How does GPU crossfire work?

Saturnity · May 3, 2017

So something ive been wondering, is how does it work? Does it basically combine them and make an ultra graphics card? Or does it sorta divide the work? Could someone explain?

Like for example if you needed like 4gb of vram, could you combine 2 2gb cards and it would work still? Does it combine the MH clocks? So yeah, could someone explain?

Gam3r01 · May 3, 2017

It splits the work load, typically through a process called AFR (or alternate frame rendering).
Memory is mirrored, so 2x2GB cards is 2GB.
Clock speeds are slowed to match the slowest card. So two cards running at 1.1GHz would be 1.1GHz.

Additionally, the performance is not doubled in this scenario.

Saturnity · May 3, 2017

Gam3r01 :

Awe that sucks, I was hoping it would increase the vram, sorta just like regular RAM where it increases the amount of RAM by adding more sticks. Would you say you get more frames though with 2 graphics card because it splits the work and lessens the workload?

Gam3r01 · May 3, 2017

The reason it dosent work like regular RAM is because that memory simply stores information, the VRAM is mirrored.

The performance increase from Xfire (or SLI) depends greatly on the games you plan on playing. Some games scale fairly well with multiple cards, the best scaling up to 80% or more improvement. But then there are an equal if not greater amount of games that scale to 0% (SLI/Xfire is not supported). There are inbetweeners, but you get the idea. Not to mention the increase in latency that tends to follow multiple card setups.

Additionally, the type of card matters too, generally speaking it is always better to get a higher end, single card compared to two lower end cards.

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How does GPU crossfire work?

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