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ATI Crossfire

I wouldn't buy another x1950 as they are totally worthless, there is no point at all when you can get a next gen card for a few quid more, its pointless spending all that money on old tech. :)
 
so there is little point me getting a crossfire board yes?

i might just move up to AM2 and await the arrival of the RD600 i think it is, because i like ATI i know every one here seams to be lovers of nVidia and i understand it, but me i like ATI and with the take over of ATI by AMD i think the graphics are going to improve, i mean Nvidia and Intel have been in bed together for years now, so who knows maybe sometime soon the same will happen to them!?!?

or am i wrong?
 
you're wrong, very wrong. Nvidia are a lot bigger than ATI, and undoubtly do not want to be taken over. They like doing what they want.
Why go AM2? you'll need a new cpu/ram/mobo, you may aswell get a core2duo, they offer better performance for the same money. Buy whatevers the best bang for the buck, sod loyalty. if the company you like release inferior products make a point of not buying them, so theyr forced to catch up. Look at intel, they went and brought us core2duo after we all got A64s.
 
Pandorasghost said:
so there is little point me getting a crossfire board yes?

i might just move up to AM2 and await the arrival of the RD600 i think it is, because i like ATI i know every one here seams to be lovers of nVidia and i understand it, but me i like ATI and with the take over of ATI by AMD i think the graphics are going to improve, i mean Nvidia and Intel have been in bed together for years now, so who knows maybe sometime soon the same will happen to them!?!?

or am i wrong?
Click to expand...

It would appear that your views are very much Fan-boy based.

"people on here" are not mostly lovers of NVidia. We go for the best kit that is available as opposed to a particular manufacturer. This is currently Nvidia's 8800 GFX cards and Intel's Core 2 Duo.

Sticking with AMD and buying AM2 just because their next generation CPU might be better is complete madness lol! You will have to buy new RAM, motherboard etc to get AM2 - and then repeat the whole process when the next generation comes out!

Once you have got over this, you can then look forward to putting together a proper machine :D
 
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Yea i understand, maybe i have a bit of a fan boy ideals, but the way i look at it is, that i have had nothing but good experences with ATI and AMD, and all the Intel and Nvidia i have ever had have had problems.

I know that most of the people i have talked to have always said that AMD are better for games, and the GFX cards are upto the individual.
But i have heard that now Intel and AMD are on a level, when it comes to gaming.


I heard the 8800 was used in the development of DX10, and i have considered the idea of moving to get the 8800, but maybe in a new build, not an upgrade.
 
It's not just the arguement of ATI 1950 vs Nvidia 8800s but also the fact that the 8800s will support DirectX10, whereas the current ATI cards don't. It's for this reason that ATI have them priced so aggressively...
 
Hi all, I've got a problem with my Crossfire setup using the following hardware and wondered if this was the best thread to seek your advice on what to try?

Overclockers bundle of:-
Asus P5B Deluxe
Core2Due E6600
Geil 2Gb DDR2 PC6400

plus
Zalman flower cooler
WD 320Gb SATA HDD
2x Sony DVD-RW
Akasa 3.5 bay media reader
Antec P180 - using 3 supplied chassis fans at slowest speed.
Seasonic S12 Energy+ 550W

using 2x Powercolor Radeon X1950 Pro Silent heatpipe 256Mb

PCIe cards are powered on the 6 pin connectors from the PSU.
2 Crossfire internal bridge connectors used.
Everything runs stable with no crossfire enabled, but when I enable Crossfire it becomes unstable and will only rarely complete a 3DMark06 test.

Without Crossfire I get a 3DMark06 score in the region of 5100.
On the few occasions where it's worked with Crossfire I've achieved a score in the region of 7500, but then fails if I run the test again without changing anything.

The system is setup with auto everything in BIOS.

When it fails during 3DMark06 it is always during the 2nd graphic test (Firefly) near the end. Display locks up with either a frozen image, black screen, or the monitor powers down after a while with no signal.

It also locks up in HL2 Episode One, freezing the screen and playing a short sound loop over and over.

PC keeps running with occasional HDD light flashes and does not respond to any keyboard etc. It requires a hard reset to get it back.

Initially, I suspected the PSU may be insufficient, or I may have faulty RAM.
The 2 RAM sticks have been swapped around and tests run with 1 and then the other installed. Prime95 torture test shows no errors for this.

I've unplugged the DVD drives and one of the chassis fans and booted it with a minimal power drain to see if the PSU was not supplying sufficient power, but this didn't work either.

BIOS 804 patched to see if this cured the problem, it didn't. BIOS notes stated the following, so I'm assuming this means the 1950 Pro is supported for Crossfire mode.

P5B Deluxe Release BIOS version 0804
1. Support conroe L processor
2. Update JMicron option rom 1.06.22
3. Modify CPU fan low limit speed from 800 RPM to 600 RPM
4. Implement ASUS CGI performance with ATI 1950 graphic cards

Catalyst drivers supplied with cards, 6.11, 6.12, and 7.1 all tried without success.

I've contacted ASUS tech support to confirm that the P5B Deluxe does support Crossfire for the 1950 Pro cards, but so far they've just regurgitated the bit in the manual about the 2nd PCIe slot running at X4 speed so performance will be different...(total lock up is a bit more severe than "different" in my mind).

Althought the ATI website lists the 975 chipset as recommended for best performance, but doesn't list it as NOT supported for the 1950 Pro crossfire configuration.

so, any suggestions?

I've already rebuilt XP once, and carefully noted the sequence of driver installations etc. to ensure the Intel chipset drivers went in first.

I'm still not convinced that it's not the PSU and my mains electric (I live in an old house in a village and the lights dip occasionally - could this result in the PSU struggling to provide sufficient power if the mains is less than optimal?)

Cooling doesn't seem to be an issue. CPU doesn't report over 40C and chipset maxed at 41C when I had the case open and airflow was sub-optimal.

However, I really need to know if others out there have been able to run 1950 Pro crossfire successfully on an ASUS P5B Deluxe.

thanks in advance
 
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