Crossfire and GPU BIOS version

[Safa246]

I have recently installed a second Sapphire 7850 OC GPU (Thanks Father Christmas for this "essential maintenance upgrade") and notice that the cards have different bios versions (015.017.000.001.000000 and 015.022.000.001.000000). Should I flash the older card to the later version?

I have read a number of reports on the internet about people bricking their GPUs by doing this. I assume I would use ATIFlash to do it. Any advice gratefully received. The cards look a little bit different - different plastic fittings and the coolers are slightly different, but I cant obviously tell whether there are more substantial differences under the skin.

(BTW these two cards STILL wont run BF3 in ultra mode - in the only hour I have managed to play since installing the second one fps dropped to less than 40 when the action heated up. Damn, future upgrade needed! Never managed more than medium settings with one card, though)

[Gisse]

What CPU you have?

[FluggerNO]

Did u enable crossfire in the amd vision ecc program?.
The bios dosent matter.
In the ecc program u can set the cards to the same MHz speed.
Also download crossfire settings from amd.

[Safa246]

My CPU is a i5-2500K, not overclocked.

I have enabled crossfire in Sapphire's ATI Catalyst program, and GPUID reports that crossfire is enabled. My fps on my old medium settings went up from about 60ish to about 110ish after adding the second card (altho that was a VERY short unscientific test).

I haven't downloaded any crossfire settings - do you have a link for where I could find that?

Thanks for your help.

Regards
Ken

[FluggerNO]

http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/pages/crossfirex-app-profiles.aspx

[Burning]

Should work just fine.
Also play in high , not ultra.
The difference is hardly noticable unless you plan on sightseeing for 3 hours.

And the framerate difference is quite big. Also turning down Anti aliasing helps. you don't need 8x on a 1080p Monitor.
FPS > Graphics , always :)

[Shadowfox]

I'm running an i5-2500k @ 4.6Ghz (you should do this too, but not with the stock-cooler) and I have 2x ASUS HD7850 in crossfire aswell. You should turn off most of the 'filters' to increase the performance without losing too much detail.
Battlefield Settings:
http://i.imgur.com/FKv62.jpg
* Fullscreen: OFF is because I windowed it for the screenshot, I play in fullscreen though.
* Protip: Turn colorblind mode ON! Only reason it's not on for me is because I just reinstalled my PC (and battlefield)

My FPS: 60~80 in open maps (caspian, damavand, ...); 80~100 in small maps (metro, bazaar, ...)

[Caveman]

Install 12.11 beta 11 ÂÂ*

http://www2.ati.com/drivers/beta/AMD_Catalyst_12.11_Beta11_NET4.exe

and install 12.11 cap2 profiles

http://www2.ati.com/drivers/hotfix/catalyst_application_profiles/AMD_Catalyst_12.11_CAP2.exe

And you have the best drivers out there for the 7000 series cards.

[Safa246]

Any thoughts about flashing the BIOS's to make them the same? Flugger says don't bother but I wonder whether there might be inconsistencies between them that might cause problems...

Thanks for all your advice so far - much appreciated ÂÂ*- Catalyst updated to the latest, profiles added, BF3 setting changed, almost ready to go - will need to think about adding some CPU cooling next month so that I can overclock a bit - thoughts on this? Closed loop water versus air? Recommended kit? (not wanting to spend a fortune and in the past I have relied heavily on the recommendations from Toms Hardware - who the hell is Tom anyway?)

Regards
Ken

[Burning]

Any thoughts about flashing the BIOS's to make them the same? Flugger says don't bother but I wonder whether there might be inconsistencies between them that might cause problems...

Thanks for all your advice so far - much appreciated Â*- Catalyst updated to the latest, profiles added, BF3 setting changed, almost ready to go - will need to think about adding some CPU cooling next month so that I can overclock a bit - thoughts on this? Closed loop water versus air? Recommended kit? (not wanting to spend a fortune and in the past I have relied heavily on the recommendations from Toms Hardware - who the hell is Tom anyway?)

Regards
Ken

I got a 2500K at stock temp atm.
The new Cooler Master Hyper 412S seems to be EXCELLENT and fairly low priced. You should be able to get to 4.2 ghz easily with that.
I ran mine 55-66 degrees on 4.0ghz with a 23 euro Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo.

