Need a beginners guide to crossfire.

[Boleyn]

Hi all I've never before used either Crossfire or ATI cards in general so need a bit of advice.

First up I have an Asus Rampage Formula board with dual 16x PCI-E slots and using 2 Powercolor 4870's.

Now both cards are installed and everything works in everyday Windows operation.

When I go into the Catalyst Control Center and click the CrossfireX tab there is a tick in enable Crossfire but the drop down Graphics Adaptor has only 1 card listed, clicking Identify GPU brings up a large blue 1 on my screen but no 2 as I would have expected.

Now like I said I'm new to ATI & Crossfire so is this normal or should I see 2 cards listed on the CrossfireX page?

Basically how do you know if Crossfire is working?

Also how many of the Crossfire connectors should I be using with 2 cards? I've tried it with 1 & 2 but nothing has changed in regards to the above problem but I've seen articles around utilising both methods, just wondering which is more preferable?

Many Thanks.

 

[Alpherah]

I just used 1 connector and its running fine.

Best way to tell if its installed correctly is to download GPU-Z and see if it states "Crossfire Enabled: ( 2 GPU)" or similar near the bottom of the page.

 

[Boleyn]

Thanks.

GPU-Z under Crossfire says Enabled [2 GPU's] [unsure on Vista 64]

And on the drop down menu at the bottom 2 cards are listed.

So from that I assume it's working.

Seems a bit strange that you need a third party program to tell if it's working, wouldn't it make more sense for 2 cards to be listed in the Catalyst Control Center?

Thanks again.

 

[Alpherah]

I think the CCC Just treats crossfire as a single GPU when Crossfire is enabled, or i heard that somewhere anyway.