X1900XT CrossFire setup....advice request

[Ratneck]

I?ve read quite a bit on the topic of ?CrossFire? but I suppose it?s just not sinking in as well as it should?.so I figured I?d ask a few of the folks on here since, oddly enough, I value the opinion of anonymous posters on anandtech more then I do most ?commercial? reviews.

Anyhow, Here is my current system setup:

Motherboard: DFI Infinity 975X
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
Memory: 2x1GB G.Skill DDR2 800 SDRAM
Power Supply: Antec SmartPower 2.0 SP-500 500W Power Supply
Video: connect3D 3056 Radeon x1900XT 512MD GDDR3 PCI Express x16
DxDiag Info

So, I?m looking to upgrade my graphics card, but for as little money as possible. I?ve had this card since the only thing better was the XTX or the GT model, so I?m starting to lose the ability to set graphics at the top level and still get acceptable performance. I don?t overclock and I?m not overly into tweaking on settings a whole lot.

My motherboard manufacturer?s page says ?- CrossFire mode: The two x16 slots each operate at x8 bandwidth.? This leads me to believe that I can run a crossfire setup, although at a reduced bandwidth for each card.

My question is on a few layers?.
1) Can I indeed run a CrossFire setup at 8x on each card? I seem to remember seeing something on ATI?s site about needing 16x, but I?m not sure if that?s for one or both.
2) Will there be a performance improvement, or will the PCIE slots be a bottleneck?
3) Is it worth spending the $100-$150 (assuming I get a good price) to pick up a x1900 XT CF edition card? I have no intention of upgrading to DX10 or Vista until absolutely necessary, I.E. when XP is no longer a viable option. When I do that I?ll be buying a whole new setup.

Any help offered would be appreciated. I?m not looking to buy a whole new $250 or $300 graphics card, but I would be willing to upgrade my Power Supply if necessary?since I could always use a spare for an older system? and would like to get a 50%+ gain in improvement from my card.

Thanks!

P.S. I did my best to include all relevant information, if you need anything additional please feel free to ask.

 

[aka1nas]

It's really not a good idea. The Master cards are never cheap and the performance gain isn't very impressive. It would cost you about the same to sell your card and get a G80 or a 2900XT than to get a Master card most likely.

 

[Ratneck]

Ok, thanks. I had remembered reading that when I first looked at it when I bought the card, hence the reason I didn't get a "master". I didn't know if driver or firmware updates had made it better or not. I'm guessing the answer is not.

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: Ratneck
Ok, thanks. I had remembered reading that when I first looked at it when I bought the card, hence the reason I didn't get a "master". I didn't know if driver or firmware updates had made it better or not. I'm guessing the answer is not.

It's not so much that the Master Card is slow or anything, it's just that they are very low volume parts and as such they are hard to find and never really came down in price. I don't know where you would get one now except for AMD/ATI directly.

 

[bigsnyder]

Will the software only version of crossfire that I have heard about work without a master card?

 

[apoppin]

i don't you need a master card anymore ... not with the x1950 series ... and i believe you can also pair a x1950xt with an x1900xt
-Matt2 knows about this ... he was considering it - except it is noisy

i would also go to the AMD website and check out the PSes that are "approved" for x1900 xfire

that said ... i am considering hd2900xt X-fire when i can get a decent price on my 2nd card.
My MB is 1-16x PCIe slot plus 1-4xPCIe slot ... so you should be fine with 8X + 8X ...
-even 4xPCIe does not limit the bandwidth for the crossfired setup that much
[ask Stumps ... he has 2900xt in his 4x PCIe ASrock with good results!]

 

[silentvois]

Yeah, I'm also wondering the same thing, is there such thing as software Crossfire? I saw a review with X1950XTX doing software Crossfire. Dunno about X1900 though.

 

[apoppin]

no - x1800 needed the master card

-x1950 doesn't and will work with the x1900 i believe in Xfire
[no more external dongles, either; i have a little "bridge thing" to connect the parallel GPUs inside the case]

(edit: "bridge interconnect")

 

[silentvois]

So only software crossfire if you pair a x1950 with a x1900? Won't work with 2 slave x1900s?

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: silentvois
So only software crossfire if you pair a x1950 with a x1900? Won't work with 2 slave x1900s?

quite awhile ago i looked it up with Matt2 ... i believe, who was considering it for himself before he decided to sell his 1900xtx and just get a single 2900xt instead of CrossFire. This is what i remember ... and i am not 100% sure of the details and i lost my bookmarks on one of my 5 partitions.

i think there is a wiki that explains it ... i'll try and look for sure ... but i am sure some one knows with x190050 xfire

edit: easier than i thought:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_CrossFire

CrossFire was first made available to the public on September 27, 2005.[1]

The system requires a CrossFire-compliant motherboard with a pair of PCI Express (PCIe) graphics cards, which can be enabled via either hardware or software. Radeon x800s, x850s, x1800s and x1900s come in a 'CrossFire Edition' that has 'master' capability built into the hardware. One must buy a Master card, and pair it with a normal card from the same series. Radeon x1300s and x1600s have no 'CrossFire Edition' but are enabled via software. ATI currently has not created the infrastructure to allow FireGL cards to be set up in a CrossFire configuration. Another point to note is that the 'slave' graphics card needs to be from the same family as the 'master', regardless of whether the 'master' is designated by the hardware or by software.

An example of a past limitation in regards to a Master-card configuration would be the CrossFire implementation in the Radeon X850 XT Master Card using a compositing chip from Silicon Image (SiI 163B TMDS) which limits a X850 CrossFire setup to a resolution of 1600×1200 @60 Hz or 1920×1440 @52 Hz and was a problem for some CRT owners wishing to use CrossFire to play games at high resolutions. As many people would find a 60 Hz refresh rate with a CRT to strain ones eyes, the practical limit becomes 1280×1024, which did not push CrossFire enough to justify the cost.

However, with ATI's release of the new Motherboard Chipset named "CrossFire Xpress 3200", the 'master' card is no longer required for every "CrossFire Ready" card (with the exception of the Radeon X1900 series). With the CrossFire Xpress 3200, two normal cards can be run in a Crossfire setup. This move is viewed as an overall improvement in market strategy due to the fact that Crossfire Master cards are expensive, in very high demand, and largely unavailable at the retail level.

Although the CrossFire Xpress 3200 chipset is indeed capable of CrossFire through the PCI-e bus for every Radeon series below the X1900s, the driver accommodations for this CrossFire method has not yet materialized for the X1800 series. ATI has said that future revisions of the Catalyst driver suite will contain what is required for X1800 dongleless CrossFire, but has not yet mentioned a specific date.

With the release of the Radeon X1950 Pro (RV570 GPU), ATI has revised CrossFire's connection infrastructure to further eliminate the need for past Y-dongle/Master card and slave card configurations for CrossFire to operate. ATI's CrossFire connector is now a ribbon like connector attached to the top of each graphics adapter, similar to nVidia's SLi bridges, but different in physical and logical natures

but i am still not sure you can pair x1900 with x1950 i think that is another wiki

ok, from AMD's Crossfire FAQ site:

http://ati.amd.com/technology/crossfire/faq.html

X1950 XTX/X1950 CF or X1950 XTX/X1900 CF work

better be sure!

 

[silentvois]

I'm still deciding if I should do crossfire with X1900XT, I could get a mastercard for about $150. Only thing is I got a P5B Deluxe with P965 chipset and the second PCI-E connector only does 4x...

 

[apoppin]

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2858&p=3

a whole article on x1950 crossfire ... but i am too tired tonight to read it

aloha
:moon: