Crossfire question

exoplasm

So I got a second 5770, making a pair for crossfire. I have it running and so far everything seems okay.

I do have one concern, though: It turns out my 2nd pci-e 16x slot only runs at 4x when the first one is in use (god damn you motherboard marketing department!). Is this slow enough to make crossfire not worthwhile? As far as I know, I can't switch both slots into 8x mode, its stuck with one 16x and one 4x.

Thoughts?

Edit: I assume it doesn't work well in Source engine games as L4D2 and Alien Swarm both behave erratically.

Edit 2: Alright, I guess crossfire isn't for me. It seems most of my games have trouble with it.

Edit 3: So it turns out crossfire works fine if I disable my second and third monitors, or use eyefinity mode. That really sucks because eyefinity isn't great in a lot of games (ui is at the edge of my vision) and having to disable my extra monitors while gaming kind of defeats the purpose of having them.

Le sigh.

TychoCelchuuu

Using two video cards for anything other than having a dedicated PhysX processor is typically not a good idea, and even the PhysX thing is only a good idea if you've got a card lying around that can do it.

Actually I think nVidia's SLI might be a lot better these days. Dunno.

exoplasm

Yeah, at first I dismissed crossfire as being garbage when I was getting crashing/BSOD, but once I figured out the monitor thing... I dunno.

On the one hand, it's really cool to have 5870 performance without spending $Texas to achieve it. On the other hand, I don't like Eyefinity and I don't like disabling my second monitors.

I should just return both my 5770's and get a 5850, but I think I will settle for just one 5770 for the time being.

Unless someone knows how to make my setup work correctly.

Roland_tHTG

Can you make a quick config to disable/enable the monitors in the ATI control center?

Synthesis

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

Using two video cards for anything other than having a dedicated PhysX processor is typically not a good idea, and even the PhysX thing is only a good idea if you've got a card lying around that can do it.

Actually I think nVidia's SLI might be a lot better these days. Dunno.

I think this has switched back and forth. It used to be that Crossfire was nice because most games could take advantage of it (but there were very few motherboards that allowed for it).

Now, it seems more games are SLI ready (I'm using 8800GT SLI myself) than Crossfire.

It might be best just to go with one card, really. At this point, I'd be reluctant to buy one card with two chipsets (ex: 5850x2) for the same reasons.

exoplasm

Roland_tHTG wrote: »

Can you make a quick config to disable/enable the monitors in the ATI control center?

I suppose this is possible. I honestly have no idea because even though CCC has more options than nVidia's control panel, it is completely alien to me and seems like whoever designed it isn't from this dimension.

This is my first time using ATI graphics.