4890 Crossfire bridge question

[dhoke]

Hi Folks- I'm currently building a new system with two crossfired gigabyte 4890 oc cards. There is space for two crossfire bridge connectors on each card. Unfortunately, one of the connectors is partially blocked by the factory installed Zalman cooler. Most of the research I've done points to the idea that you only need one crossfire bridge for two 4890 single-gpu cards. This is also what ATI says. However, I came across this review by Jason Landals at Futurelooks.com while he was reviewing a Gigabyte 4890 video card on June 11, 2009.

"The other added bonus is a little bit of a head scratcher. It comes in the form of a single Crossfire bridge. This is weird because configuring any HD 4890 in Crossfire requires two of these bridges. I guess if you buy another GIGABYTE GV-R489-1GH-B video card this shouldn’t be an issue. On the other hand, if you buy another brand of card that doesn’t include a bridge, you’ll have to go find another one. Most CrossFire ready motherboards do seem to come with said bridges so it shouldn’t be that big of a deal."

I would like to know if he is correct or am I missing something.

 

[jeff77789]

Well, i used to have some HD4850's in crossfire and my story was that they worked FINE without the second bridge. I just added the second 1 later just for looks. Now im assuming that you have an aftermarket cooler on your GPU right????i think for you that 's what's getting in the way. so one is fine, but for me, my ati cards had a lot of artifacts on them so yea.....

 

[dhoke]

Hi Jeff--Thanks for the response. Gigabyte says that no crossfire bridge should be needed at all !!! Here is my question and response from Gigabyte:

Question:
"I purchased two of these cards for crossfire and now I am wondering if I can even use these in crossfire. If both crossfire bridges are needed then these cards are not crossfire-capable because one of the crossfire connection points is blocked by the aftermarket Zalman cooler! The Manual says to connect both crossfire bridges in the section on setting up the hardware although in the beginning of the manual it says 1 or 2 crossfire bridges needed in the section on crossfire hardware requirements. Please help--Thanks"

Response:
"No bridge should be needed, the ati software should allow for crossfire to be enable if you are using an Crossfire supported motherboard."

Are they Kidding??? I haven't purchased a motherboard, however, if Gigabyte is incorrect, I now know that I need a board with no more than two slots between the x16 slots so a 100 mm bridge (87 mm between connectors) can have enough slack to clear the cooler on the top card. There are 20 mm between slots on center.
Now I'm more confused than ever!

 

[leon2006]

You need at least 1 crossfire bridge for the CF feature to work.