MP 6,1 Need help enabling CrossfireX in Windows 11

[zackkmac]

I have a 6,1 with dual D700's that I'd like to enable CrossfireX for within Windows 11. I installed this copy using Rufus to bypass the TPM requirements and what not. Then, I installed AMD Catalyst software by manually installing the drivers and selecting W9000 as the card variant.

When enabling CrossfireX in Catalyst and clicking Apply, it immediately reverts back to disabled. I'm wondering if there's a different card I should have selected for driver installation (or a different installation altogether), or if it's my version of Windows? Not sure if the Rufus method is still a UEFI install or Legacy and I believe Legacy may correct the issue, but want to do OS re-installation as a last resort.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[Da_NKP]

I have good news and bad news...

Good news: you are not alone.
Bad news: you are not alone.

Specs: Mac Pro 6,1 w/dual D700s, Windows 11 (pretty sure I used Rufus as well...), and...yeah, CrossFireX to make the most of 10 year old GPUs in 2023 (I suspect we might have had the same idea).

Here's what I did:
I used this amazing bootcamp driver project to handle all of my driver installs, including AMD Graphics Drivers.
This let me...

• Install Drivers that actually work
• Configure and Enable CrossFireX by default in all apps
• Monitor activity in standard apps like Afterburner and Task Manager...

...except for the part where one GPU showed absolutely zero activity in a game. With CFX enabled globally, I should have seen something, even if my performance was worse overall.

I figured this was just Afterburner not being happy with something and maybe I needed to "Enable unified GPU monitoring" in settings, as one forum poster all but mandated. Guess what? That option is just greyed out. I can't change it. So...that's a thing. I was troubleshooting this when I was bullied into giving up Afterburner entirely, to which I tried HWINFO64 (which just *wont* show its sensor data) and GPU-Z (which doesn't even identify the D700s correctly).

So, I decided to do a quick sanity check: disable CFX entirely, then try the game again. Regardless of my computer's "inability" to understand what a linked CFX GPU is doing, this would show for certain that CFX was doing something. Unless of course, the performance was identical, because, obviously, CFX was doing nothing this whole time! Yep, guess it just doesn't work!

As much as I like Win11 (well, the curved corners are nice and all) I think I'll swap the SSD on this thing and do a Win10 install, just to see if the drivers do better there. Apple has always had "custom" drivers (even if they're not all that custom) for their custom (read: slightly reconfigured) GPUs, so I've always bet on actual Apple drivers over standard manufacturer ones.

 

[TzunamiOSX]

I have simply installed R4 from 2020 and done. Crossfire is working fine.

Previous Apple Boot Camp Software Graphics Drivers

www.amd.com

 

[Da_NKP]

Totally forgot to report back. Windows 10 resolved all issues. Well, getting GPU monitoring to work correctly still isn't working, but that's the least important thing (to me at least). I went from about 70FPS to something closer to 110+ with CFX enabled, so that's proof enough for me.

I have simply installed R4 from 2020 and done. Crossfire is working fine.

Previous Apple Boot Camp Software Graphics Drivers

www.amd.com

Huh, I'll have to try that on the Win11 install to see what happens. Would love to not have to start over (I just did a quick install and test with Win10 on a spare SSD).