i connected it together with the native crossfire. so far so good. running stalker at 1680X1050 with everything maxed except aa, af and grass shadows at around 40 fps. i installed a mod for ultra quality graphix thats maybe why im getting stutters. using 8.38 RC7 drivers.

there is no crossfire option at CCC though.

anybody else did the same?

screenshot with eye candies!

http://img179.imageshack.us/my.php [...] 10rpp0.jpg

You can't crossfire the two (which is why you don't see the option), and I don't think Stalker uses VPU physics. So that extra X1950 is just chewing up power and not doing anyting on the Xfire bridge.

i called ati today confirming that ape, i showed him the radeon render and physics page, he went: "Hmmm... interesting... would you hold for about 2 min as i have to get the guys at the lab to confirm this?"
they told me as its at the experimental phase, in the coming months i should hear from them again.

i tried graw too, too bad i dont have havoc fx drivers. i could blow up the whole city without a drop in fps.


but omg, this is the best thing (graphics wise) since x1950pro for me!

but i could swear i hear the x1950pro's fan at maximum which means its doing something, not just being below a heater.

the xt's fan is loud no doubt about it, but the pro's fan at max just shrieks like a girl who saw a sign "new shoes giveaway!"

This may explain a lil, tho not much. Let us know what ATI says? Heres a link http://r800.blogspot.com/ Check out this link, it talks about what youre doing a little, tho like I said not much

hmmm..... interesting.

would be nice to see what the final outcome is.

Could be that your X1950 is doing most of the work cause stalker sucks on the 2900 so it is likely putting out it's little bit of driver destroyed work while your x1950 is doing all the hard stuff. I thought that ATI cards from the x1900 up could run crossfire with dissimilar cards. If so the there is your explanation. If you are getting about 12 frames more than you were before then i would say that this is what is happening.

damn your right Rabidpeanut. i removed the x1950pro, reinstalled drivers and i get more frames. this time i everything on max, getting mid 50's fps.

screens with eyecandy without x1000 flavor:

http://img400.imageshack.us/my.php [...] 10rnk0.jpg

http://img169.imageshack.us/my.php [...] 10rvu6.jpg

http://img455.imageshack.us/my.php [...] 10rfx6.jpg

I think you're confusing what Rapidpeanut was saying (he was talkign about Xfire, which isn't going on there).

What was happening was one card was rendering which explains why the X1900 was running hard, since it was running and the HD2900 was idle.

Just to be clear, you CANNOT Xfire an HD2900XT and non-HD2900 together to render the graphics. Asymetric VPU physics is a different story, and even still not supported by stalker.

Think about it, if the X1950Pro can't SLi with a more similar designed X1650XT, how is it going to co-ordinate the work on the night/day different architecture of the HS2900.

Achiving that would've been moreof a feat than Xfire'ing an X1900 and GF7900 together.

You may be able to use your X1950Pro in the future for physics work, but it has to be supported either at the API or Game level, and neither of which have occured yet in any shipping title.

Honestly i don't see why they cant work out this problem, you just need to get the drivers to send the top half of the screen to one card to do and the bottom half to the other, surely that is not so hard. I mean come on, all you are doing is adjusting the resolution of each card, and then the user can tweak it for the maximum output. Seriously, you don't even need a crossfire bridge this way, the cards don't need to communicate, they can just do what they are given and get it over and done with. Please someone explain why the hell they don't just do this it is so bloody simple. Sure you will need to mix the signal but you can just use those irritating plugs you get.

well, my initial idea was not to crossfire it, as the x1950pro is the one serving the image which makes my $600 investment obsolete. i was trying to get these two to render graphics AND calculate physics.

the only time my system recognize that the pro is installed is when look at how many monitors i can enable, other than that there is only one card registered and thats the hd2900xt.

You need to remove the X1950Pro and instal the HS2900XT get it to work, and then if you want multi-monitor support add that afterwards.

Why did you buy a second card for physics in a game that doesn't support it?

Really a case of RTFM for ~$400 US Alex.

Right now if you want to use the HD2900XT then sell the X1950Pro, if you want to keep the X1950Pro for FUTURE GAMES that SPECIFICALLY SUPPORT VPU-physics, then do so. But until that day, unless you need nulti-monitor support, that X1950Pro is only going to use up power and generate heat while in your compputer, so might as well remove it.

I understand why you might be confused just thinking it's adding rendering power, but look at how you don't always use dual and quad core CPUs for stuff, and at least they're the exact same units. Xifirng or SLIing different architectures would be terribly difficult due to their different mean of addressing memory, handling AA, textures, etc.

Split screen would be less effective than AFR for that, and even then you'd have one architecture that's faster and more capable than the other.

Considering that AMD and nV can't get their shiz together for straight forward SLI and Xfire in many titles, I'm not surprised that there's little work on get this type of exotic solution to work.

At least for physics they can be treated separatly so their is a use of it, but I don't see any company supporting a-symetric rendering in the same generation (ie HD2900+HD2600) let alone across generations.

Something like the HD2900XTX + HD2900XL or lower may be possible like they could do for X1800XFire+X1800GTO but that's the same architecture with different functional units disabled, but in a ratio that can easily be matched by the other card.

It blows... IOW if i wanted to do that i would have to write my own drivers... I don't really feel up to that right now, maybe tomorrow then...

Sell that X1950Pro as it's likely the card will never actually support GPU physics.

really? it says on thier page any x1000 card. but i could be wrong.

ape,my initial card was x1950pro bought last december. at first it was a good purchase price wise then realize its not gonna cut it if i want games at max. so i bought another one and crossfire it, didnt actually live up to my expectations so i got a refund on one of them. cant wait for july so i bought 2900 on impulse. so far so good.



and i just got hired at tigerdirect so i can purchase the xtx one on july without selling my 1950pro. i could post benches without nda! whooo hooooo!