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Thinking about Crossfire

Modred189

Modred189

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See my sig for my gaming system stats.
I am thinking of going crossfire with one of the newer ATi cards coming out/out already.
However, I am concerned with regards to my older Mobo which sports the P965 chipset. Yes, it's crossfire capable, but to what extent? I assume I can run 2X 38XX no problem, since that's just basic crossfire.
But what about 2 of those new Asus 3850x2's? Is that considered crossfireX? You have to have an AMD/ATi or newer Intel chipset for that right?

My other thought is to upgrade the 8800GT with one of this summer's newer cards, and use it as a physics card once CUDA hits....

Any ideas?
 
Really? Why? What makes that Crossfire X as opposed to Crossfire? Just the generation of the gpu?
 
crossfire x means more than 2 gpu's. the 790fx boards sport 4 pci-e slots for four 3850's, four 3870's, or two x2's.
 
rennyf77 said:
crossfire x means more than 2 gpu's. the 790fx boards sport 4 pci-e slots for four 3850's, four 3870's, or two x2's.
Click to expand...

Are the 4 card Crossfire drivers out yet? I haven't heard anything about this in a long time.
 
crossfire x drivers were made officially available shortly after the release of the x2's.
 
Back to my original question...
Are 2 3850x2's considered crossfireX, and is it supported by my P965 mobo?
 
Anything over 2 GPU's is considered CrossfireX, regardless of the number of cards. Two X2 cards is CrossfireX.
 
Modred189 said:
Back to my original question...
Are 2 3850x2's considered crossfireX, and is it supported by my P965 mobo?
Click to expand...

I have 2 3870s running in Crossfire and my Catalyst Crossfire tab claims it is CrossfireX, although it's not :I think true CrossfireX only works under Vista (and I have XP).

According to ASUS's webby, the P5B supports Crossfire. The only possible issue is that the PCI-E lane setup might be less than ideal, because only one x16 slot runs at x16 while the other runs at x4..I remember reading something about that on the AMD forums when I was searching for Crossfire user info while waiting for my 2nd cars to arrive.

I upgraded from a single 320mb 8800GTS and saw a pretty big performance jump so I am very happy for adding that second 3870. I think the only drawback I've noticed is that they can get loud, but my recent addition of Zalman VF900s changed that :)
 
all current intel mid-range chipsets that support crossfire do so in a 16/4 configuration. i personally would not contemplate placing dual x2 cards in anything but the full 16/16 capable boards, because two 3870's in 16/4 really are poorer performers than a single x2, especially when trying to use aa or run high res textures.
 
CrossfireX is the offical name for the 3rd generation of Crossfire. 2 is the most GPUs you can have in Windows XP. You can have up to 4 in Vista, but I believe I read an article that right now only 3 will be used by any game.

The general recommendation is to use two full 16x PCI-E lanes for CrossfireX with the HD 3000 series. You will lose some performance using two 8x lanes but not as much as an 16x and 4x.

I have two HD3870s in CrossfireX on Windows XP and it seems to work alright at 1920x1200. The only game I've played so far has been World in Conflict and the benchmark demo shows about 15fps min and mid 90s as high, IIRC. With CrossfireX disabled it fell around 8fps and was about 70fps high.
 
Modred189 said:
Ah ok,so RADeoN's post is incorrect?
Click to expand...

No, when I get home I can show you in my Catalyst Control Center where it says CrossFireX enabled, and i only have 2 GPU's. It's just in reference to the new age of crossfire.
 
RADEoN said:
No, when I get home I can show you in my Catalyst Control Center where it says CrossFireX enabled, and i only have 2 GPU's. It's just in reference to the new age of crossfire.
Click to expand...
I totally get it then. Your posts plus those above now make sense!

So, I think Crossfire X (more than 2gpu at least) is out of the question...
What about simply 2 3850's in crossfire?
 
two 3850 256 cards might not be powerful enough to saturate the 16x and the 4x slots, so its possible that you wouldn't be leaving performance on the second card.
 
Anything more than 2 GPUs is pretty useless anyway, Performance gains nearly stop after 2 GPUs.
My motherboard has 3 PCI-e slots, the speed with 3 video cards is 16x/16x/4x. but I will never use it sense its just a waste of money.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_CrossFire says that Crossfire X is there new brand for crossfire with the 3800 series and newer video cards. I also thought it was for Crossfire with more than 2 GPUs but I guess thats not the case.
http://game.amd.com/us-en/crossfirex_about.aspx also says it is 2 or more GPUs
 
Modred189 said:
I totally get it then. Your posts plus those above now make sense!

So, I think Crossfire X (more than 2gpu at least) is out of the question...
What about simply 2 3850's in crossfire?
Click to expand...

for the money, 3870's would be worth it. if you're interested i plan on selling my 2 3870's for around 300 bucks shipped when the 4870's are released, and yeah that's for a pair.
 
you can get 2 x sapphire 3870's on the Egg for under 300 brand new in a combo deal.... thats the best crossfire deal right now.

think im gonna wait see how these new ones perform first, i hope theyre good.
 
nightwalker said:
you can get 2 x sapphire 3870's on the Egg for under 300 brand new in a combo deal.... thats the best crossfire deal right now.

think im gonna wait see how these new ones perform first, i hope theyre good.
Click to expand...
Yea, after reading some of the stuff aboout the 4000 series, I might wait.

But the consensus us that CrossfireX (with 2 gpu's over 2 cards) should work just fine..
 
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