Crossfire on an SLI Board

[christopherzombie]

I love my Asus M2N32-SLI-DX mobo and want to upgrade my graphics with a 2900XT. And I plan to get another card for multi-GPU gaming later on, but I don't want another mobo! Are there any driver hacks out there where I can enable crossfire on an nVidia chipset?

 

[aka1nas]

AMD/ATI claims that it will work on any platform with 2 x16 slots. I don't know that anyone has actually tested it on Nforce boards in the last year or so, though.

 

[tvdang7]

i wanna try crossfire 2600 xt's where do we get these hacked drivers everone talks about. i have an sli board also.

 

[aka1nas]

AMD/ATI was claiming that the Cats do not do any chipset detection for Crossfire support. Make sure you can return a card if you want to try, I'm not terribly confident as no one has said they have gotten it working AFAIK.

 

[airhendrix13]

I remember when crossfire first came out, you needed a crossfire enabled motherboard to support it, but maybe with the new GPU's that's different now.

 

[tvdang7]

so whats stopping the cards from working? mobo bios? hardware it self?

 

[aka1nas]

Well, with SLI the drivers are locked down to prevent them from working on unauthorized chipsets. AMD/ATI has repeatedly said this is not the case with Crossfire, but they will only support it on Crossfire boards and some Intel chipsets. Due to the cost of buying two cards and ATI not having a competitive solution since G80 came out, it's possible that no one was interested enough in trying to test if it can be made to work on SLI boards.

 

[gregor7777]

If someone wants to send me their 2900's to test it out on my K9N Diamond I'd be happy to post results

 

[tvdang7]

i was thinking more 2600's

 

[Bateluer]

Why are so many people so keen on Crossfire or SLI mid range cards lately? We didn't learn from the GF6600s, the X16x0s, and the GF7600s? Its not worth the investment when a single high end card, or in some cases, yesterday's high end card, outperform your dual video card solution.

I would be interested in knowing if Crossfire works on a 680i chipset though, for dual 2900XTs.

 

[gregor7777]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Why are so many people so keen on Crossfire or SLI mid range cards lately? We didn't learn from the GF6600s, the X16x0s, and the GF7600s? Its not worth the investment when a single high end card, or in some cases, yesterday's high end card, outperform your dual video card solution.

I would be interested in knowing if Crossfire works on a 680i chipset though, for dual 2900XTs.

I think mostly it's the desire to play around with toys. SLI is kind of a "new" thing, and this is a PC hardware forum, so I bet a lot of it is based in curiosity.

 

[bluefoam]

yeah... drop a little loot on a single gtx and spank a midrange sli

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: gregor7777

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Why are so many people so keen on Crossfire or SLI mid range cards lately? We didn't learn from the GF6600s, the X16x0s, and the GF7600s? Its not worth the investment when a single high end card, or in some cases, yesterday's high end card, outperform your dual video card solution.

I would be interested in knowing if Crossfire works on a 680i chipset though, for dual 2900XTs.

I think mostly it's the desire to play around with toys. SLI is kind of a "new" thing, and this is a PC hardware forum, so I bet a lot of it is based in curiosity.

It's probably also a little to do with the current high-end cards not having all of the multi-media functionality such as full h.264 acceleration while at the same time the new mid-range cards that do have these features aren't all that impressive in gaming. Doesn't make SLI or Crossfire with those cards any more reasonable, but I could see where people might be interested in such a setup.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Why are so many people so keen on Crossfire or SLI mid range cards lately? We didn't learn from the GF6600s, the X16x0s, and the GF7600s? Its not worth the investment when a single high end card, or in some cases, yesterday's high end card, outperform your dual video card solution.

I would be interested in knowing if Crossfire works on a 680i chipset though, for dual 2900XTs.

I think a lot of the interest stems from the pricing on the mid-range high-end parts (GTS and X2900XTs). In a single card configuration these cards are generally slower than the fastest single-card solution (GTX/Ultra), maybe 25-30% or so, but in SLI they can perform as well or even see a 20-25% speed advantage for about the same price.

Personally I'd rather still get the fastest single-card solution, but people with a GTS or X2900XT might find it easier/more fun to go SLI than upgrade and then deal with selling their "old" card.