Crossfire on an NFORCE Pro 3600 chipset?

[Guest]

Is this possible through driver hacks, tweaks, flashing bios, etc? I currently have an xw9400 workstation but I can't get it to work with crossfired Radeon 5870's.

 

[Guest]

hacked drivers might not be needed.
I can't promise that because I never had or have seen this exact set-up.
at first the 3600 chipset was SLi only but with updates now you never know.
update the motherboard BIOS and look for updated nVidia nForce Pro 3600 chipset drivers, if so then possibly the board should have SLi and CF-X support
but then the question is do they allow dual card support for non business class GPU's.?
sounds crazy but I'm serious..

then again without some sort of hack it might not work if CF-X support is indeed still not available.
as for hacked drivers for that unit (where), I do not have an answer.

Are there certain steps I need to do to resolve this? I installed the newest BIOS (which I believe is the 2010 one), and also the new Nforce chipset drivers, but I still don't know how to get Crossfire in the end to work.

 

[Guest]

stupid question but you have the CF-x bridge installed, and what options do you get in the CCC (control panel).?

I have

Pinned
Presets
Desktop Management
Common Display Tasks
My Digital Flat-Panels
Video
Gaming
Performance
Power
Information

 

[Guest]

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/287558-33-crossfire-nforce-board-success

I read that, but the comments below make it seem like it's only giving the option, but not actually running 2 cards at once? I'll give it a try anyways.

 

[Guest]

let me know what happens and if it doesn't work we can look for another trick..

I followed the steps to the best of my ability, and I also changed every single registry value that said "enable crossfire" to 1.
Right now, CCC shows the Crossfire option, but it is greyed out on "disabled".

 

[Guest]

damn, that was close...
hmm, what to do now.

I think the reason that guy got it to work was cause Dell had a commercially available desktop which used a crossfired 3870 on an Nvidia board, and they made a special driver for it, which that guy forced onto his cards.

But in my case, unless I find a commercially available desktop that has special drivers for using crossfired Radeons on an Nvidia board， it will be tough.

I will ask my assembly CPSC professor, and also a near PHD student for answers.

I also only know of one other type of motherboard which supports socket F processors and DDR2, the SR5670/5690, but they cost around 400 dollars.

 

[Guest]

I was going to mention swapping motherboards but refrained because I knew the added cost.
you might just have to sell those Radeon HD 5870 cards and grab you a pair of GTX 560 Ti's in place of...
those and the GTX 570's will be going on crazy sale really soon with the release of the GTX 6 series around the corner if you can't wait.
just bringing it that too your attention.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709&IsNodeId=1&Description=gtx%20560%20ti&name=Desktop%20Graphics%20%2f%20Video%20Cards&Order=PRICE&Pagesize=100&SecondSearch=1

I might just have to wait until the next phase of computers are replaced, then I might be able to grab an HP dc8100， which AFAIK supports crossfire.