Can I crossfire a MSI RAdeon HD 6970 with a Saphire technology 6970 on a ASROCK 970?

[dibidant]

Hello,

I recently bought a rig,

16 GB DDR3 RAm
8 Core AMD cpu
ASROCK 970M Pro3 (micro atx)
1 MSI Radeon HD 6970
1 Saphire Technologies HD 6970

Both are crossfire compatible, with hookups, and my board supports 2 PCI x16 (1x16, 2x4)
I am building a case for it as the sides of my current case block the fans.
I have tried putting the both in, but can't seem to get the whole shebang to work.
I am wandering if they are compatible, first of all and also how to activate crossfire in the bios.
Any thoughts,
Thanks,
D

 

[weberdarren97]

Although the cards are plenty compatible and would have no problem doing Crossfire on a board with the 990FX chipset and plenty of PCIe x16 slots, they won't do much good on that motherboard. You see, PCIe x4 simply isn't enough bandwidth for a fully functional graphics card. With that board, you will see almost no benefit from the second card.

You did not mention your power supply. You need a good quality unit before you can use more than one graphics card.

Also, I recommend the 990FX chipset for Crossfire.

8 Core AMD CPU is not enough information. I need to know the model.

On top of all that, I do not recommend SLI/Crossfire for multiple reasons:
1) Power consumption and heat output.
2) Support. Not all games support Crossfire. Many games will only use one card at a time, even though there are multiple cards that are properly installed and ready to be used.
3) Non-linear scaling. Adding a second card does not double performance. If the game is well optimized for Crossfire, you'll see about a 40-50% performance increase, assuming your CPU can keep up with both graphics cards.
4) Microstutter. Because of the time it takes for the signal to get from one card to another before it's displayed, any Microstutter is greatly amplified by adding a second card. Having a high framerate in games is not all that's necessary for a good experience. If there's a lot of stuttering and the motion is not smooth, then the higher framerate isn't nearly as pleasing as it would otherwise be.

 

[dibidant]

Yeah, I'm probably just gonna use one of the two Saphires that I bought till I can sell them both.
My Processor is an AMD FX 8320, and I'm hoping that alone boosts gaming performance over my previos 3.0 quad core. I am playing Train Fever and I can't get by without some lag, so maybe that will help. What would be a good upgrade from the 6970? Obviously a single card, and something that will fit micro atx. Maybe a newer version of AMD's line?

 

[weberdarren97]

AMD FX CPUs suffer from low IPC. Also, their cores are not fully utilized by Windows. I'll use the AMD FX 8350 for example (it's the 8320's big brother). I had this CPU for a while. And even though it boasts eight cores, each pair of cores only have one single point of entry, creating a bottleneck at the scheduler level within the CPU. Because of this, Windows sees the CPU as a quad core with eight logical processors. Also, because of low IPC, it's 5.2GHz stable overclock feels like my i7 6700K at 3.0GHz with Hyperthreading disabled. It's funny because I though I had this bad*** CPU and in reality it wasn't all that great.

I started doing some research and found that core count and clock speed are nowhere near the full story of how fast a CPU will "feel" to the user.

As for the new card, please don't use AMD with that CPU unless it's from the new RX 4xx lineup. You see, other AMD cards are capable of what's called parallelized processing. This means that certain clusters of Stream Processors can focus on a task while other clusters handle another task. This greatly improves DirectX 12 performance, but it also puts a heavier load on the CPU as the card now demands data at a faster rate.

The exception to this trend is the RX 4xx series. They exhibit parallelized processing capabilities, but the newer Polaris architecture greatly improves GPU processing capability while reducing the load on the CPU.

Basically, you're left with the choice of the power of an Nvidia card vs the DirectX 12 optimization of the new AMD cards.

Personally, I recommend the RX 480. HW Bench recommendation. GPU Boss recommendation.

 

[dibidant]

Thank you so much! I love the willingness to help and all the in depth explanations and research. I will definetly go with what you say, and see how everything works out. I simply went with AMD because it was cheaper, but i am not likely to buy an older (2011) CPU again. Also, Micro ATX sucks. Now i have to go through pawning off the two crossfire GPUs. I will do as though say, oh great computing master... However, i must ask if you suggest anything cheaper? Right now I have about $130 and Ebay to work with, so anything used would work too.

Thanks

 

[weberdarren97]

The RX 470 comes at a price that may be closer to your budget. It has less Stream Processors and therefore has less total compute power, but it still holds its ground against the RX 480 in most cases. Of course, because it's Polaris, it struggles with OpenGL games, but excels in DirectX12 and Vulkan. DirectX11 performance is kind of meh, buy hey you get what you pay for. I think a new card with this much power for under $200 is a great deal.

Here's a helpful YouTube video.