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Moving from Single 5870 to X-Fire

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I'm rather impatiently awaiting my 2nd Sapphire 2gb 5870 to crossfire with my identical card. I've never crossfired cards before. I'm thinking that I just need to uninstall drivers, boot into safe mode, run driver sweeper, shut down. Install the new card and 2 crossfire bridges (rumor is that is better?) then fire it up, reinstall drivers, activate crossfire in Catalyst and I'm up and running. Is this correct? I know the answer to this question is almost always yes, but would i benefit more from doing reformatting and doing a clean install with the 2 cards installed?


My system specs (if it matters):

AMD Phenom X4 965 BE @ 3.8ghz
MSI 790FX-GD70 mobo
4gb OCZ AMD BE DDR3-1600
Sapphire 2gb 5870
OCZ Agility 2 SSD - 120gb
Some old 250gb Sata II HDD
750w Corsair PSU

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Graphics card Expert

Nver use a registry cleaner,they can cause more harm than good.All you need to do is install the second card,only 1 bridge is required,start up and crossfire should already be enabled in ccc.

I have been running crossfire since the 3870's.I also find ,for my setup at least,that the 10.5ahotfix drivers work best with my Xfire 5870's.

good luck
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Graphics card Master

codyw9524 said:
Woops that was a typo, I do have the quad. I've edited the original post. that shouldn't bottleneck my cards right? well I'm glad I just have to plug in and go that's easy.

Every time I install another AMD card in crossfire, I have to re-install the drivers. Otherwise, crossfire doesn't behave appropriately.

Just use the Catalyst 'Express Uninstall' option when you uninstall the drivers (control panel->programs->uninstall a program). If you use the express uninstall option, you usually don't have to use any Driver Sweeper software.

Then, install the latest drivers from the AMD website.

Sounds like I better reinstall drivers to be on the safe side. Is Driver Sweeper a registry editor? Also on a side note this motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD7-B3 LGA 1155 Intel P67. I know Intel likes Nvidia, but would my 2 5870's perform well on that board?

codyw9524 said:
I'm rather impatiently awaiting my 2nd Sapphire 2gb 5870 to crossfire with my identical card. I've never crossfired cards before. I'm thinking that I just need to uninstall drivers, boot into safe mode, run driver sweeper, shut down. Install the new card and 2 crossfire bridges (rumor is that is better?) then fire it up, reinstall drivers, activate crossfire in Catalyst and I'm up and running. Is this correct? I know the answer to this question is almost always yes, but would i benefit more from doing reformatting and doing a clean install with the 2 cards installed?


My system specs (if it matters):

AMD Phenom X4 965 BE @ 3.8ghz
MSI 790FX-GD70 mobo
4gb OCZ AMD BE DDR3-1600
Sapphire 2gb 5870
OCZ Agility 2 SSD - 120gb
Some old 250gb Sata II HDD
750w Corsair PSU


May I ask what monitor resolution your system is at? Unless you're driving multiple monitors in Eyefinity, even a single 2 GB 5870 is probably overkill...

P

I've got a 42' LG Plasma at 1920x1080 and I wish a single card was overkill. It runs every game, most on max settings (not Metro, though that one's impossible), but not always holding at that magic 60 fps number. With 2 i can go eyefinity later if I want (its just so appealing) and i think I've future proofed a little.
Graphics card Master

Make sure you get the newest driver sweeper version. There's a glitch in older versions where it would accidentally delete 3 files windows needs (when using ATI cards), although the issue only crept up when Win 7 SP1 came out. lol.

Anyway, I don't see the issue with registry cleaners either, I use Cclean all the time.

And yeah, CF 5870s should rock. I'm using CF 5850s and can max games out at 1080p.

Although I have to say I'd hate being on a 42" TV (I hope you meant inch, not foot lol). I plugged into my 40" 1080p Samsung TV before and I can't see text at all. It's so much sharper on my 24" monitor.

haha yeah i meant 42 inch. A lot of the time I just keep the desktop at 720p. I sit pretty close to it and Mozilla has a great extension that auto zooms on web pages so the text is nice and big. Any real typing work (word docs for school or work) I do on my laptop. I dunno if I could go back to a small monitor; I've been spoiled by my tv! Unless of course that was three small monitors! :D 
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