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Does the crossfire "slave" card work less?

A

af22

Gawd
Joined
Jun 21, 2010
Messages
610
Just wondering since in every multi video card setup, the top card always runs quite a bit hotter then the bottom card.

Would it even be possible to make the "master" card the bottom card, and let the top card be the one that doesn't output video.

My bottom video card has an aftermarket accelerator twin turbo, so it does not get very warm...

Just wanted to see if anyone has paid attention, or if it's even possible to use the bottom card as the "master" card.
 
Based on the rig in your sig, you'll see the top card running hotter even at idle, due to the multi-monitor setup you've got, which keeps the VRAM running at full to avoid issues with flicker and stuff.

So if your current slave card is better equipped, then make it the master.

As for usage, assuming you're maxing out GPU usage (though I think you might be VRAM limited if those are 1GB cards at that resolution), then both work equally hard in games.

The slave card at idle will just sit at super-low clocks though.

Hope this helps you.
 
That would be nice if you could switch them. The top card is usually pulling hot air off the bottom card, hence the higher temps.
 
Sweet, i switched the "master" card to the bottom one, and the top card just idles at super low clocks.

the main card stays at 725 / 1000 mhz due to my triple monitor setup. where the secondary card idles down to 157 / 300 mhz.

also, my case is a silver stone raven, the cards are actually side by side vertical... but they cards are side by side with no gap.
 
af22 said:
Sweet, i switched the "master" card to the bottom one, and the top card just idles at super low clocks.
.
Click to expand...

How did you switch the master to the lower card? I'd like to do this too.
 
af22 said:
but they cards are side by side with no gap.
Click to expand...

This is why your "top" card runs hotter. The only air that it's taking in is the hot air off of the PCB of the other card. Whenever I buy multi-slot motherboards, I always make sure that there's a 1 slot gap between the 2 cards (been running multi-GPU setups since 2005).
I've used boards where there was no gap and the top card always got too hot for my liking (I hate seeing GPUs' go over 75C).
 
NukeDukem said:
How did you switch the master to the lower card? I'd like to do this too.
Click to expand...

I selected in my bios to boot PCIX16-2, and i swapped all my cables to the other card. Windows was still looking at the first card, so I had to plug one monitor back in the first card to disable and renable crossfire.
 
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