Crossfire witht his card

[Computear]

Crossfire and SLI have to be with 2 of the exact same cards

Yes and no.

IIRC: SLI requires the same card for compatibility, Crossfire is compatible with any same-generation cards.

you cant crossfire a 4870(x2) with a 4850(x2).

Yes you can. You can't, for example, SLI a GTX 260 and GTX 275, or Crossfire a 3300 and 4850 (different generation cards).


HOWEVER: If you crossfire a card with a lower card (i.e. 4890 with a 4850) it drags down the performance to the clock speeds of the lower card, so a 4890 + 4850 in crossfire would be equal to having 2x 4850s in crossfire.

 

[Atomic Rooster]

MARIOPARTY53 -
Can you please supply us with the specs of the rest of your system? Throwing another video card in there may not be the best solution.

 

[Computear]

"When in doubt, add more videocard" isn't a great idea.

List the rest of your specs, there are other places you can improve; or I'd even recommend overclocking before throwing a pile of GPUs into your case.

 

[sniperviper21]

Yes and no.

IIRC: SLI requires the same card for compatibility, Crossfire is compatible with any same-generation cards.




Yes you can. You can't, for example, SLI a GTX 260 and GTX 275, or Crossfire a 3300 and 4850 (different generation cards).


HOWEVER: If you crossfire a card with a lower card (i.e. 4890 with a 4850) it drags down the performance to the clock speeds of the lower card, so a 4890 + 4850 in crossfire would be equal to having 2x 4850s in crossfire.

sry, i shouldnt have put that, i was typing for the red team and thinking of the green team


its been a bad day, my apologies.

 

[Computear]

sry, i shouldnt have put that, i was typing for the red team and thinking of the green team


its been a bad day, my apologies.

Np; just making sure he gets the right info

In either case (SLI or Crossfire) its not a good idea to combine 2 different cards anyway. 1 won't work, and 1 you're just gimping 1 of your cards.

 

[sniperviper21]

the best advise i could say is,

Either spend the money ud spend on 2 cards, and get 1 really powerfull kick ass card, 4890 atomic/Toxic from ATI or a GTX 295 from Nvidia

could be your CPU being the bottleneck as well.

 

[Computear]

the best advise i could say is,

Either spend the money ud spend on 2 cards, and get 1 really powerfull kick ass card, 4890 atomic/Toxic from ATI or a GTX 295 from Nvidia

could be your CPU being the bottleneck as well.

Pretty sure Crysis has good driver support for dual GPU setups; in which case the 4850X2 would outperform either of those cards.

Need to know the rest of the specs to make further recommendations, but if he wants to push his computer a bit harder he could just OC his CPU, GPU, & RAM.

 

[MARIOPARTY53]

OK rest of specs are
Cpu quad core 3.4 (with oc)
4gb of ram

 

[sniperviper21]

which quad core?

 

[_-..zKiLLA..-_]

Then what exactly is the point of this -.-
http://ati.amd.com/technology/crossfire/charts.html

Woah i learn somethin new everyday