Basic Crossfire question

Im currently in the process of putting together a new rig and want to include a Crossfire Graphic configuration. The one thing Im not certain about is if you need to use the exact same cards for this kind of setup or of you can use two different ATI cards....

Well I planned on using a Radeon 4850+ another card in the future but from the looks of it I have to use 2 Radeon 4850s

Crossfire can mix the same generation IE a 4870 and a 4850 or 3850 and 3870 etc SLI it has to be the same Chip IE 8800gt with a 8800GT

The results of mixing the 4 series seems to vary depending on who you ask, I have read a couple of publications that say a 4850 paired with a 4870 will perform similar to 2x 4870. But looking at this review http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/for [...] eview.html It would seem to me that they were being favourable. From the figures in the review it would be just as easy and probably more correct to say that a 4870 paired with a 4850 shows no real increase over 2 x4850 in crossfire.

mactronix

Ok thanks for the replies

What did I just say? Can you not read or understand plain english?

You said "Don't mix Sapphire with Powercooler for instance. Again, they should work, but I have seen many instances for whatever reason, they simply would not play well together."

And the fact is that cards from Powercolor, Asus, His, Sapphire etc. are the SAME reference card with just different stickers. They will "play together," or there is another problem with the system. And that's ATI's own take on the matter. Other than different clock speeds (meaning some are factory overclocked) all 4850s, 4870s and so on are electronically identical. Palit is doing something a bit different but it should still mix with the others.

And yes you can crossfire a 3870 and 4850, under Vista, (maybe XP) there's just not much point doing so.

And my reponse was in reference to the OP's original question about how far he could mix and match cards, while correcting inaccuracies in later posts.

And Mactronix you forget that a fellow might have a card then want to add another one for crossfire. (1) it may be hard to get the same brand, (2) having run a single card for a while THEN adding crossfire is where the problems originate that you are talking about in the "big forums." To get hardware associations correct the driver may have to be reinstalled. If a fellow is installing both cards at the same time then they probably are the same brand, which has nothing to do with the fact that the drivers DON'T have to be reinstalled. Right? Some logic here....

I read everything on this site, AND I have one of the earliest possible 4850 crossfire setups, having it within three days of when the card became available.

All true. I agree we don't want to mix different spec'd cards. I don't think however that the prospects for getting an additional card down the road are so frightening if they are at least the same model designation (eg. 4870 and 4870) The driver WILL probably have to be reinstalled to get Crossfire to kick in, but at least it wll be the same driver - which should figure out how to handle each card. I had for a while a 1950 and 3870, then 3870 and 4850, running on the same motherboard (not crossfired.) they were the same driver and worked straightaway when the second card was tossed in without even a reinstall or uninstall. Then I switched to two Nvidias (not SLI, since this was on a P5W-DH) and the problems were horrendous, 9 hours to get them working! That was all due to resource managment (or mismanagment.)