Some Crossfire(X) Questions

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xp3nd4bl3

2[H]4U
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Sep 25, 2004
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Okay, so I have a pair of 3870X2's sitting here and I want to poke around with "Quadfire". First of all, is there a beta driver supporting CrossfireX anywhere out on the internet? Secondly, I'm assumingI still can't do Crossfire on an nVidia chipset board so the only Intel board I've got here is a Bad Axe 2. I'm guessing the second PCIe slot in x8 will greatly hinder performance in a quad GPU setup; so what's a good cheap Crossfire board that has dual x16 PCIe slots? Lastly, I can get a third x2 if there's anyway to get this thing running six GPUs, but I don't think that's going to be possible, is it?
 
Wow, that post doesn't read well. My apologies, let me sum up.

  1. Is there a driver out somewhere that allows running two 3870x2's together?
  2. Can I run two 3870x2's on my nVidia board?
  3. Can I run two 3870x2's on my 975xbx2kr and if so will performance suck from 16x8x config?
  4. What's the most affordable decent Crossfire board for running 2 3870x2's in 16x16x?
  5. Any chance of running three 3870x2's?
 
xp3nd4bl3 said:
Wow, that post doesn't read well. My apologies, let me sum up.

  1. Is there a driver out somewhere that allows running two 3870x2's together?
  2. Can I run two 3870x2's on my nVidia board?
  3. Can I run two 3870x2's on my 975xbx2kr and if so will performance suck from 16x8x config?
  4. What's the most affordable decent Crossfire board for running 2 3870x2's in 16x16x?
  5. Any chance of running three 3870x2's?
Click to expand...

1. There is a driver that is claimed to enable Crossfire with the 3870x2's floating about, but it doesn't appear to work.
2. Don't know
3. I don't see why not if its a Crossfire board. 16x and 8x.. there might be some difference. Can't say for sure. Maybe a 10-15% decrease?
4. Gigabyte GA-X38-DS4 is running right around $200 at most places. Uses X38 chipset.
5. No, not unless ATI expands past their 4 GPU limit they have slated for their CrossfireX. Also it would probably only be possible on an AMD board.
 
the 975x is 8/8 in cf. cf on nvidia no, sli on intel yes but very slow and the last time i saw it running only the 7 series nvidia cards worked.
 
In 975x boards, what's the performance hit when the PCI-e busses revert to 8x in a crossfire setup? Would the performance hit be even more pronounced with 2 xfirex'd hd3870x2's as opposed to 2 hd3870's (assuming xfirex support reaches the 975x platform).
 
it's just waste of the money to have 6 GPUs, also you might need 2kw PSU......$$$$$$. there are no games that's ultilize 4 GPUs at the moment and you're thinking about 6 grfx cards?:eek:
 
PATSCRU said:
In 975x boards, what's the performance hit when the PCI-e busses revert to 8x in a crossfire setup? Would the performance hit be even more pronounced with 2 xfirex'd hd3870x2's as opposed to 2 hd3870's (assuming xfirex support reaches the 975x platform).
Click to expand...

I haven't seen 975x numbers specifically, but I doubt you'll see any performance degradation going from 2x16 to 2x8 pci-e lanes with dualgpu. I wouldn't bother with 2x3870X2 but a 3 GPU setup is looking pretty good.

At any rate, if you find a review of any motherboard chipset doing 8x/8x vs 16x/16x, that should be indicative of 975x performance at 8/8.
 
thanks for the info dospac....now i'm just waiting to find out if crossfirex support is coming to 975x, as i don't think it's supported yet and you can't do 3 gpu's without cfx, correct?

also, would the 8x reversion on 975x boards start becoming an issue once you start incorporating 3 or more cards?
 
The question is if a 3870X2 will saturate a 8x PCI-e bus. Not a question I can answer, but I doubt it would be much of a performance impact.
 
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