ATI crossfire and 5870/Eyefinity, or CF question in general

geniv2 · Post by **geniv2** » 15 Sep 2009, 02:08

Since I'm selling my, 9800GX2, FireMV, Th2G digital.

I can probably afford the 5870x2 (single board crossfire).

How long do u guys think it will take ATI to get CF working with Eyefinity multimonitor gaming? I don't mind sprining for it and have it work later on. as oppse to getting a single GPU card and upgrading to a CF card later.

but in general I can jsut disable CF and all my games will see a single GPU right?

I have no experience with CF but I do have a SLI card and it works with not hardly any problem for me. (I'm not talking about performance, more like that it just run and doesn't crash my games)

Post by **thales100** » 15 Sep 2009, 02:18

How long do u guys think it will take ATI to get CF working with Eyefinity multimonitor gaming?

Its hard to tell, since i own 3 x 22" 57Hz compatible monitors i think ill keep my th2go and buy 2 x 5870, running them in crossfire (not using the eyefinity then), if i can actually run DX 10 (and 11) with the new catalyst drivers and the matrox adapter at 5040x1050, as ive checked in some threads here at wsgf.

MrCrowley · Post by **MrCrowley** » 15 Sep 2009, 09:20

Any chances for a 5870x2 4GB version soon?

LeeNux · Post by **LeeNux** » 15 Sep 2009, 10:30

hmm, dont think so. heard somewhere amd is currently having difficulties wie the pcb design of the x2 cards. and i also dont think they will bring out 4gb versions at the beginning, most likely 2gb versions, but thats only my belief

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 15 Sep 2009, 11:12

Wouldn't surprise me if they're having PCB design issues, although there is a ridiculous amount of FUD around from both the pro- and anti-ATi camps about RV870.

WaveZtream · Post by **WaveZtream** » 15 Sep 2009, 14:35

Why get two cards in the first place? It ain't worth the cash thats for damn sure and CF is even worse than SLI. And SLI is garbage :) You just don't get the value out of your money in other words you are getting screwed :/

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 15 Sep 2009, 14:43

Mm. It depends on the games you play really - for those games that CrossFire handles well, it scales better than SLI, but for those it doesn't, you're usually not getting a boost, or better off not having bothered in the first place. I preferred 3dfx's SLI, as that actually scaled well (ie: nearly perfectly) and worked with every Glide/OpenGL game. SLI and CrossFire are both too picky, too driver dependent. :)

Post by **thales100** » 15 Sep 2009, 14:45

Mm. It depends on the games you play really

Yes thats it.

WaveZtream · Post by **WaveZtream** » 15 Sep 2009, 17:54

Yeah but SLI ain't a new technology so what is the excuse for the engineering? Ill tell ya NOTHING :) It's to far to many games that doesn't work with it. It's just not worth the hassle and most of the time when its enabled you get less fps :(

Mesh · Post by **Mesh** » 15 Sep 2009, 18:35

So far I've yet to see a single game that has any benefit from sli. Benchmarks sure but those aren't useful for anyone except bragging rights fanatics.

Right now I'd like some way to patch in the 2nd cards vram to the first so it increases the total. That way I'd have 1536mb of vram to make gta4 happy.

WaveZtream · Post by **WaveZtream** » 16 Sep 2009, 15:53

So far I've yet to see a single game that has any benefit from sli. Benchmarks sure but those aren't useful for anyone except bragging rights fanatics.

Right now I'd like some way to patch in the 2nd cards vram to the first so it increases the total. That way I'd have 1536mb of vram to make gta4 happy.

Yeah I couldn't say it better benchmarks means shit if the performance in games are crap. Most benchmarks from people with SLI or CF is just 1 big penis enlargement to show how much score you have and that matter to whom?

whismerhill · Post by **whismerhill** » 16 Sep 2009, 20:08

So far I've yet to see a single game that has any benefit from sli. Benchmarks sure but those aren't useful for anyone except bragging rights fanatics.

