ATI Crossfire - both cards the same?

[wseyller]

I am interested in adding another video card

I currently have an HIS Radeon HD 4850 - currently unavailable at newegg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161244

I got it for 79.99 after $20 rebate & free shipping back in july 09.

I look on ebay so far the best I see for the same card is $115. Makes me feel good that I got a good deal.

Closest model I can find on newegg is http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161290 which is $129.99 plus free shipping

I only researched for a few minutes but is it true that I can crossfire with a different card as long it is in the 4800 series.

First I want to upgrade from cpu/mobo/ram from AM2 to a good AM3. If I remember my board doesn't even have pci-express 2.0 profile. So maybe my mobo with chipset RS690/RS690M & athlon 4000+ at 2.1ghz & 2GB memory is a bottle neck for my current 4850 gpu. I will probably upgrade those first to see how I do.

As for the application of it all I am getting back into gaming. Don't have a particular game I want to play except maybe Battlefield Bad Company 2. I want to be able to play BF3 well when it decides to come out. I am wanting to try out some newer games to see how well I like them and how well I can run them. I recent played Crysis to try it out and on medium settings it ran ok, with some lag spike here and there on 720p. I have a nice 1020p monitor now and want to run most anything at decent settings.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

You should be able to crossfire different brands of cards together if thats what you mean.

http://game.amd.com/us-en/content/images/crossfirex/CF_combo_chart.jpg

You can also crossfire different cards together if you look at that chart. For example a 5750 with a 5770 though i'm not sure how well that would scale (probably optimal to just get 2 of the same cards though).

Keep in mind different games scale better or worse with crossfire. Look at benchmarks to make sure that it's worth it for whatever games you want to play though most recent games will work well with crossfire and if they don't updates will fix that soon after release.

 

[blanketyblank]

Yes a 4850 should be able to crossfire with any other 48XX card including 4830,4870, and 4890. However doing so might limit your other card. From what I've read 4850 with a 4870 acts like 2 x 4850 most of the time. However 5770 and 5750 acts like something in between 2 x 5750 and 2 x 5770.