how does crossfire work ?

[wozie]

looking to crossfire 2x5850 cards in the future now being a tight git i was wondering if you can turn on the second card in the catalyst control center play your game then turn it of after playing the game thus saving power and reducing my electric bill ? is this how it works or do you just leave it running ?
cheers all

 

[smit101]

Yes, you can enable and disable crossfire via the cat control panel, both cards will remain powered up though.

If you're worried about using excess power when in desktop use don't be, crossfire only uses significantly more juice when gaming. In desktop use the cards revert to 2d clocks and so consume far less power, I would have thought the power draw between crossfire enabled and disabled when just using windows would be minimal.

 

[wozie]

thanks for the info looking to get another card just to tide me over for a while until new cards are out

 

[smit101]

Not a bad idea, 2X5850's would be very quick! I still find my single 5850 can handle most things at 1200p, great cards tbh and good clockers. Have you got your eye on any particular model/brand of 5850?

 

[wozie]

not really bought a bog standard sapphire model when first came out its a good card plays all my games at top rez only reason thinking 2nd card as the new bf3 and newer titles coming out that was all will prob be gettin new mobo and cpu and mem later on when the new intel ones come out runnin a intel q6600 at mo so should be better and like the 6gb sata ports for a newer ssd drive as well

 

[smit101]

not really bought a bog standard sapphire model when first came out its a good card plays all my games at top rez only reason thinking 2nd card as the new bf3 and newer titles coming out that was all will prob be gettin new mobo and cpu and mem later on when the new intel ones come out runnin a intel q6600 at mo so should be better and like the 6gb sata ports for a newer ssd drive as well

Yeah, same here with the Q6600, amazing how long they've lasted isn't it? Had mine since 2007 and it's been running at 3.5ghz with 1.5vcore eversince, it's never skipped a beat!

I'm waiting for the Ivybridge and Bulldozer platforms to release and mature a little before complete upgrade in the new year.

I'd say your Q6600 and 5850 will run BF3 fine, crossfire 5850 even better of course. Is your Q6600 o'clocked at all?

 

[DazQ87]

Just for some information regarding the clock speeds at desktop:
I run multiple monitors in eyefinity, when on the desktop my primary 5850 clocks itself to 400MHz whilst the secondary card clocks itself down to just 157MHz and sits at about 25 degrees with the fan on a whisper quiet speed.
The only time you notace having multiple cards is when gaming.

 

[wozie]

nah left it alone at stock speeds like seems to chug along ok tech is certainly mooving at good speeds compared to years ago and graphics are getting the wow factor cant wait for bf3 looks good

 

[wozie]

got to say you have done good overclocks though,and it runs stable as well ?

 

[wozie]

software for crossfire is maturing though although there does seem to still be problems !

 

[smit101]

got to say you have done good overclocks though,and it runs stable as well ?

Yes, runs very stable at 3.5ghz.

Most Q6600's will go to at least 3ghz with minimal vcore tweaks, you should try clocking yours up a bit, it will allow that 5850 to stretch its legs more and will give you a significant fps boost in your games.

 

[wozie]

cheers will do thanks