X1900 Crossfire without XTX?

[SimonMoon]

The XTX is the best card, only setting it off by a bit in clocking speeds. The XT is a bit below that, and on the same level is the crossfire master card.

Now would you gain anything in a crossfire environment if you had an XTX with the master card, over having "only" an XT with the master card? I dont know exactly how crossfire handles cases with different gpu and memory speeds.

Thanks in advance for any insight anyone could give.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

An XTX+XT and XT+XT will perform at the same level because Crossfire will throttle back the faster card whether it's a master or a slave.

HMmmm throttling a slave doesn't sound right! Sound like...

8O

 

[Heyyou27]

Already planning on two? Wow...that'll be a fun rig.

 

[TeraMedia]

From the ATI CrossFire FAQ page (http://www.ati.com/technology/crossfire/faq.html):

7. What happens when you pair a 12-pipe CrossFire Edition card with a 16-pipe card?

A. In this scenario both cards will operate as 12-pipe cards while in CrossFire mode.

8. What happens when your CrossFire Edition card and and a compatible standard Radeon (CrossFire Ready) graphics card have different clock speeds?

A. Both cards will continue to operate at their individual clock speeds.

So from this, it looks like pairing an X1900 with, say, an X1600 would be a bad idea, but an X1900XTX with an X1900XT CrossFire should make available the full processing power of both cards.

 

[Heyyou27]

Either way, the 25MHz loss would be no problem.

 

[SimonMoon]

Thanks for the answers.

So there is no loss, the XTX just can do "more" while the crossfire cant. Hmm, overclocking the crossfire one might be a fun idea, to push it to XTX limits. Dual XTX power

Yes i plan on a dual set of those, and the original cooler will go bye bye as soon as they arrive, to make space for watercooling parts. Now i only need to find one for the power elements (that red bar on the right side) and one that specifically also cools the composite chip.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Yeah that's interesting the original info in this is different.

I'll have to check into a little more detail about that from B3D or R3D.