Crossfire ?

[Mal X]

1......is Crossfire not as reliable as a single card and will every game recognise crossfire automatically ?

2....why do we have SLI and Crossfire what's the difference ?

3....i'm interested in the 7950 Crossfire, does anybody have this set up ?

thanks

 

[mattius1989]

1. To play games in crossfire/SLI, AMD/Nvidia need to release a "profile" for each game. This enables the game to utilise both cards. The speed at which AMD/Nvidia release these profiles can mean the difference between you using both cards or not. For example, it took about a month for AMD to release a profile for Skyrim.

2. SLI is Nvidia and Crossfire is AMD. They are both relatively the same in that they enable multiple GPU setups.

3. From what I hear, dual 7950s is a good way to go.

What are you hoping to use the cards for? What resolution do you use?

 

[arc@css]

I think the member 'eyetrip' has 7950 crossfire.

 

[craarc]

doesnt sli share the load evenly between both cards and xfire lets one card take the load then start loading the next card.? thats what seems to happen on mine prefer sli nividia all the way for next upgrade

 

[Rusty0611]

1......is Crossfire not as reliable as a single card and will every game recognise crossfire automatically ?

No it's not as reliable but it's still quite robust now. As mentioned above, it depends on profiles being released.

But if you're asking if Crossfire/SLI with two cards is less reliable than a dual GPU single card, then no. It's the same.

 

[frank_grimes]

doesnt sli share the load evenly between both cards and xfire lets one card take the load then start loading the next card.? thats what seems to happen on mine prefer sli nividia all the way for next upgrade

Strange.. My 6950's balance the load betweent them.

Anyway, next upgrade time i wont be getting crossfire, not worth the expense and effort. IMO buy the fastest single card you can afford...

 

[Mal X]

i'm on 1080p, but i'm after max FPS

 

[Mal X]

Strange.. My 6950's balance the load betweent them.

Anyway, next upgrade time i wont be getting crossfire, not worth the expense and effort. IMO buy the fastest single card you can afford...

yea i thought someone would say this I've read this a lot too, unreliability is something i hate, i like to turn on the pc and get swallowed up by my sofa and not have to move for another 5 hours !

 

[Mr Footlong]

SLI = Scan Line Interleave. For those of you too young to remember the sheer total & utter awesomeness that was the 3DFX Voodoo II, just Google Scan Line Interleave.

 

[craarc]

dual 680 for me next i think tbh sli for me

 

[eyetrip]

yea i thought someone would say this I've read this a lot too, unreliability is something i hate, i like to turn on the pc and get swallowed up by my sofa and not have to move for another 5 hours !

To be honest, yes, you will likely experience more issues with crossfire than single card, but I find it becomes less of an issue the more mature cards become.

Don't recall having any major issues with my 6950 toxics, but I have had some headaches with my 7950's.

But I honestly believe it's because they are new, and neither drivers nor overclocking apps are at their best for these cards yet.

Currently got all mine figured out how to set up so that I now have minimal issues.

And if you don't attempt overclocking, well then life with dual cards is even simpler.

There ARE issues with microstutter, but you figure out how to minimise this according to your preferences.

Got BF3 running quite brilliantly right now without using vsync, and with no overclock whatsoever.

 

[Mal X]

THE 7950 becomes very interesting if it drops in price even further, even right now the price seems ok !!!!

 

[Rusty0611]

I think 7950 crossfire already offers unrivalled performance for around £600. You won't get any better. The sad thing is, the only real downside of a 7950 crossfire set up is AMD's notorious ability to scuff people up with poor drivers. I have to admit I've not had an issue with them myself historically but the notoriety is there for a reason

Enough VRAM for future proofing - check
Enough performance with one card if all else fails - check
Excellent crossfire scaling - check

If I was going to spend £600 ish when I upgraded it would have been a no brainer.

Edit: Not with this motherboard obviously

 

[Mal X]

I think 7950 crossfire already offers unrivalled performance for around £600. You won't get any better. The sad thing is, the only real downside of a 7950 crossfire set up is AMD's notorious ability to scuff people up with poor drivers. I have to admit I've not had an issue with them myself historically but the notoriety is there for a reason

Enough VRAM for future proofing - check
Enough performance with one card if all else fails - check
Excellent crossfire scaling - check

If I was going to spend £600 ish when I upgraded it would have been a no brainer.

Edit: Not with this motherboard obviously

what MOBO ? oh that's ok i thought you had the same as me.... yes i almost brought two 7950s yesterday, these cards are perfect for me and will be for ages yet, but i'm not 100% happy at the words ``poor drivers and not 100% reliable``

the best ones to get are if the 680s drop to this very same price, but this wont happen because 320 quid is too far to fall, plus the 7950 is only this cheap because they aren't as powerful as the 7970, therefore not as attractive to buy

 

[Rusty0611]

Your motherboard is fine. Mine caps PCIE-2 slot to x4 which from what I've read will exacerbate any microstutter. So I'll need to upgrade it if I do go SLI with my 680.

 

[Mal X]

Your motherboard is fine. Mine caps PCIE-2 slot to x4 which from what I've read will exacerbate any microstutter. So I'll need to upgrade it if I do go SLI with my 680.

with mine i've lost some stuff, i've lost the crossfire bridge, but there is some good news, i found the Magahalems cpu paste from 3 years ago..... hell yea'

now this bothers me, because this paste is dense and heavy, but the gold Koenig is wet and runny and this is the same stuff that spilt out and wrecked my old rig, it looks like i'm going to be removing my cooler again; doesn't it !!!

the good thing about my rig is i have no old drivers in it, it's all fresh and new, but my old rig has all the old drivers going back over 6 years, i could never delete them... never

 

[chipachap]

Crossfire today is a lot better of Crossfire from 3 years ago. SLI may be slightly more robust but depending on your situation each can be as good or as bad as the other. Bad scaling in SLI and Crossfire in BF3 seems to be down to the engine itself not being able to do the business with large amounts of things going on in the background. It (at this stage) doesn't seem to be a driver problem but I'm not sure we'll ever find out!

The latest drivers and CAP have fixed a lot of the stupid Crossfire errors (for me anyway).

EDIT: What do you mean by 'lapped' with your 2500k?

 

[Final8y]

doesnt sli share the load evenly between both cards and xfire lets one card take the load then start loading the next card.? thats what seems to happen on mine prefer sli nividia all the way for next upgrade

I use quadfire and the load is even across all GPUs.

 

[tommybhoy]

If you are considering going dual setup,the best bit of advice I could offer is read up as much as you can about it first, it's highly advisable to do as much homework you can on the tech.

That's where people fall flat on their ****, they just throw them in and cross their fingers, here's an example:

'just got my new build and have x2 7970 in , never had two cards before , so ive fired up my first game BF3 , but how do i know if its running in cross fire??
Is there something i have to setup first???'

also:

'is there anything i need to do with games or does crossfire automatically kick in?'

The poster of that thread didn't even know that you need to turn on CrossFire in CCC!

(I didn't directly quote as not wanting to offend anyone)

... 'CrossFire/SLI is ****, never doing that again' is what happens most often, which imho(from posts here and other forums) is down to the user not having a clue.

It has it's benefits of sometimes mental performance when paired with the proper hardware.

1 card might be a demon oc'er but the other might be abysmal, recipe for disaster in dual card setups, the tech gets the blame because the driver craps out due to instability is only one one of many type of things that can go wrong.

Release day performance as already mentioned, can be lacking, sometimes for a considerable time too, but realistically, the 680/79**'s have enough grunt to get you by with most titles until support is available.

yes i almost brought two 7950s yesterday, these cards are perfect for me and will be for ages yet, but i'm not 100% happy at the words ``poor drivers and not 100% reliable``

Point me in the direction of 100% reliable drivers please.

They both can have their faults from time to time there is plenty of problems in here with both driver sets.

I have 6950>70 CrossFire myself, when they launched, AMD was on the ball with profiles/caps, then it dropped off and seemed to become a lack of priority for whatever reason, but for us the end user, it's pretty **** tbph.

It didn't affect me as I don't jump on most games on launch tbh, but if your an avid gamer then it's not good enough imho, but they now let you create your own CrossFire profiles which helps out somewhat.

I have used SLI in the past as well and would recommend either of them as the performance gained can be fantastic.

I don't need an upgrade yet as my custom air cooled 6950>70's are faster than both the big hitters fastest single solutions which was the point of going CrossFire for me last year along with the unlocking and my 1GHz cores helps too.

EDIT: What do you mean by 'lapped' with your 2500k?

He's sanded down his heatsink and the heatsink on his 2500K for better thermal contact which reduces temps on the cpu:

 

[Mal X]

EDIT: What do you mean by 'lapped' with your 2500k?

it's ground and polished to a mirror finish, as is the base of the cooler.. OCs used to do this 5 years ago

but dont do this yourself, because i regret doing it, it's too easy to get **** on the other side of the CPU, it cleans off easily, but it's still quite scary, finally you loose your guarantee if the CPU doesn't work.

lapping the cooler is easy, no worries here, unless it slips and the fins cut you !

when both are lapped, i can lift the MOBO up without bolting it to the CPU, the suction is increadible, but lets hope it still works