Crossfire setup

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: AmberClad

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder
For whatever it's worth I looked in my motherboard box, and I have an MSI branded bridge there. I looked in my 4870 box and I also have one in there. My MSI one is a flexible ribbon type, the Sapphire one is rigid. Guess it's up to the manufacturers.

It seems that way. I didn't get a Crossfire bridge with my ASUS board, but I did get a ribbon bridge with my Visiontek card.

I wonder if it's more common to see the Crossfire bridge included with the higher end cards.

I'm also kind of curious why ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte chose to include the bridge with their cards, and not with their motherboards.

well it's less common to see interconnect bridges with cheaper partners .. like Sapphire

i am guessing that AMD wants the bridges bundled with the GPUs and Nvidia wants theirs together with the MBs

either way seems to work .. i remember being stuck by buying Sapphire last time and not having one included with either my 2900p or 4870
- but then the cheapskates charge you $15 for a "RMA application" .. which is probably not even legal

 

[octopus41092]

I got crossfire bridges with both my video cards. My Powercolor X1950 Pro and my ASUS HD4850. Maybe they're just trying to save money now. I don't use either of them so I can understand if they choose not to put them in.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder

Originally posted by: nitromullet

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
Bridges are supposed to come with the motherboards that support CF or SLI. Not with the cards.

This is true.

As has already been stated, this is the case for SLI but not CF. This is one of the few benefits of NVIDIA's SLI certification/licensing program over ATI's simple compatibility approach. Although, I was under the impression that ATI required a bridge to be shipped with their CF compatible cards.

For whatever it's worth I looked in my motherboard box, and I have an MSI branded bridge there. I looked in my 4870 box and I also have one in there. My MSI one is a flexible ribbon type, the Sapphire one is rigid. Guess it's up to the manufacturers.

I'm guessing that they did that because that board has four PEG slots for a CF X 4-way option, which is not very common. From looking at the color coding on the slots, it looks like they are in an A/B, A/B config - meaning that if you were running 2-way CF, you would use the A1(1st) and A2 (3rd) slots to achieve 16x/16x CF. To do this would require you to span three empty slots instead of the usual one made possible by the standard CF bridges supplied with (most) CF capable cards.

...makes more sense when you look at the board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...therboard%20-%20Retail

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: AmberClad

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder
For whatever it's worth I looked in my motherboard box, and I have an MSI branded bridge there. I looked in my 4870 box and I also have one in there. My MSI one is a flexible ribbon type, the Sapphire one is rigid. Guess it's up to the manufacturers.

It seems that way. I didn't get a Crossfire bridge with my ASUS board, but I did get a ribbon bridge with my Visiontek card.

I wonder if it's more common to see the Crossfire bridge included with the higher end cards.

I'm also kind of curious why ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte chose to include the bridge with their cards, and not with their motherboards.

well it's less common to see interconnect bridges with cheaper partners .. like Sapphire

i am guessing that AMD wants the bridges bundled with the GPUs and Nvidia wants theirs together with the MBs

either way seems to work .. i remember being stuck by buying Sapphire last time and not having one included with either my 2900p or 4870
- but then the cheapskates charge you $15 for a "RMA application" .. which is probably not even legal

I bought a Sapphire HD4850 and it came with a bridge.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Originally posted by: nitromullet

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder

Originally posted by: nitromullet

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
Bridges are supposed to come with the motherboards that support CF or SLI. Not with the cards.

This is true.

As has already been stated, this is the case for SLI but not CF. This is one of the few benefits of NVIDIA's SLI certification/licensing program over ATI's simple compatibility approach. Although, I was under the impression that ATI required a bridge to be shipped with their CF compatible cards.

For whatever it's worth I looked in my motherboard box, and I have an MSI branded bridge there. I looked in my 4870 box and I also have one in there. My MSI one is a flexible ribbon type, the Sapphire one is rigid. Guess it's up to the manufacturers.

I'm guessing that they did that because that board has four PEG slots for a CF X 4-way option, which is not very common. From looking at the color coding on the slots, it looks like they are in an A/B, A/B config - meaning that if you were running 2-way CF, you would use the A1(1st) and A2 (3rd) slots to achieve 16x/16x CF. To do this would require you to span three empty slots instead of the usual one made possible by the standard CF bridges supplied with (most) CF capable cards.

...makes more sense when you look at the board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...therboard%20-%20Retail

Yea, that makes sense. That's probably why they included the ribbon-type bridge, it's longer than it needs to be for using the adjacent slots, but because it's flexible it can be used in the adjecant slots if you wanted too. It certainly is pretty cool that this board offers 2 x 16xPCIE or 4 x 8xPCIE... of course I'll never use it, so it really doesn't matter to me.

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: AmberClad

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder
For whatever it's worth I looked in my motherboard box, and I have an MSI branded bridge there. I looked in my 4870 box and I also have one in there. My MSI one is a flexible ribbon type, the Sapphire one is rigid. Guess it's up to the manufacturers.

It seems that way. I didn't get a Crossfire bridge with my ASUS board, but I did get a ribbon bridge with my Visiontek card.

I wonder if it's more common to see the Crossfire bridge included with the higher end cards.

I'm also kind of curious why ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte chose to include the bridge with their cards, and not with their motherboards.

well it's less common to see interconnect bridges with cheaper partners .. like Sapphire

i am guessing that AMD wants the bridges bundled with the GPUs and Nvidia wants theirs together with the MBs

either way seems to work .. i remember being stuck by buying Sapphire last time and not having one included with either my 2900p or 4870
- but then the cheapskates charge you $15 for a "RMA application" .. which is probably not even legal

I got a bridge with my Sapphire 4870, but I did get the 'Toxic' edition, so being their highest end single GPU card they probably chose to include a more complete bundle.