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Crossfire Question!

M

Murtrude

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 12, 2006
Messages
146
do i need any special cables for crossfire, and if so are they included in the packaging of most crossfire cards?
 
ahh well the answer is yes/no.

Two types of crossfire:

type 1: Dongle cable.

Applies to the following models: all X1600s, all X1800s, X1900XT X1900XTX, X1900GT**, X1950XT**, X1950XTX.

Type one has one standard card and one crossfire master card. The crossfire master card has a rendering chip on it which simply compiles the image for the screen. This made crossfire more expensive but more efficient since the image stiching is handled by MCP (the south bridge) using valueble clocks, on Nvidias SLI.

The dongle cable is usually supplied in the Crossfire Master box.

type 2: Bridge.

Applies to the following models: all HD 2k cards that are crossfire ready, X1950 PRO, X1950XT**, X1900GT**, X1950GT.

This type of crossfire uses two identical standard cards, and is generally cheaper. Weather it ATI decided to put a compiler on both cards or, like SLI, run the image stictching off the chipset (in this case the northbridge because crossfire only uses 1 bridge).

The crossfire bridges can be found all over the place, but usually come with the motherboards, if they support crossfire. If not, best get in-touch with an e-tailer as I'm sure they carry them seperatly.

Crossfire has lots of little advantages over SLI, and does, in the benchmarks I've done and read, seem to reflect that.

** the X1900s and X1950s basically have PCB revisions the later of which support Bridge and the earlier dongle. MOST X1900GT Rev 2's support Bridge Crossfire, some do not (as is the case with my dead X1900 GT rev 2 :mad:) I can get the answer for you, but you'll need to provide as much information about the card as you can get.
 
Murtrude said:
do i need any special cables for crossfire, and if so are they included in the packaging of most crossfire cards?
Click to expand...

Like the previous post said there are two differnt crossfire types. The old style crossfire master card will come with the dongle, if it is the newer style each card will come with a bridge.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
Crossfire has lots of little advantages over SLI, and does, in the benchmarks I've done and read, seem to reflect that.
Click to expand...

Ya you're right.. lots of little advantages like the LACK of scaling or any benefit from running the cards in crossfire in most new games. Good point :)

Seriously.. have you seen any Crossfire benchmarks lately?
 
Sr7 said:
Ya you're right.. lots of little advantages like the LACK of scaling or any benefit from running the cards in crossfire in most new games. Good point :)

Seriously.. have you seen any Crossfire benchmarks lately?
Click to expand...

sigh...

here we go again....

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o142/MrWizard6600/HD2900XTXfiregood2.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o142/MrWizard6600/HD2900XTXfiregood1.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o142/MrWizard6600/lostoc1600.gif


[sorry I want some from the HD 2600XT Crossfire as well but I cant find anything, anyways I was impressed, as it was on par with 8600GTS SLI].

and, well we've all heard the story from the X1k series vs the 7k series (they're just about neck and neck).

those samples were pulled randomly. If an Nv fanboy gets on these boards he could very well pull out hundreds of pictures that show the HD 2900XT doing as well as or worse then the 8800GTS, at which point I'll un-subscribe to this thread. These pics were pulled semi randomly, I just took pics from what I thought were commonly played games. The general trend is, 8800GTS = HD 2900XT, 8800GTS SLI < HD 2900XT, or at least thats my take on it. Take it or leave it.
 
Guy.. have you looked at anything RECENT? Not some 1 year old game? Bioshock? Lost Planet? World in Conflict demo? Anything DX10?

Seriously, citing some old ass games is pretty laughable.
 
Sorry I had an answer all typed up that got killed because Im on a half dead computer.

Ill give you a proper answer when I get home later tonight...
 
well i don't like both solution (sli/x-fire), i'm still prefering single card and single gpu.

btw. i'm bringing a pair of machine gun right now, one for sr7 and the other for MrWizzard6600.
 
Ok so, I've never seen Crossfire done with two X1650 Pros, but you will need an X1650 Crossfire Master card, which will be hard to find and expensive.

The X1650XT is crossfire bridge ready, so if your looking for a system to upgrade when you can pick up a card at bargin bin prices for a little extra performance, your going to need to want to drop some bucks on the X1650 XT.

@Sr7:

Heres the problem with taking the current DX 10 benchmarks seriously: you have an infant api/sdk basing what it can do on other infant APIs. Any program is just commands being translated and retranslated and retranslated until you end up with binary, which your computer can use. In its current state: Vista and Direct X 10 arn't very efficient.

And understand 1.5 million people still play quake 4, about 2 million still play oblivion, 7 million play wow, 3 million play Counter Strike Source, 2.5 million still play Counter Strike 1.6, and huge swaths up people, probibly around 10 million, play starcraft. Counterstrike 1.6 and Starcraft have been around for almost a decade now. Just because its an old game doesn't mean its not played.

@nösferatu:

In all of my posts I've helped answer the OPs question. While my comments to Sr7 might be off topic, all most posts have had something relavent in to Murtrude.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
Ok so, I've never seen Crossfire done with two X1650 Pros, but you will need an X1650 Crossfire Master card, which will be hard to find and expensive.

The X1650XT is crossfire bridge ready, so if your looking for a system to upgrade when you can pick up a card at bargin bin prices for a little extra performance, your going to need to want to drop some bucks on the X1650 XT.

@Sr7:

Heres the problem with taking the current DX 10 benchmarks seriously: you have an infant api/sdk basing what it can do on other infant APIs. Any program is just commands being translated and retranslated and retranslated until you end up with binary, which your computer can use. In its current state: Vista and Direct X 10 arn't very efficient.

And understand 1.5 million people still play quake 4, about 2 million still play oblivion, 7 million play wow, 3 million play Counter Strike Source, 2.5 million still play Counter Strike 1.6, and huge swaths up people, probibly around 10 million, play starcraft. Counterstrike 1.6 and Starcraft have been around for almost a decade now. Just because its an old game doesn't mean its not played.

@nösferatu:

In all of my posts I've helped answer the OPs question. While my comments to Sr7 might be off topic, all most posts have had something relavent in to Murtrude.
Click to expand...

The API isn't inefficient. It is a modified version of DX9c, a solid DX distribution.

You don't seem to understand that older games are easily CPU bound. Showing benchmarks on older games provides nothing but a mark of how efficient the driver is when it is bound by the CPU's maximum throughput of drawcalls (especially so with dual gpu solutions). The newest games provide the best idea of the actual graphical hardware horsepower of the cards.

Crossfire sucks ass for anyone hoping to invest a lot of money to play new games... in many cases results in massive/unplayable corruption. If you buy a new top of the line card to play old games, then ok, but don't expect the shitstorm of AA and AAA games coming out this fall/winter to work well with crossfire, judging based of the current crossfire support.
 
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