Help me out on upgrade please

Ping · 5 May 2006 at 14:43

Hi guys been out of the hardware scene for sometime i just stopped looking at things because i was too tempted too buy em. But in all fairness that means ive fallen behind on newer technology too. i may have around £1200 for a new mobo cpu and gfx setup. i wanna go crossfire with a 4400+or 4000+ maybe even an opty 170.

so basically can anyone tell me a decent setup need to know 2 nice x1900xt that are compatible and a decent mobo

hopefully this powerstream will be enough too power it

fenderbass86 · 5 May 2006 at 14:48

Is it just the mobo, CPU and gfx you want, you'll probably need a new PSU. What about Hard drives, Case, CD/DVD? Your probably better off waiting for AMD's new socket AM2 or Intel's 'super' chip, Conroe.

squiffy · 5 May 2006 at 15:03

look,in,my,sig,roughly,similar,to,what,you're,looking,for.wouldn't,get,two,x1900s,as,you,can,always,get,the,second,later,.other,parts,good,value,for,money,ie,not,500gb,drie.

gah,my,keyboard,is,playing,up,spacebar,isn't,working...c

for.crossfire,you,need,a,ati,480,or,580,mobo

Ping · 5 May 2006 at 17:24

My current system is
a64 3400+ clawhammer @ 2.5
dfi ut250gb
2 x 512 ocz 3500eb
250 gb wd caviar
x800 xt pe flashed to HIS bios
ocz powerstream 520w
akasa eclipse
2 x plextor 716a
LG 1980q flatron

lol was high spec when i put it together. but everything else should be ok just mobo cpu and gfx at the minute.

any explanations about xfire would help aswell

quadboi · 5 May 2006 at 17:39

squiffy said:
look,in,my,sig,roughly,similar,to,what,you're,looking,for.wouldn't,get,two,x1900s,as,you,can,always,get,the,second,later,.other,parts,good,value,for,money,ie,not,500gb,drie.

gah,my,keyboard,is,playing,up,spacebar,isn't,working...c

for.crossfire,you,need,a,ati,480,or,580,mobo

Lol, lovely to read! However good advice

Ping · 5 May 2006 at 23:29

cmon guys any explanations on how crossfire configurations work please

Naffa · 6 May 2006 at 19:04

Basically with any dual card setup the game is rendered by two GPUs rather than one. I'll be back in a bit and give you a better explanation.

Naffa · 6 May 2006 at 19:16

Both dual card systems, SLI and Crossfire, use whats known as "Scissors Rendering" to split the workload. One card takes responsibility for the top half of the screen, more or less, and another takes responsibility for the other. if one of the halves is simpler to render, such as a cloudless sky, that card will take on some of the other card's burden to equalize their loads. SLI does this more efficiently as the cards connector makes them one where as with Crossfire theres a primary GPU and a secondary GPU. With SLI its thought of as one beasty card.

In addition to the scissors rendering, Crossfire also provides "Supertiling". This rendering scheme breaks the work into a checkerboard pattern. Imaging the screen is a checkers board, one card takes responsibility for the black squares and one takes responsibilty for the white squares. A chip on on one of the boards shuffles the squares into the proper order before sending the instructions to the display.

Hope this is of some use..