CrossFireX Arrives: First Look at 3 and 4 GPUs in 2 Card Setups

Setting it Up …

We Had Issues

Our experience with the new 8.3 drivers and CrossFireX were not seamless. AMD has been working very to try and reproduce the install issues we had with no success so far. Multiple other AnandTech editors had no installation problems, but we feel that it's at least worth mentioning. We can also advise some steps to follow to avoid the issue. This may be an isolated incident, but here are some things you can do to never find out.

It does need to be noted that we only experienced major issues on the Skulltrail platform that we've been using for our graphics benchmarking lately. We've had multiple hardware and drivers installed and uninstalled over the past month or so. These factors certainly could have contributed to the problem and would also make finding the issue tough for AMD. It's always easier to start from a fresh install, but our readers (especially the ones interested in actually running CrossFireX and Skulltrail) will very likely be the ones who install and uninstall hardware and drivers most frequently. We think our usage model for this system could be fairly representative in this case.

The specific problem we ran into was a timeout during attempts to install the driver either through the Catalyst Install Manager or manually. Additionally, once we got the driver installed on one 3870X2, plugging in the second would cause a hard lock when windows tried to automatically find the driver for the second card. We suspect that this occurred because we had previously installed two 3870X2 cards and then removed one before installing the 8.3 catalyst driver. We aren't exactly sure of the cause and neither is AMD, but we can say that the fix for us was removing some non-present including display adapters (along with driver files) in safe mode. After rebooting a few times to let windows do its thing, we installed the driver and all was well.

How to Not Have Issues

To make sure this doesn't happen, when installing CrossFireX, here is what we suggest:

1. Install Vista SP1 (this is easier/better than installing the required hotfixes)
2. Uninstall old drivers first
3. Reboot and let windows install a standard VGA adapter (or cancel if prompted for drivers)
4. Power down and install the second (or additional two or three) cards
5. Boot and let windows finish finding new hardware
6. Reboot and let windows finish finding new hardware (if it needs to)
7. Install Catalyst 8.3 or higher

That should keep you safe, in our experience. It's a serious headache to fix the problems once they start, as simply uninstalling doesn't fix the issue.

How to Fix It (Spring Cleaning)

Just in case, here's what you'd need to do if you find the driver times out on install. Please be cautious with this procedure and do not remove any software devices, as they can be difficult to reinstall without reinstalling the OS.

1. Start up with only one card in the system
2. Uninstall ATI drivers through the control panel -> add/remove programs
3. Reboot into safe mode (press F8 at boot)
4. Open a command window with admin privileges
5. Run these commands from a command prompt:
   • set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
   • start devmgmt.msc
6. Enable show hidden devices
7. Uninstall all display adapters listed (present or non-present/hidden - they appear slightly faded); make sure to check the box to remove driver files if possible
8. Uninstall any non-present/hidden "PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge" devices from system devices. It may also help to uninstall other non-present hardware, but be careful about software and non plug-and-play devices (don't remove them).
9. Reboot normally
10. Let windows finish finding new hardware
11. Power down and plug in all new hardware
12. Boot and let windows finish finding new hardware
13. Reboot and let windows finish finding new hardware (if it needs to)
14. Install Catalyst 8.3 or higher

As we said, it's best to follow the first set of directions as it's quite a bit less involved. If all goes wrong, however, this lengthier repair/install process should help you get yourself out of a hole.