need help please

[immaturegizzmoe]

Hello everyone, I wanted to make my gaming PC stronger so I bought a second card and setup crossfire but some things not right. I have a
I7 3770k CPU, a maximus 5 formula board with 16 gigs of g skill 2666 ram, a thermal take 1200 watt PSU and a matrix 7970 platinum GPU. This system has run flawless for 2 years, I just purchased another used matrix 7970. I installed the latest drivers first, I made sure the device manager
Recognized both cards then I entered catylist control and enabled crossfire. The first thing I tried was heaven benchmark, the score was lower with
Both cards than one single card. Next I tried crysis 3 on ultra settings, with one card frames where around 32 on average with both cards
It jumped to 75 and even 85, I thought yeah it works then less than a minute into game the led indicator on the new card went instantly to max load
And the screen started tearing and artifacting and froze. Did this everytime, I then loaded furmark and did a stability test and it wouldn't even load before crashing, disabled crossfire and everything works fine. Is the new card bad or am I not doing something right.

[Nate152]

Hello immaturegizzmoe

Artifacting and crashing is definitely not good. If your gpu's are at stock speeds and you're getting artifacting and crashing, try them one at a time to see if both are ok or if one artifacts or crashes. If both are ok one at a time.......

I see your psu has four +12v rails, when running sli or crossfire a psu with a single +12v rail is preferred, this could be the problem too.

I imagine you have a 60hz monitor to get tearing at 75-85 FPS, you will want to enable v-sync to stop the tearing. This will cap the FPS to your monitors refresh rate.

[immaturegizzmoe]

Thank you for the reply, I checked and both cards are running at stock speed. I enabled vsync and tried crysis again and it ran fine no problems.
If I had a 120hz monitor would that help? I'm curious why with one card some games run over 60 hz fine, I ran one game at 130 with no problems. But its not as graphic intensive. I'm new at this so a lot I don't understand.

[Nate152]

Yes a 120hz monitor can go up to 120FPS with no screen tearing. if you can run a game at 130FPS on a 60 hz monitor and get no tearing by all means go for it.

I suppose it depends on the game but on a 60hz monitor anything over 60FPS and you should get screen tear.