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crossfire two Nvidia cards?

S

Seraphim974

Gawd
Joined
Nov 7, 2003
Messages
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I am trying to help pick out a video card for my brother. He got an Asus m4a89gtd pro/usb3 mobo with 4 gb ram, phenom II x6, 650 watt PSU, WIN 7, etc. He will be playing battlefield 3 and diablo 3 with it. The motherboard supports hybrid crossfire but we're scratching that because it has a lot of limitations it seems. So im trying now to find a nice single video card for now.. A lot of Nvidia cards seem to have a little more bang for the buck if im not mistaken. My question is if he gets an Nvidia card for this crossfire mobo can he eventually get another down the line and run them crossfire, or does crossfire only work with 2 ATI cards?? If anything works, anyone have a recommendation for $250-$275 video card. Or if he needs an ATI card now to be able to Xfire in the future can anyone recommend an ATI card? Thanks.
 
what limitations? the mobo is crossfire only so no nvidia sli - crossfire is ati/amd only. actually amd is better bang for buck right now. best card in that price range is definitely 2gb 6950, bar none.
 
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"Right now the latest generation of Hybrid Crossfire pairs an 890GX or 880G (Radeon HD4290 and HD 4250 respectively) motherboards from the AMD 800 chipset series with an HD 5450 Radeon video card" -Wikileaks

that sounds like it only works with an hd 5450 video card which is like $35. If I can get past that limitation some how, it still is vague whether you need two of these or whether you can sli with just the one and the onboard.
 
Seraphim974 said:
A lot of Nvidia cards seem to have a little more bang for the buck if im not mistaken.
Click to expand...
It's actually the complete opposite. AMD has the lead when it comes to price/performance.

My question is if he gets an Nvidia card for this crossfire mobo can he eventually get another down the line and run them crossfire, or does crossfire only work with 2 ATI cards??
Click to expand...
That motherboard does not support SLI, so buying an Nvidia card with the intent to SLI is not an option.
If anything works, anyone have a recommendation for $250-$275 video card. Or if he needs an ATI card now to be able to Xfire in the future can anyone recommend an ATI card? Thanks.
Click to expand...
The best bang for buck card right now is the HD6950, a few months ago they were going for really cheap $225 after rebates. Prices have gone up a bit since then but you can get some really nice factory overclocked custom design ones to make up for it. The MSI Twin Frozr III or ASUS Direct CU II ones are specially nice though I would wait for a sale because after glacing at prices on newegg they seem a bit overpriced right now IMO.
 
The description for the twin frozr on newegg says, "EXCLUSIVE TWIN FROZR III THERMAL DESIGN WITH PROPELLER BLADE TECHNOLOGY" Propeller blade technology as in..... a fan?
 
As previously stated, Crossfire is AMD's multi GPU tech and SLI is nVidia's multi GPU tech. They are not cross compatible ( well, technically they can be with a Lucid Hydra chipset ).

If you buy one AMD card now, you can add another one ( of the same model ) in the future. If you buy an nVidia card now, you can't add another in the future.

Seraphim974 said:
"Right now the latest generation of Hybrid Crossfire pairs an 890GX or 880G (Radeon HD4290 and HD 4250 respectively) motherboards from the AMD 800 chipset series with an HD 5450 Radeon video card" -Wikileaks

that sounds like it only works with an hd 5450 video card which is like $35. If I can get past that limitation some how, it still is vague whether you need two of these or whether you can sli with just the one and the onboard.
Click to expand...

Hybrid Crossfire only works with specific on-board graphics and a specific add-in video card. For Hybrid Crossfire you just add a single 5450 to couple with the 4290 graphics on that mobo. Getting two 5450s ( or rather two 6950s for example ) would turn off hybrid Crossfire, but it would let you run both cards in CrossfireX. Even if you could get around the need for specific hardware, hybrid Crossfire's performance would not be great because the better card would need to match itself to the lower performing card and performance would suffer. The on-board video is pretty bad as is and adding a 5450 really won't help. If he wants to play games at quality settings he'll need a better card.

Battlefield 3 and Diablo 3 haven't come out yet, so it's entirely plausible that a new line of cards will be out when those games are released. If that's the case it might be best to hold off. Otherwise if you need a new card now, with your only criteria being the price point, I'd go for a single AMD Radeon 6950 as recommended above. I've got one for my Eyefinity setup ( three 23" 1080p Dells ) and the performance is great ( it's an ASUS DIRECTCU II Eyefinity 6 edition ).

Is there any reason you/he want(s) to use Crossfire? I had intended to add a second Radeon 5850 in the future, but when I had the money for that second card I ended up with a single 6950 instead. It always seems like Crossfire is great for more performance now, but as an upgrade path it can be iffy when a newer card with all-around better performance and newer features can be had for a few pigeons more.
 
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