Radeon 5670 and 6770 Crossfire option missing

[MarkP1969]

Hi everyone, I recently picked up a Sapphire 6770 Flex edition card and installed it no problems. I used to have two 5670's installed and crossfired fine. Now I cannot get the Crossfire option to even show up in the Catalyst menu no matter what I try. I have tried to un-install all software and drivers through control panel and installed one card at a time, made sure they loaded up and were found by hardware manager and all. Then put on the Crossfire ribbons last. Still no dice.

System Specs:
CPU_Name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU 750 @ 2.67GHz
6 GB Ram
OperatingSystem: MS Windows 7 Home Premium Edition

Catalyst 11.9 installed showing no Crossfire option:

What am I doing wrong here?

 

[Pyree]

You cannot cf cards from different generation.

 

[MarkP1969]

So if I understand correctly, according to this chart I should be able to crossfire everything in yellow with each other right?

 

[Pyree]

Yes. Now that you bring this table up, I am confused. I always though they cannot cf cross gen. Lets get a second opinion.

 

[ross_mitchell]

It sounds like you only have one graphics card now, could it be that it does not come up because it needs 2 cards present to use crossfire.

PS : i don't think that the 5670 and the 6770 can work in crossfire together.

 

[MarkP1969]

Maybe I just do not understand the AMD chart. If all in yellow is crossfire able then I should be able to do this no?

I have two cards installed one 6770 and one 5670 both are enabled and show up in device manager fine.

 

[FlintIronStagg]

you cannot xfire those two cards together. look at the name in the first post you made. one is redwood, the other juniper. you cannot xfire two different gpu chips. the 5770/50 can xfire with the 6770/50 because they are the same gpu chip.

 

[Pyree]

^yes you are right. The 5670 is not in the yellow square. Must be my eye. It is really late in Australia. Well, problem solved.

 

[amirp]

Lol OP you aren't reading the table right... look on the left vertical column.. Card 1: 6770,
now the top horizontal column Card2: the 5670 , where these two columns meet there is NO yellow square... so you cannot crossfire them.

And why would you want to.....: the 5670 is half as good as a 6770.... and since the faster card always slows down to the speed of the slower card, it would be like having two 5670's in crossfire... which is equal to exactly ONE 6770... which is what you already have....and you had 5670s in crossfire before too lol

Just buy another 6770 or 5770

 

[FlintIronStagg]

why didnt you just get a single 6870 and call it a day? it would be less hassle than xfiring 2 cards that have roughly the same performance

 

[Pyree]

^+1

 

[amirp]

uhh... because he bought a 6770 , where did you get that he could afford a 6870?

If I was OP though I would either stick with the two 5670s, or spend on atleast a 6870.
I would take back the 6770. But if you can't return it, then I would buy another 6770, otherwise 1 6770 is approx. equal to two 5670s

 

[FlintIronStagg]

uhh... because he bought a 6770 , where did you get that he could afford a 6870?

If I was OP though I would either stick with the two 5670s, or spend on atleast a 6870.
I would take back the 6770. But if you can't return it, then I would buy another 6770, otherwise 1 6770 is approx. equal to two 5670s

Where did you get the idea that op couldn't afford a 6870? My point was instead of now buying a second card to xfire he could spend a bit more and get a single card with little more power and better tesselation support. No reason to get snarky, was just making a suggestion.

 

[MarkP1969]

Thanks guys. I will sell my 5670's and get something compatible with the 6770 then.

Isnt the whole idea of crossfire to enable more video Ram? Two 1 GB cards crossfired = 2GB video ram right?

 

[FlintIronStagg]

Thanks guys. I will sell my 5670's and get something compatible with the 6770 then.

Isnt the whole idea of crossfire to enable more video Ram? Two 1 GB cards crossfired = 2GB video ram right?

No it isn't and no it doesnt. Even if you were to get 2gb out of it, with a single monitor 1920x1080 and below you would be wasting the extra GIg of vram. Xfiriring doesn't double power, it makes your cards work in tendem with each other and share the load of the gpu work. You have 1g of vram per card but that doesn't double the ram is still set to each card and if each card is helping the other, you will never see 2gb of usage with the restrictions I said earlier

 

[Pyree]

Unfortunatly, the memory is not combined but duplicated. You get 2 copy of 1GB (total of 1GB per card) in a 2x1GB card setting. So if you need 1.5Gb, the excess 0.5GB would not "flow" to the other card.

 

[amirp]

Sorry Flint.... I am just saying that now that he has two 5670s and a 6770, going out to buy another 6870 would not make sense monetarily. We have to give him the best advice for what he has now.

Try and return the 6770 , and sell the 5670s. Then buy a 6870 or something along those lines.
If that's not possible, use the 6770, and sell the 5670s. You can add a 6770 if you want, because 1 6770 = 2 5670s.

And crossfire is about increasing performance and never about Vram, Vram depends on single cards,
ie. crossfiring two 1gb cards you still have 1gb of Vram, but like Flint said at 1920by1080, 1gb is all you need

 

[FlintIronStagg]

Sorry Flint.... I am just saying that now that he has two 5670s and a 6770, going out to buy another 6870 would not make sense monetarily. We have to give him the best advice for what he has now.

Try and return the 6770 , and sell the 5670s. Then buy a 6870 or something along those lines.
If that's not possible, use the 6770, and sell the 5670s. You can add a 6770 if you want, because 1 6770 = 2 5670s.

And crossfire is about increasing performance and never about Vram, Vram depends on single cards,
ie. crossfiring two 1gb cards you still have 1gb of Vram, but like Flint said at 1920by1080, 1gb is all you need

I was suggesting that because instead of getting two 6770's he could sell everything and get a single 6870 imo is the better move

 

[MarkP1969]

Returning the 6770 is not an option at this point. I will keep it and sell the 5670's and see what I can get with that cash.

Thank you for the advice guys. It is appreciated.

 

[amirp]

I was suggesting that because instead of getting two 6770's he could sell everything and get a single 6870 imo is the better move

It depends how much you can sell it for, imo selling a card you just bought isn't something I would like doing. But I guess it wouldn't hurt to put it up on craigslist and see if people respond to it.

And no problem Mark. Also before buying the second 6770, or a more powerful card make sure your power supply is good enough, do you happen to know what it is?
Also what is your motherboard?

 

[Murissokah]

Thanks guys. I will sell my 5670's and get something compatible with the 6770 then.

Isnt the whole idea of crossfire to enable more video Ram? Two 1 GB cards crossfired = 2GB video ram right?

Adding to what Flint said, multi-GPU is about combining GPU processing power for parallel tasks (graphics). What crossfire does is render even frames on one GPU and odd frames on the other, increasing the overall frame rate. Each card uses its own VRAM, even if it means mirrorring every byte. Also, don't overestimate the importance of the amount of VRAM. At the entry/mid level, graphics cards will choke on their GPUs much sooner then they will run out of VRAM. So, having 2GB on a 6770 would be absolutely useless.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Best answer selected by mousemonkey.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey