Widescreen Gaming Forum

I don't use crossfire but I'm curious...

Is crossfire implemented badly or whats the problem. Seems every other game that comes out has some crossfire related problem, the latest was Crysis 2.

The developers either have to patch the game or a catalyst hotfix is required usually it seems.

I visit a fair few support threads on offical game forums and there is usually a thread or two about the lack of crossfire support or that the particular game performs better on one card than when its crossfired.

I'd like someone who has crossfire to give me a fair objective appraisal if possible, people are inclined to defend particular technologies when they have invested heavily in them.

I use a single 6970 in eyefinity myself.

To make CrossFire work, the driver is dependent on the application profiles, which have specific optimisations for the game. Without it, there might be no or even worse a negative performance hit. This depends on the game and how well the engine was coded. Usually there are profiles for the games before they hit the shelves. But sometimes the developers don't work together with AMD, sometimes the developers change anything in the last second (As with Crysis 2, where there was an application profile weeks before release... BTW. nVidia has the same problem with SLI) and it gets broken.
The majority runs fine and with no issues out-of-the-box. Even for those games, AMD keeps on working for profiles to enhance performance.

PS.: Wrong sub-forum ;)

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Cheers nice reply.

Yeah, spotted I was in the wrong forum about 2 secs after I posted, hopefully a mod will do the mod thing...

I had an SLi rig in the past, 2 8800's, but it was a pain, very hot and loved electricity and there wasn't enough improvement to warrant it in the first place.

I'm curious about crossfire but I don't want to find myself regretting it a few months down the line.

TBH, my single 6970 has plenty of grunt for my 5040x1050 res atm.

With all these bloody cpu dependant console ports lately, I'm beginning to wonder if there's any point buying high end cards at all.

I used only one 5870 for 5040x1050 for more than a year now, and just bought a second card, as some games started to drop into the low 20ish FPS rates with full details. Had CrossFire with older generations, too. I'm happy with it and can recommend it to everyone. Though, I cannot say there are no issues. There will always be some bugs, just as always. Nothings for sure.

I'd suggest, stick with one card and try it. If you are not satisfied, try to put in a second card.

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