How much mucking around is need to use an X2 ATI card?

loafer87gt

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 2, 2005
Messages
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I was going to pick my Dad up a 4870 card today on a boxing day clearance, and although they were all sold out, they did have a single Saphire 4870x2 card for $200 Canadian which I grabbed. I am just wondering if this is a good card for him, or if there is a significant amount of mucking around with crossfire profiles and the like to get applications to play nicely with the card. Any advice would be much appreciated!
 
No first hand experience, but I was always under the impression that with both nVidia and ATI that for those dual GPU cards it was all handled in the drivers and the OS/Game really only sees one card like normal.
 
$200CAD is a really good price for a 4870X2. Hang on to it.

I use a 4870X2 and there's only two games I have issues with. The first being Defense Grid since about Catalyst 9.4 will only play at 10FPS~ when using Windows XP, 7 is fine but XP is FUBARED with no fix in sight. (this issue happens with any ATI card and isn't dual GPU specific but just thought I'd throw it in)

The second issue I have is that the old L4D FPS glitch is back only this time it's happening in L4D2 where if you use a 4870x2 (or I assume any combo of crossfire) and you start a new level/load up next level in campaign sequence etc. you need to alt tab and then come back in to fix your FPS, this issue is slightly annoying and will be fixed eventually like the first game I'm sure.
 
I have the card in my system since a few months after launch, I'm still happy with the performance. It can keep up with the HD5870, except for the low power consumption, and the eyefinity, and the DX11 and the performance stability of a single gpu...
 
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No mucking about, you dont need profiles with ATI drivers, crossfire works on all major titles out of the box, just keep the drivers up to date and you're good to go.
 
You can't enable or disable the CrossFire for the HD 4870x2, after driver installation your system will just treat it as a single card, and games that support CrossFire will be running so automatically.

You can check if CrossFire is active, by enabling the CrossFire Logo through the System Tray.

In Device Manager, you will see two ATI video cards installed.
 
You can't enable or disable the CrossFire for the HD 4870x2, after driver installation your system will just treat it as a single card, and games that support CrossFire will be running so automatically.

You can check if CrossFire is active, by enabling the CrossFire Logo through the System Tray.

In Device Manager, you will see two ATI video cards installed.

Actually you can turn it off. Set Catalyst AI to disabled to force only one GPU to be used in games.
 
No first hand experience, but I was always under the impression that with both nVidia and ATI that for those dual GPU cards it was all handled in the drivers and the OS/Game really only sees one card like normal.

Doesn't match my experience. GTA IV only supports up to 2 GPUs. On my system it uses the 5870 and one of the 5970 cores. If it only saw the 5970 as 1 GPU then it would be able to use both 5970 cores.
 
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