CAn you crossfire with different cards?

[mckevstah]

My Spec is :
AMD x4 II 850 @ 3.3ghz
6950
8gbs RAM
GA-870A-USB3L

It runs Battlefield Awfully, but everything else including Bad Company ect perfectly. After trying about a thousand different things, my problems (Micro stuttering) and everything else are persisting, so i want to upgrade.

I want to get another 6950 so i can crossfire and i want to know if i can do it with a different board. Like mine is a VFX i believe and i want to get a normal one or another varient. Is it possible?

Thanks

 

[Surveyor]

You can CrossFire 2 different makes of HD 6950.

You should CrossFire a 2GB card with a 2GB card.

You can even CrossFire the HD 6950 with the HD 6970 and HD 6990.

Unfortunately your motherboard will run the second card at x4 speed on the PCI-E slot which can be a bit of a bottleneck:

Does CrossFire Work At x16/x4?

It's also possible your processor will be a bottleneck.

And finally what make and model of power supply do you have?

 

[ALXAndy]

Is your 6950 a 2gb card?

You shouldn't be getting stuttering if it is. If it is a 1gb then I would strongly suggest you not Crossfire it. Clearly if it only has 1gb vram then your limitation is there, so adding another 6950 won't help matters. It will probably just stutter more.

 

[Surveyor]

Is your 6950 a 2gb card?

Hi,

So basically, I am a noob lol. I know about computers, just not about the gaming side of things as I have always been poor and not been able to afford high end stuff. So anyway I bought this:

AMD Phenom II X4 850 3.30Ghz
8 GB RAM
Home Premium 65 bit
ATI HD VFX 6950 2GB
GA-870A-USB3L Motherboard

OP, are you gaming on 3 screens (Eyefinity)?:

Where's my third monitor? - 6950

 

[ALXAndy]

Where did that come from ? All I get is this..

My Spec is :
AMD x4 II 850 @ 3.3ghz
6950
8gbs RAM
GA-870A-USB3L

It runs Battlefield Awfully, but everything else including Bad Company ect perfectly. After trying about a thousand different things, my problems (Micro stuttering) and everything else are persisting, so i want to upgrade.

I want to get another 6950 so i can crossfire and i want to know if i can do it with a different board. Like mine is a VFX i believe and i want to get a normal one or another varient. Is it possible?

Thanks

 

[Surveyor]

Where did that come from ? All I get is this..

Here:

Is there a way to use all my computers potential?

 

[ALXAndy]

Ahhh. Seriously lulz. I was staring at my screen and F5ing to see if he had edited his post

 

[mckevstah]

Yes its a 2gb card and no i am not running more than 1 monitor

I will look into the bottle neck issue. Upgrade my Motherboard and CPU?

 

[Surveyor]

I'd have thought you could run BF3 at high quality at a decent frame rate:

Single player around 60FPS at 1920x1080: Benchmark Results: AMD Graphics Cards, High Quality

Multiplayer will take something of a hit but you should still get a decent enough frame rate.

I don't know if BF3 needs it but perhaps if you overclocked your CPU it might help.

 

[ALXAndy]

Sadly on Phenom 2 chips they don't provide the gains when overclocked that you can get out of an Intel.

I used to run an X4 940 @ 3900mhz on my NH-D14 but the differences between that and my I7 950 even at stock are night and day.

They were good chips when they came out, as they managed to compete with Intel's 45nm quads. But any sort of I5 or I7 simply obliterated them.

It's kind of nice how cheap the I5 2500k is really. Makes me feel safe if anything ever happened to my 950.

 

[Surveyor]

I'm just Googling stuff now but BF3 doesn't seem to be particularly CPU limited:

Benchmark Results: CPU Scaling

 

[ALXAndy]

If it's anything like BFBC2 then it's pretty much all about the GPU. And as many as you can throw at it, with plenty of vram.

It's amazing the cost BF3 has come at to GPUs. I had no issues throwing BC2 around like a rag doll on my 5770CF.