Screen flicker/random static-filled black outs on Crossfired 7870's

[Hazzyftw]

Hey guys,

Seeking some advice here, i recently reformatted my system, and now i keep having random flickering in the bottom in the screen when i open new windows/minimize them and already had two instances were my main display completely goes ape**** and displays a flashing black light with a bunch of purple/reddish static lines (fixed by a quick reset but still hella annoying, 450$ isnt worth the mishaps). I've already checked the refresh rate on my monitor and its set properly. I have the two cards running on crossfire and these problems have only come about recently. Any suggestions? like installing old drivers or ways to test if one of the two cards is toast/has faulty electronics? (i have insurance in one of them and the second should be covered under RMA period.)

[Antronman]

Test the system with one card.

[Hazzyftw]

so test them both individually to see if the flickering persists specifically with one of the two? if neither of the two show the flickering, do you feel it may be something having to do w/ crossfire/drivers? also it seems alot of people are having similar issues with R9 270x/HD 7870s :[

http://forums.amd.com/game/categories.cfm?catid=440

[Antronman]

Not CF drivers. Just multi-GPU itself. The way CF and SLI work when you have more than 1 card rendering on 1 display, is alternate frame rendering. Some of the frames are given to one card, then to the other, and it goes back and forth. One card takes a break, while the other takes the current shift. Then the other one takes the next shift, and one takes a break. And so on. Because in CF/SLI, the cards have to communicate externally with a middle man (either a bridge or the mobo itself as is in the case of the R7/R9 series). That can lead to stutters between renders. They're hiccups. Pretty much moments when one or more of the cards gets confused and renders early or late because of miscommunication.

[Hazzyftw]

alright, well im seeing the stutters as well on both cards individually when i maximize/minimize windows, didn't get any weird reactions running Cinebench test and got fairly good fps (142 on both). Leads me to think the issue may not be hardware but a software one 😕 I've read about that occasional stutter in cross-card information relay but the stutter is still present in both cards when utilized individually.

For that matter the stutter isn't really what pisses me off, what really is driving me to go nvidea is the fact AMD is aware of this issues happening/the random black screens im getting which are making finishing my project a really big pain the ass. I end up having to save and restart my computer every time.

[Antronman]

Uh-oh. Try reinstalling the drivers. Did this happen after you updated your BIOS, or was this before you updated/you didn't update your BIOS since you built the system.

AMD is busy restructuring the company. And because the R7/R9 series is newer, they solve the problems on those quicker.

[Hazzyftw]

Alright now how do i get rid of the old drivers and install the new ones cleanly? i've only reinstalled graphics drivers after wiping out the entire drive. I've already got the previous version on hand (12.9, 12.13 is current).

Also i don't think i've updated the BIOS on the cards if that's what youre asking. I did the clean reinstall on tuesday of last week (2/18?).

[Antronman]

You can either just install them off the manufacturer's website and restart, or go to the device manager, right click on the driver and click reinstall driver. If it tells you to restart, restart.

If you go for installing them off the website, make sure you've uninstalled the drivers.

[Hazzyftw]

Ok uninstalled and reinstalled, and restarted my system. but now it refuses to ackowledge my second display (HDMI), nor will it let me run a Cinebench. Installed these:
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop/previous?os=Windows%207%20-%2064 (12.9)

[Antronman]

Get the newest ones.

And please, answer the question I asked earlier.