New 4850x2 system - need advice

R

Rocco123

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 24, 2006
Messages
481
I'm building a new gaming rig for my bro-in-law. His wife wanted to get him something totally kick ass, so I bought a C2Q8300, DFI X38 and (2) 4850x2s. I bought the Tuniq Ripper 1000W after I read the [H] review. To tell you the truth I'm now a little jealous and I now want to keep it.

I've never set up a crossfire system before. Is there anything in particular I should know about setting it up? Should I be installing the 1st card, getting all the drivers installed, then install the 2nd card? Or just do everything at once? I've heard the drivers are buggy for crossfire-X, so I thought I would consult first before installing. Any feedback is appreciated.
 
Firstly you don't need (2) HD 4850 X2 unless you are using 2560x1600 resolution so you should keep one of the X2 for yourself. Secondly, if you still want to do CrossfireX, just install both cards and install the driver.
 
I've done it both ways.
For ease, I'd install the first one, then the drivers.
Then the second one and the Crossfire bridge.

You should get a pop-up notifying you Crossfire is available, then a box in the CCC for you to enable Crossfire X.

Please don't fall victim to people telling you ......you don't need this....blah,blah,blah....do it if it makes you happy.
 
My 4850x2 already has crossfire setup (as do all *X2's) By default that crossfire would be enabled already with the first card installed. So yeah, i would put the first one in, install the drivers and then pop the second one in. as far as how it will handle quadfireX, I have no idea. I don't know of anyone doing quadfire with the 4850x2's.....

I would love to hear the results when you get it up and running. You may want to check up on 4870x2 quadfire setups, in principle the drivers should scale the same.
 
alg7_munif said:
Firstly you don't need (2) HD 4850 X2 unless you are using 2560x1600 resolution so you should keep one of the X2 for yourself. Secondly, if you still want to do CrossfireX, just install both cards and install the driver.
Click to expand...

I understand where you're coming from, but from my angle it's not a matter of "need". I wanted to build something that was as scalable as he wanted to get a monitor for (he plans on buying 24 inch or larger). I decided 4850x2 crossfire-x was a good solution for the money.
 
Sparkhard said:
My 4850x2 already has crossfire setup (as do all *X2's) By default that crossfire would be enabled already with the first card installed. So yeah, i would put the first one in, install the drivers and then pop the second one in. as far as how it will handle quadfireX, I have no idea. I don't know of anyone doing quadfire with the 4850x2's.....

I would love to hear the results when you get it up and running. You may want to check up on 4870x2 quadfire setups, in principle the drivers should scale the same.
Click to expand...

I will post some benchies once it's set up. I didn't see a whole lot of reviews and configs with this setup, so I'm not totally sure what to expect. But I would expect 70-80% of a 4870x2 crossfire-x setup (i hope).
 
I had 4870 X2 Crossfire on a Gigabyte X48 board.

To be honest, I didn't see alot of benefit at the time.......which was about one month after the X2's release.

I saw a marked improvement in STALKER ClearSky vs. my SLi, but I thought FarCry2 was terrible......

I went back to SLi for a variety of reasons, but at present it seems that the Crossfire X has improved as drivers have improved.
 
I think you're the first person to setup 4850X2 CrossFire.
I would have gone with a single 4870X2 though, especially at that resolution...
 
Rocco123 said:
I understand where you're coming from, but from my angle it's not a matter of "need". I wanted to build something that was as scalable as he wanted to get a monitor for (he plans on buying 24 inch or larger). I decided 4850x2 crossfire-x was a good solution for the money.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, four GPUs is not "scalable" at all. There's no tangible performance gain derived by doubling up on the X2s.

You likely wasted money that could have gone into purchasing a 4870 X2.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top