Crossfire Compatibility

[Intelman07]

I'm curious if crossfire is compatbile with almost all games, or does the game specifically have to support it. I am tore between a 4850 crossfire or a single 4870. This will be at 1680x1050.

I like to use AA when I can. Also with my Asus P5E board, all I need is a Crossfire Bridge right?

I really don't care which I get, I just really need input from other people. I kind of like to keep things simple when I can, so the single card is tempting, as long as it would be powerful enough. Currently COD 4 online sometimes stutters, but barely. It is just enough to tick me off though. I can also use a little more performance in flight sim.

Thanks guys, I really do appreciate it!

 

[SergeC]

At that res, I'd stick with a single card. A 4870 will be more than enough for anything out now (except crysis @ ultra high, of course)

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I don't know if this will help you or if you want to do this but on my 1900XTX with my old FX60, I got really good fps. Sometimes 200's I found one of the biggest factors in performance was the desktop 'Mipmap' setting. Quality would drop my fps. Performance I would rarely see 60's ... but this is also at 1280x1024. But so you know where you might want to look for some performance and i don't mean to insult you if you already know this.

Seeing you have an Asus P5E, I'd go for the 4870

 

[Sylvanas]

The P5E is an X38 board right? If so, there's nothing wrong with 4850 CF it will be faster for everything you'll play but a single 4870 would be fine also- for the sake of simplicity I'd just get a single 4870.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: Sylvanas
The P5E is an X38 board right? If so, there's nothing wrong with 4850 CF it will be faster for everything you'll play but a single 4870 would be fine also- for the sake of simplicity I'd just get a single 4870.

Yep, the P5E is an X38 board. It's basically a stripped down Formula Maximus without the ROG extras. It has a different color scheme, heatsink, less mobo fan headers, and no on board reset/pwr switches. The P5E label is actually a sticker on the mobo covering up the "Formula Maximus" printed on the PCB. Not sure about the BIOS options, but they seem to be adequate for my OCing needs.

To the OP: Crossfire bridges come with ATI cards, not the motherboards as they do with SLI boards. So, no worries there.

Personally, I'd go with the 4870... As a matter of fact, I have a recently purchased P5E, and I just ordered a 4870 from Newegg today.

 

[Intelman07]

Just FYI, I got the Sapphire HD 4870 and absolutely love it. Crysis doesn't run better enough to where I can kill people online....it is amazing.

My only complaint now is the drivers are kinda buggy. I have a two users machine, one non admin, and one admin. When I logout to switch users, my welcome screen becomes black, so I have to reboot. The 8.7 Betas haven't fixed it.