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Overclocking X1900XTX's in crossfire mode

barney

barney

barney

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22 Mar 2006
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Kent
Going to start playing with my graphics cards tonight and have been trying to find some info about the best way to overclock these cards in crossfire mode. As far as i can see ATI Tool will let me switch between the two and change the settings for each of them but apprently it only stores the settings for one card and you have to redo the 2nd card every time you reboot (i hope not because im just way to lazy to do that :) ).

Can anyone confirm this? Also any other tips to get me started would be good :)
 
Little off topic, but if your looking to overclock your GPU's then that means you must have a stable CF system, What Motherboard are you using? I Ordered straight from ati.com my x1900xtx and x1900 CF edition card, already have my WD SATA II 3.0 and my FX 60. I just want to put them to use but I will not buy my ram psu till I find a good mobo. hence why I'm waiting to get compatible RAM and PSU.
 
Im using an MSI RD480 Neo 2. I spent quite a long time looking at the alternatives but this board seems to be the best one out there at the moment for a good crossfire setup and it has some nice options for over clocking. Only problem i have had with it so far are that the Duel memory channels are labeled wrong. The colour code, label on the board and manual all say to use channels 1&3 and 2&4 but it is actually 1&2 and 3&4.

The cards fit in quite nicely and there is a pretty good gap between the two of them.

Only other thing with this board is that it takes a LOT of power. I tried running on a hiper 580 psu and it fell over all the time. Now using an FSP epsilon 700w and its running very nicely (4800 cpu currently overclocked to just over 2.6Ghz but had it up to almost 2.8 and it still run fine).

Edit: sorry just noticed you have SATA II drives. This motherboard doesnt support support SATA II, your drives will still work but not at full speed. TBH i never noticed that big a difference between SATA and SATA II when they are in a raid 0 config anyway.

Link to motherboard specs: http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=RD480_Neo2-FI&class=mb
 
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Afraid Im of no help but Im following this post as well as another xfire overclocking thread as Im looking to go xfire soon and a bit worried about not being to overclock both cards in in crossfire, I assumed It was like SLI where the overclock automatically applied to both cards seems I assumed wrong???
 
turtle3 said:
Afraid Im of no help but Im following this post as well as another xfire overclocking thread as Im looking to go xfire soon and a bit worried about not being to overclock both cards in in crossfire, I assumed It was like SLI where the overclock automatically applied to both cards seems I assumed wrong???
Click to expand...

There is a reason for that Turtle3.

In SLI you must have 2 identical cards. With crossfire, as long as you have a CF edition card, the second card can be any radeon card, as it acts as a slave, therefore applying the same settings to the cards could cause major problems....
 
Yeah you can apply different settings to both cards. Problem being that CCC only lets you change the settings on the master card. ATI tools will apprently let you alter the settings on both but i have read it only stores the settings for one card when you reboot. Im prime testing my CPU overclock at the moment but will be taking a look at my cards and ATI tool later on. Will update this thread with what i find as it doesnt seem like anyone else has done it (or wants to post about it).
 
Soul Rider said:
There is a reason for that Turtle3.

In SLI you must have 2 identical cards. With crossfire, as long as you have a CF edition card, the second card can be any radeon card, as it acts as a slave, therefore applying the same settings to the cards could cause major problems....
Click to expand...


Ahh I didnt realise crossfire could use two completely different cards, Wouldnt that be a bit pointless though?? surely the system would ony work as fast as your slowest card, eg x1800xt and x1900xt in crossfire = speed of two 1800xt's, or am I completely wrong?? Thanks for the info :)
 
Taken from ATi site crossfire FAQ

7. What happens when your CrossFire Edition card and and a compatible standard Radeon (CrossFire Ready) graphics card have different clock speeds?

A. Both cards will continue to operate at their individual clock speeds.

So you can have an x1900xtx master card and as long as it was a compatable slave card you could put an x800 in as a slave and still get a performance boost (maybe not quite that low as if one card has less pipes then the other they both run with lower pipes).

Im in the middle of overclocking my master card at the moment and so far it is dead easy to do. Will write it up in a bit more detail once i have done both cards and tested them.
 
If thats correct that would be a fantastic feature, adding an extra card of any kind for a performance boost :cool: have to have a read up later :)
 
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