Cross firing a 280x - Bridge Cables ?

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lewchenko

Limp Gawd
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Jul 30, 2004
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My new PC has a 280x inside it (from a company called VTX). The motherboard is an Asus Hero Maximus.

I want to crossfire this GPU with another 280x but having never done it before I have a couple of questions :

1) There is no crossfire cable in the box of the motherboard or the GPU. Do I need one or will this motherboard cross fire the cards automatically or do I need to buy a cable ? I noticed there is an SLI cable in the MB box!

2) The 280x card I have is a generic model (ie non overclocked etc). Can I add another 280x from any vendor that is the same spec and expect it to work ?

many thanks
 
SLI bridge connector will NOT work for your xfire setup. Go and double check with everything your PC came with to make sure you do not have a xfire bridge... If you dont, you can pick them up very cheap, even newegg sells them. To play it safe tho, go to your motherboards website (in your case Asus.com) and buy the bridge for your motherboard, that way you can be 100% sure the length will be correct and not to short or to long.
 
Xfire bridges only come with the AMD video cards. It's usually buried in the box.
 
Question for the experts, does the 280X require the physical connection. I read an article on Atech that they have moved on to onboard xfire capabilities that no longer require the bridge?


EDIT: PCI Express lanes are assumed to provide enough bandwidth apparently, but the article specifically mentions 290X.
 
samm said:
Question for the experts, does the 280X require the physical connection. I read an article on Atech that they have moved on to onboard xfire capabilities that no longer require the bridge?
Click to expand...

Yes, they req the bridges. I have two 280x in xfire... Only the 290 and 290x have bridge less xfire.
 
The 280X still requires a physical Crossfire bridge connector off the top of the card.
The R9 290 series has done away with it however.

Most motherboards that support Crossfire have Crossfire bridges included, all the AMD GPUs that you buy will include a Crossfire bridge.

You should make sure your motherboard supports Crossfire.....some don't. OOps....I saw you have a Maximus VI Hero.....it will support Crossfire, there should be a Crossfire bridge in the motherboard box.....I looked up the Maximus VI Hero on the website......it looks like ASUS doesn't supply one? I know you can buy one from ASUS on their e-store....just google ASUS e-store.

You cannot use an SLi bridge on an AMD card.

Most Crossfire Bridges that are included in the GPU box are short, you can generally buy long ones(100mm) on eBay for about 10 bucks.

You may use any vendor for the second card in Crossfire.....generally it should be another 280X, but Crossfire does also allow mixing different types of crads. Theres a chart on the AMD website that will help guide you in that regard, but if you want ideal scaling, I'd buy another 280X.......that said, read Brent's review on the 280 series, if I recall, since the 280X is a rebranded 7970, you could Crossfire that card, and save some real cash.:D
 
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Thanks everyone.

I've ordered a cross fire bridge from amazon for peanuts..Its 7cm which should be enough to connect the two cards. Its a joke that I get an SLI bridge in the MB box but not a cross fire bridge, and nothing in the 280x box itself forcing me to hunt on ebay for one! I rang a couple of the most popular PC builder companies in the UK (Scan / Overclockers) and neither sell the crossfire bridge ! ( I pointed out that Im unlikely to order the 2nd GPU from them if they cant sell me the cross fire bridge too ... they told me to look on ebay!)

As for another 280x. The card I have is essentially a bargain basement card by a company called VTX (east European company I think). It works well enough though but I probably wont over clock it. Surprisingly the price new is about the same price as a 7970 as well (if not cheaper than some) so I will probably get another one exactly the same.
 
quick update..

The 7cm bridge cable I got from amazon worked a treat, and both VTX 280X cards are now operating in crossfire mode.

In order to get working I had to tell the motherboard via the bios to always use PCIE as the primary display.. otherwise was a breeze.

Running 1920x1200 at the moment, and get humongous framerates in BF4 with everything on high. Planning on going to a 27" though at the next res, so this has worked out perfectly.
 
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