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Benefits of Crossfire???????

Benefits of Crossfire???????

Postby yeshuas » Mon Jun 30, 2008 3:03 pm

I am confused!!!!!!!!!!

I have never really understood how Crossfire worked, but why would I take a PCI-E 2.0 X16 card, and then take another exact card, add it to a system, enable Crossfire, and then have them run at X8.

Can somebody explain this to me please?

Am I missing some other advantage?
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Postby Absolute-Zero » Mon Jun 30, 2008 3:34 pm

Are both of the PCIe slots in the mobo x16 capable?
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Postby yeshuas » Mon Jun 30, 2008 3:37 pm

Absolute-Zero wrote:Are both of the PCIe slots in the mobo x16 capable?

Yes it has two slots capable of X16, just not at the same time :confused even using Crossfire
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Postby Absolute-Zero » Mon Jun 30, 2008 3:42 pm

Yep, just been reading. Apparently it's a limitation of the P45 chipset, it can't run two cards in crossfire at the full x16.
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Postby yeshuas » Mon Jun 30, 2008 3:50 pm

Absolute-Zero wrote:Yep, just been reading. Apparently it's a limitation of the P45 chipset, it can't run two cards in crossfire at the full x16.

This Crossfire setup to me is like a sack race, my twin and I can each run at a speed of 10 miles and hour, but put a sack on one of each of our legs and we can only run half that speed connected together.
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Postby freeagent » Tue Jul 01, 2008 3:39 pm

theres nothing wrong with crossfire. on my p5k deluxe (p35) it has 2 x16 slots, but one is electrically x4.. someone should have done some research ;)

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Postby yeshuas » Tue Jul 01, 2008 3:55 pm

freeagent wrote:theres nothing wrong with crossfire. on my p5k deluxe (p35) it has 2 x16 slots, but one is electrically x4.. someone should have done some research ;)

:lol:


What does that mean, but one is electrically X4

mine actually has 3 - x16 slots, but if you try to use 2 of them in crossfire they fall back to x8. I agree I should have done more research on the board
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Postby Absolute-Zero » Tue Jul 01, 2008 4:03 pm

Oddly enough, I think that two of the x16 slots are actually sharing the bandwidth. They'll run as x16 if you use them individually but only as x8 if you try to use them together....

...or something like that!
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Postby yeshuas » Tue Jul 01, 2008 4:15 pm

Absolute-Zero wrote:Oddly enough, I think that two of the x16 slots are actually sharing the bandwidth. They'll run as x16 if you use them individually but only as x8 if you try to use them together....

...or something like that!

That is my understanding as well, thus I don't see the advantage for the consumer or end user as it were. I can see using 2 cards if you want to run say 4 LCD's but then you would n't hook them together in crossfire mode. There is suppose to be some advantage to crossfire and then connecting to 1 LCD, but I ain't a seein et. or hearing it other than the hype from ATI

I do see the advantage for the manufacturer, the wholesaler, the retailer, they sell twice as many cards...........
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Postby Absolute-Zero » Tue Jul 01, 2008 5:28 pm

The thing is, the problem doesn't affect ALL chipsets, only certain ones. On the x38 and x48 chipsets you CAN run Crossfire at the full x16 that's advertised.

Have a look at this.
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