[Caveman]

I would not bother flashing the bios. It is really easy to brick a videocard by flashing wrong bios.
And they don't have a second bios to rely on if it would go wrong like most of the motherboards have these days.

Did you installed the drivers i posted?

[Shadowfox]

Any thoughts about flashing the BIOS's to make them the same? Flugger says don't bother but I wonder whether there might be inconsistencies between them that might cause problems...

Thanks for all your advice so far - much appreciated Â*- Catalyst updated to the latest, profiles added, BF3 setting changed, almost ready to go - will need to think about adding some CPU cooling next month so that I can overclock a bit - thoughts on this? Closed loop water versus air? Recommended kit? (not wanting to spend a fortune and in the past I have relied heavily on the recommendations from Toms Hardware - who the hell is Tom anyway?)

Regards
Ken
I'm using a Scythe Mugen 3.

[Safa246]

Yeah, thanks Cave, CCC and cap profiles loaded, althoUgh I am not really sure what to do with the profiles - I went and selected BF3 in CCC but don't know if it worked correctly.

Set up with Shadows settings and went and ran around a battlefield for a few minutes last night - it all looked pretty good and fps was 60 to 80. It does look a little bit more cartoony or precise than it did before - that's probably the higher settings creating more clarity but it will take a bit of getting used to. The family are out all day Saturday watching Les Miserables and shopping so I will have a full day to play in peace and quiet. Yay!

[FluggerNO]

Did take a look at the bios versjons.
The 022 versjon is the OC - Version of the card.
So the only difference is that one card is running 60MHz and 0,2GHz fatser then the other card.
This settings u can change under the AMD VISION program.

[Safa246]

Added a Corsair H80i sealed water loop this weekend - turned out to be a lot more effort than anticipated, as I needed to remove my motherboard to get the supporting bracket in place - even though my case has a cut out, it wasn't quite in the right place. Then it wouldn't boot - memory in the wrong slots, then some very nasty pink lines on the screen when in crossfire which was corrected by swapping the gpu's into different slots. All looking very neat and tidy now, although my ssd isn't working at full speed according to windows experience! Not sure what to do with this yet! Did a quick overclock with the tool that came with my asus mobo and it got to 4.3 no problems. More tweaking required. Also can't work out how to upgrade my bios - the auto tool just doesn't work. &£)(:;, why is this so complicated!

[Burning]

Seems like you luckly only got easy fix issues :D

As for SSD.
Test it with programm like HDtune. And is it connected to a Sata 6 port instead of a Sata 3?

What motherboard do you have?

[Caveman]

Indeed make sure it is connected to a SATA6 port.

And if you haven't done this yet install this driver.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst132BetaDriver.aspx

[Gisse]

Oh man, i see that you done that easy.

Just to know you didn't have problems, all went good :)

[Safa246]

Asus p6p67 - neither the bios based updater or the windows one seems to work correctly. My bios is dated 11/2011 so I assume it could do with an update but when I downloaded a later version from the asus website the updater wouldn't recognise it as a valid bios package

My ssd is connected to a sata6 port, although I will check that again tonight. I'm wondering whether Windows Experience just doesn't recognise my ssd as the primary drive, because all my docs are on a secondary slower mechanical drive. More to figure out!

Always updating to the latest driver that you post - thanks Caveman

Time to try to figure out this overclocking stuff during the week, I hope. Not sure i am patient enough for it though...

[0daro0]

try USB ? or Old Floppy drive :D.

[Safa246]

Quick update - managed to update my motherboard bios using usb stick - all worked very well (thanks Odao0), checked that SSD is in fact working correctly by using HD Tune (thanks Burning), catalyst running latest version (thanks Caveman), new cooling system working perfectly although it is a bit nosier than the stock fan used to be. Running the standard ASUS overclock at the moment (4.4ghz I think) but will try to up that a bit next weekend. So far my FPS seems much improved and BF3 running smoothly (thanks Shadowfox). And my case now looks super tidy (in my opinion any way) so all in all a success...

KD no better though... ÂÂ*:(