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Crossfire Functioning on Intel 5400 Chipset

ardy89

ardy89

ardy89

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Joined
6 Dec 2005
Posts
872
This may not be of interest to many people here as it is a Workstation/server chipset.

Basically I aquired a Dell T5400 Precision Workstation which came specced with dual nvidia workstation graphics cards, was informed these wouldn't work in sli so sold them on and bought two ATI 4870's.

Last night the beast was complete, spec is now:

Dual Intel Xeon Quad Cores at 2.66ghz
8Gb FB-Dimm
3 15k rpm sas drives in raid 0
Dual ATI 4870's
Intel 5400 Chipset Mainboard

In essence it s a very similar setup to Skulltrail systems, using the same chipset anyway.

The main reason I'm posting this is to get the information out there, Searching the Internet and asking Dell Direct no one could confirm if it would work.

So I confirm that Crossfire will work with a Dell T5400 Workstation.

Rob
 
what kind of performance are you getting out of it?

do you use the rig for games?

finally - can we see some benchies? pleeeeese :p
 
Hey guys, thanks for the replies.

System is extremely fast, although it does take a while to load vista for some reason. It is used for gaming although after configuring Crossfire last night and cranking up crysis I noticed terrible performance (10fps) apparently a common thing, so i beleive it will require a new driver.

Haven't done any benchmarks as such, what should I use to do so?

Current games I'm playing:

DOD: Source
Counterstrike: Source

(Never dips below 60fps in either game)

Hopefully try out Race Driver: GRID later tonight

The Drives arent backed up as there is no important data stored on them, have externals for that!
 
Counterstrike source on an 8 core system with dual 4870s?
:/

Grab CoD4, Grid, try to get crysis working properly....
 
Impressive stuff. Crysis is almost certainly a driver issue, though as I'm sure you've gathered, the game is generally a rogue regardless of one's seup. I assume you have patched it to version 1.1 or 1.2/1.2.1 (1.0 never worked properly with Crossfire). Which drivers are you using?

COD4 will scorch!

Also, if you have it, give Oblivion a go (with all the latest texture packs applied), it is an old game, but is still prone to stutter if AA/AF are maxed out with all those fancy textures, I believe this is also where your lovely HDDs will come into play.:);)
 
Hey guys,

Just tried GRID, installed fine, however when I launch the game it simply sits there saying loading please wait and doesnt go any further, I can hear the fans on the graphics cards getting faster at this point. Anyone have any ideas with this one?

Also, thanks for the advice with patching crysis, all patched now but stil no performance change, getting around 5fps in the Benchmarks :S

Unfortunately I don't have Oblivion, but am downloading 3DMark Vantage to give that a test.

Rob
 
ardy89 said:
Hey guys,

Just tried GRID, installed fine, however when I launch the game it simply sits there saying loading please wait and doesnt go any further, I can hear the fans on the graphics cards getting faster at this point. Anyone have any ideas with this one?

Rob
Click to expand...

Well the Crysis patches may not have altered things:(

...but for GRID, I'm almost certain that patch 1.1 gets round that issue as I encountered it myself!
 
balth_dire said:
Well the Crysis patches may not have altered things:(

...but for GRID, I'm almost certain that patch 1.1 gets round that issue as I encountered it myself!
Click to expand...

Ahh right, to the internet!

Just tried Grid in safe Mode and it started up straight away!

Thanks for the help will update later.

As for crysis, I think I'm waiting on new drivers/patch really!

Rob
 
Hi Mate,

Crysis running at 1680 x 1050

I have 4X AA enabled but no v-sync.

Its set to very High Detail.

I think I should try it without Crossfire enabled to double check!
 
Hello again!

It would certainly appear that crossfire has issues with Crysis when looking at this:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/734/11/

Note that for their 1920x1200 (medium) and 1280x1024 (high) tests, crossfire actually reduces the framerate.

They were using the 8.7 beta drivers.

Try with No AA (AA murders performance, even on TRI-SLI setups in this game) and at 1920x1200 (very high or high), this seems to be where crossfire most benefits at present. See if you get close to the 26fps they are getting, they are using a slightly faster CPU (qx9770) though this shouldn't make too much difference. As you say, try with CF disabled aswell to verify it is actually working.
 
Last edited:
Well cheers for your research and thanks for the advice on Grid, that is now working fine at 1900x1200 with full aa and everything turned up.

Tried Crysis without aa and in the GPU Benchmark I was getting 10fps, still thats better than 5 i was getting, also tried it without crossfire enabled and it made no difference (still had aa enabled).

Going to bed now, but will try again tomorow and also try 3DMark Vantage!

Rob

Again appreciate the help.
 
ardy89 said:
System is extremely fast, although it does take a while to load vista for some reason.
Click to expand...

I beleive Vista pre-loads applications into memory on the assumption you will need them eventually. The more memory you have the more it loads, so with 8Gig to load up it will have a field day!
 
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