crossfire

timjj22 · Rated PG-13 Joined: 19 Apr 2009 Posts: 38

i was confused as to what was needed for crossfire X..

do you need 2 PCI-e x16 slots???

or a PCI-e x16 and a PCI-e x1??

Thanks

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:15:30 Post Subject:

2x x16. You're looking to match identical cards, which will most likely be x16. Some motherboards may not provide x16 power/signal to the secondary slots, but they will at least be x16 physically.

sbrehm72255 · Posted: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:54:41 Post Subject:

From what I understand, they don't have to be 100% identical cards, just from the same series; IE the 4800 series will do X-Fire just fine.

Blake · Posted: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:01:05 Post Subject:

Yeah, ATI Crossfire is a bit different from SLI in that you have a few more options. Here is a chart with compatible video cards:
http://game.amd.com/us-en/content/images/crossfirex/CF_combo_chart.jpg

Dont forget to ensure your motherboard supports Crossfire.

timjj22 · Rated PG-13 Joined: 19 Apr 2009 Posts: 38

if you need 2 x16 slots, what are the x1's for??

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:27:14 Post Subject:

all kinds of other stuff... sound cards, network adapters, drive controllers, tv tuners... you can get video cards with a x1 interface, but I wouldn't unless a system with no other options needed one.

nolonger · Rated R Joined: 19 Apr 2009 Posts: 98

I've seen exhausts that use PCI-Ex x1 slots.

Prozium · Rated PG-13 Joined: 22 Apr 2009 Posts: 30

I think it should also be noted here that, say if you use a 4850 and a 4870 the 4870 will only work at the 4850 level.
the phrase "your only as strong as your weakest link." comes to mind.

sbrehm72255 · Posted: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:26:04 Post Subject:

Not if you put the faster card as default and OC the crap out of both of them.................. Wink

As a example I've seen results where a X-Fired 4890-4870 completely trashed a 4870-4870 on the same exact same system.

nolonger · Rated R Joined: 19 Apr 2009 Posts: 98

It's hard to make a general rule that involves more than one component. You can't say a Crossfire Solution is better than a single card, because it depends a lot on game compatibility and drivers. You could have a HD4890 in CrossFireX with a HD4850 that perfectly works to play Crysis, while it sucks at L4D for example. With favorable CrossFireX conditions, the amount of performance the second card brings is around 50%, when you put in a slower card, it goes down by a lot since the main GPU will be doing more processing and the secondary GPU won't be doing too much to improve the performance.