle. Not good! I bought Battlefield2 from steam, used high settings, the fans power up, temps spike in the 90s on the top card, and then the game crashes. BTW, the PSU is CorsairTX 750W. Not sure that has any bearing. It is crossfire certified... But the crash brings about a catalyst driver error. This is unacceptable performance for such a high price rig. Any ideas what the deal is?

 

[iam2thecrowe]

there is no deal, its just your motherboard has the pcie slots too close together for the cards you want to use. The only thing you can do is either, buy single slot cards, or a faster single card, or get another motherboard that has larger spacing between cards.

 

[Pearlallica]

lol - that is truly pathetic. I buy a 3-way SLI/crossfire EVGA board at the higher end and that's what I get? ouch, ouch, ouch.

I tried placing the bottom card in the third slot making for a greater gap, however it means my power/reset/hdd-led/etc. switches are in the way for the card to be fully seated. That is just unbelievably pathetic...

Thanks for the reply, anyways.

 

[Pearlallica]

Best answer selected by Pearlallica.

 

[bystander]

lol - that is truly pathetic. I buy a 3-way SLI/crossfire EVGA board at the higher end and that's what I get? ouch, ouch, ouch.

I tried placing the bottom card in the third slot making for a greater gap, however it means my power/reset/hdd-led/etc. switches are in the way for the card to be fully seated. That is just unbelievably pathetic...

Thanks for the reply, anyways.

I do this, and while the plugs are there, the wires can still bend down enough to allow the other card to seat. Are you sure you can't do the same? Obviously the motherboard was designed to allows that slot to be used.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

you could always take the side cover off and have a household fan blowing directly on the cards...not very practicle, but it will work. That or watercooling.

 

[Pearlallica]

I do this, and while the plugs are there, the wires can still bend down enough to allow the other card to seat. Are you sure you can't do the same? Obviously the motherboard was designed to allows that slot to be used.

Got it! Had to pull a few wires out and some pci cards that I could live without. Managed to access the third slot. Top card is running 57C idle and bottom at 42C idle. Big difference!!!

I couldn't get to it right away as I was waiting for an SSD drive to arrive and do a full software reinstall. Going to do some benchmarks and see if these temps stabilize for real.