Crossfire Support

[Scott Webber]

Hey guys,

it's me again , just a noob question really, im totally new to this 2x graphics crossfire stuff

i currently have a XFX Core Edition Radeon HD 7870 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card , and im looking to buy another one, simple fact is , the 2GB is not enough for my triple screens, it needs more power, especially for me to run my games on High or Ultra.

Silly Question but what do i do? i heard it's very easy, buy the card (well obviously ) , then plug in the graphics card to the secondary slot on your MB, and attach a crossfire wire (which i have btw) , it comes with the card, then i activated it in the control center? is it really that simple?

 

[Scott Webber]

no1 knows about crossfire?

 

[Strahil Kotlarov]

Its very simple as you said, the same goes for nvidia,just plug the second video card under the first one,attach the sli/crossfire bridge,after you boot up just go to your ccc/ncp and enable your crossfire or sli tech,and thats it pretty much.

 

[Jordi Casademunt]

1 warning.

If you go Crossfire, you won't double your VRAM. You will have only 2GB.

If you really need more VRAM, your choices would be buying a 7950/7970 or a 680 4GB (expensive!). The next generation should be around the corner though, so it might be worth waiting a bit. But if you're lacking VRAM, Crossfire will certainly not help at all.

If you are not sure if you need more Vram or not, a gpu monitor would help (if you're not already using one). I use MSI Afterburner (http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm), it should work with any card regardless of the maker.

 

[Scott Webber]

Jordi Casademunt my 1 card is struggling with the high graphics on 3 screens, i got told if i go crossfire this would solve the problem?

 

[Jordi Casademunt]

Well, it depends on if it needs more computing power, or more vram.

To be honest, in most sims, 2GB of vram should be enough, they don't seem to use too much, while adding a second card in crossfire would improve the performance.

My first step would be checking how much Vram you use while playing your sims. Check a few for good measure (modern ones should use more vram). If it gets to 2GB, or very close to it (around 1.9GB or so) then crossfire won't help. A lack of vram will usually cause heavy stuttering, but not neccesarily low fps.

 

[Scott Webber]

Well, it depends on if it needs more computing power, or more vram.

To be honest, in most sims, 2GB of vram should be enough, they don't seem to use too much, while adding a second card in crossfire would improve the performance.

My first step would be checking how much Vram you use while playing your sims. Check a few for good measure (modern ones should use more vram). If it gets to 2GB, or very close to it (around 1.9GB or so) then crossfire won't help. A lack of vram will usually cause heavy stuttering, but not neccesarily low fps.

ok, so with MSI , what am i looking for when i run it? i have no idea what to look for, is it in the actual programme when playing a game or the pink text on the screen when im ingame?

Thanks

 

[Jordi Casademunt]

It should look like the attached image, just check the max value at "Memory usage, MB" after playing for a while.

 

[Victor Ivanov]

Crossfire won't double the RAM. You will still have 2 GB RAM for each card but as far as I know it will load same textures twice. If you won't more ram the option is ASUS 7970 3GB.