SLI / CrossFire FAQs - Page 3

Last message on previous page:
indeed u are,(no joke) i have learned lots of things from you and other guys here.
Remember the PSU and the GPU questions i had and u helped me alot in there and i never forget when someone helps me in the problems i have(Even this PC problems )

Looked at the first post again, looks good. There are a few things I would change here and there, but no "deal breakers". Looks nice.

Edited again, (Nvidi 3-way SLI, Hybrid CrossFire and some other things)

This thread needs to be on every forum out there. I have so many people asking me why they can't "SLI" two 3870's with a P35....wtf. Besides the fact that people are needing to use their own brains, more posts like this really help.

THANKS

i bought 2 cards ati 3850 saphire and they are configured in crossfire.
i got a couple of problems which i would appreaciate if someone has the same problem and provides with any info :
1. after a couple of second in game call of duty 4 it crashes and when i try to open it agan it says DIRECTX ERROR ps. i am playing with ati 7.11 drivers.
My question is there any other configuration in CATALYST?

Sooooo, I take it I can't use the old 7600GT my brother gave me (free ) with my 7800GT in SLI? Seeing as they are different models...

exact answer ^^
thanks nukemaster

If the rumors are true and a 9800 is %30 faster than a 8800 ULTRA, then i would recommend 1 9800. but you have to wait and see what the exact specifications are.

Thanks for the quick reply. I do not mind waiting. All I really want is to have the best possible picture quality for movies and occasional gaming.

im looking for a setup for 1280x1024 and was wondering about crossfire I have a ASUS P5K mobo

Does anyone out there know if the spider platform can accomodate three cards? or are the options limited to 1,2 and 4.

Would using 2 cards that have more Stream Processors get more benefit from SLi and CrossFire than cards with lower Strream Processors? For instance say :

EVGA GeForce 8800 GT Video Card - 512MB DDR3, PCI Express 2.0, SLI Ready, (Dual Link) Dual DVI, HDTV, Video Card with 112 stream processors for 259.99
VS.
Visiontek Radeon HD 3870 Video Card - 512MB GDDR4, PCI Express 2.0, CrossFireX Ready, Dual DVI, HDTV, HDMI Support, Video Card with 320 stream processors for 249.99

I know it 2 different tech but its the only 2 cards i found in the same price range with a large difference in stream processors.

to valorean:
the stream processors in 88xx series are different with the stream processors in HD 38xx or HD 29xx series.
As you see in the benchmarks,HD 3850/HD 3870/ 2900XT have
320 stream processors, and for example 8800GTX has 112 stream processors, and a 8800TGX (which has 112 stream processors) beats 2900XT (which has 320 stream processors)

Here is a useful link :
http://www.hothardware.com/article [...] ed/?page=2

The 320 individual stream processing units in R600 are arranged in 4 groups of 80 SIMD arrays and each functional unit is arranged as a 5-way superscalar shader processor. In contrast, NVIDIA's G80 has up to 8 groups of 16 (128 total) fully generalized, fully decoupled, scalar, stream processors, but keep in mind the SPs in G80 run in a separate domain and can be clocked as high as 1.5GHz. In ATI's R600, each functional SP unit can handle 5 scalar floating point MAD instructions per clock. And one of the five shader processors (the fatter one in the image above) can also handle transcendentals as well. In each shader processor, there is also a branch execution unit that handles flow control and conditional operations and a number of general purpose registers to store input data, temporary values, and output data.

to yay:
yes,thanks i will edit it

Your math is a bit off. Its $138 * 2 - $20 + shipping. Check the rebate info, only one per household/person. (Unless you are shipping one somewhere else, you'll only get one.) Not a big problem, but I thought I'd point that out.

8600GTS in SLI isn't enough to handle a 3850 AFAIK. The 3850 is pretty much the best sub $200 card out there right now. The 256MB 8800GT isn't a bad idea either. If I remember correctly, the 3850 and the 256MB 8800GT are pretty close, so I'd try to get either of these.

Last, not meaning to be rude, but I'm not sure the SLI sticky is the correct place to post this. Posting back to your old thread, or PMing someone would probably have been a better idea.

Edited

Its included

Glad to hear it mate

You don't need to reboot to turn a second monitor on or off. From what a coworker says, you don't need to reboot to turn SLI on or off either. I don't know about the status of CF though.

I said "typically"...heh.

I haven't owned an ATI card in over a decade, but I know from personal experience that disabling/enable SLI often requires a restart...it seems to be dependent on the amount of virtual memory & ram in use.
And for someone who tends to leave the computer running w/ anti-virus running 24/7, rebooting (and clearing the virtual memory & ram) is not necessarily a bad thing...just kind of annoying when I want to go from playing a game to watching a movie on my big screen.

will it? how will that work, i am assuming that you will lose the benefit of one of the cards in the setup no?

Can you have 4 or 2 HD3870's on a 790FX

http://www.hothardware.com/article [...] X2/?page=2

Also note that the 3870 X2 has only a single CrossFire edge connector along the top of its PCB. It has only one because the other connection is already utilized on the PCB. Although the Radeon HD 3870 X2 is equipped with a CrossFire connector, at this time drivers are not available that will allow end users to link two of these cards together for quad-GPU CrossFireX. Those drivers are coming though.

So you'd have to get an AMD mobo and 4 cards to get mutli-monitor support out of CrossFire X?

I'll pass.
but at least I can get 2 cards and not have to deal w/ the stupid dongle anymore, yeah?

Edited

Edited

a couple things to fix on your post. where you discribed all the cards in each series
1. the 3870gx2 is NOT 2 cards (like nvidea) . its 2 gpus on one card
2. you do not need a crossfire edition card with the 2xxx and 3xxx series cards all cards in the series can crossfire. if memory serves the 1950 i believe didnt need it eather but the 1900 and down does


other then the little fixes good post.