Right now I'd like some way to patch in the 2nd cards vram to the first so it increases the total. That way I'd have 1536mb of vram to make gta4 happy.

accessing VRAM on the second gfx card like you explain would mean very slow VRAM access for this portion which is just almost as bad as using main memory instead of VRAM ...

performance of SLI & CF systems are always more subject to variations than a single gfx card, some rage3D articles explained it way better than I.
More often than not, minimum fps does not increase much in multiple GPU environments ...

kornkidpr · Post by **kornkidpr** » 17 Sep 2009, 04:09

Is the EyeFinity gonna work only with the 587os upward or is it gonna be like something that will be enabled on driver when they come out and will work on all the other ones as well?

Post by **Mach1.9pants** » 17 Sep 2009, 05:03

Is the EyeFinity gonna work only with the 587os upward or is it gonna be like something that will be enabled on driver when they come out and will work on all the other ones as well?

New cards only, AFAIK.

Post by **BHawthorne** » 17 Sep 2009, 06:21

My guess is the way it works is with how many port outs a card can do concurrently. My guess is this might work on previous cards, but only with 2 ports out. This is merely a guess on my part though. This is also why I believe EyeFinity will never be able to bridge GPUs/cards without some driver rewrites. Someone with current ATI cards could always install a beta driver and let us know. :wink:

OzHuski · Post by **OzHuski** » 17 Sep 2009, 09:14

How long do u guys think it will take ATI to get CF working with Eyefinity multimonitor gaming?

Im going to presume that if eyefinity is available on 5850/5870 on release then they will have it working in crossfire on release - im pretty sure they realise people are going to want as much performance as they can get and would preffer to have an extra card sold.

but in general I can jsut disable CF and all my games will see a single GPU right?

If you buy separate cards, yes you can do this. If you buy a 5870X2 you wont have that option.

hmm, dont think so. heard somewhere amd is currently having difficulties wie the pcb design of the x2 cards. and i also dont think they will bring out 4gb versions at the beginning, most likely 2gb versions, but thats only my belief

Apparently the issue they are having with the X2 cards at the moment is the TDP and power it consumes.. Apparently they are rumoured to be consuming 368 watts. Consuming so much more power means they also put out more heat - which is even more than the current 4870X2. Its still all rumour's - will find out in a month or so.

If they release 2gig cards of the 5870's I do expect them to release 4 gig 5870X2's though so people can run 3 way Crossfire at its best possible performance.. That being said I am expecting ATi to prove me wrong :P

MrCrowley · Post by **MrCrowley** » 17 Sep 2009, 09:50

Im going to presume that if eyefinity is available on 5850/5870 on release then they will have it working in crossfire on release - im pretty sure they realise people are going to want as much performance as they can get and would preffer to have an extra card sold.

Is confirmed, in ATI website, that CF support will not be ready on release for eyefinity, but will be in the future.

If they release 2gig cards of the 5870's I do expect them to release 4 gig 5870X2's though so people can run 3 way Crossfire at its best possible performance.. That being said I am expecting ATi to prove me wrong

5870 2GB versión is confirmed and named 5870 Six (for their six miniDP outputs). 5870x2 4GB are not confirmed, and It´s not sure they can be released in a relative long term, because high output for 5870x2 2GB version.

Post by **thales100** » 17 Sep 2009, 12:20

5870 2GB versión is confirmed and named 5870 Six (for their six miniDP outputs).

Mmm it seems ill need some miniDP x DVI adapters. :)

whismerhill · Post by **whismerhill** » 17 Sep 2009, 17:53

[quote] but in general I can jsut disable CF and all my games will see a single GPU right?

If you buy separate cards, yes you can do this. If you buy a 5870X2 you wont have that option.
true and that's one of the things why I prefer Nvidia after years of buying ATI

ATI choose to hide things from us thinking we are all a bunch of incompetent crap and that their software/hardware don't need to be fully exposed
(in short, they hide the fact that a 5870X2 IS actually using CF to work which means what was quoted : one can't disable CF on a 5870X2...)

Post by **Mach1.9pants** » 17 Sep 2009, 21:30

ATI choose to hide things from us thinking we are all a bunch of incompetent crap and that their software/hardware don't need to be fully exposed
(in short, they hide the fact that a 5870X2 IS actually using CF to work which means what was quoted : one can't disable CF on a 5870X2...)

Man I didn't know that, that sucks. Buying a 5870x2 seemed a good idea, but if I can't disable CF, that sucks LOADS. Can you do it with something like RivaTuner?

Widescreen Gaming Forum