SLI / CrossFire FAQs

[Maziar]

Edited with some new information about X58/P55 and new VGA cards.

 

[aurik]

Does anyone know what the status of Eyefinity under Crossfire support is? I'm going to be building a new system and want to do an Eyefinity setup. I'd love to use a ATI 5870, but those are soooo hard to find right now. Can I do it with a pair of 5770's?

 

[Maziar]

Currently only HD 5790 supports CrossFire with eyefinity,cards like 5750/5770/5850 and 5870 still doesn't support CrossFire with eyefinity

 

[pwndeta]

Do the cards have to be same model?
I answer it with an example:
You have a NVIDIA Geforce 7800GTX 256, and you want to add another card , the second card has to be 7800GTX exactly.

Could you clarify/update this section. This is not accurate for AMD cards now as you can do mixed crossfire (ex: 4850+4870). Not sure about SLI.

 

[Maziar]

Very good point,just edited it thanks a lot for mentioning

 

[Maziar]

Hey
What is your motheboard? what resolution are you going to play and how much would you like to spend ?

 

[Maziar]

No problem

 

[muhd86]

i want to go for tri sli gts-250 512mb xfx models , allready have 2 cant sell em but i can get another , only thing left is the x58 mobo for now which i will get in a couple of days .

just wanted to know will tri sli gts-250 beat 2 4870 in crossfire or a single gtx-260 or gtx-275 for that matter.

also guys i have only limited options for the mobo as well .


asus p6t deluxe / msi x58 platnium or in the end plain old intel x58 smackover mobo .

please help .

 

[Maziar]

What resolution are you going to play at ?

 

[Maziar]

For FSX,a good CPU (which you already have) is needed,what resolution do you play at ?

 

[Maziar]

An ATI HD 5850 would do the job well

 

[Tenshi75]

Thanks for the great information. I am a novice and I just built a i7 920, 3-sli, but only have one 9800 gtx video card for now, and I was having trouble adjusting the graphics on the game. Other graphics looks great, but when I try to play cov or coh, the graphics looked really rough....choppy like. Any suggestions on how to fix this issue will greatly be appreciated.

 

[nukemaster]

If by choppy you mean rough on the edges as opposed to choppy bad FPS, read on

In COH/COV make sure AA is on, that game looks extremely jaggy without it. COH/COV is more cpu dependent then anything so, AA should not hit you too hard.

You will have to enable advanced settings(Menu->Options->Graphics and Sound, enable Advanced Graphics settings). Also, the bloom effects can hide some of the rough edges.

If you think you have a fps issue, in the chat bar type /showfps 1 and you can see your fps(top right) and make adjustments and see how they work(always leave the menu to test, it oddly enough can effect fps as does the WW/BM screens). Sometimes Vsync causes big hits in fps on this game(sudden drops). But with it off you get page tearing. So test it out. Also remember certain times fps drops are not avoidable. Invasions are one of those times.

I do not think COH/COV will get a boost from SLI/Xfire

Hope this helps, have fun.

EDIT, Also enable triple buffering for COH/COV in the Nvidia control panel.

 

[Maziar]

Do what nuke said,if it didn't help post a screenshot please,also what is the resolution you are playing and how much FPS do you get ?

 

[Tenshi75]

If by choppy you mean rough on the edges as opposed to choppy bad FPS, read on

In COH/COV make sure AA is on, that game looks extremely jaggy without it. COH/COV is more cpu dependent then anything so, AA should not hit you too hard.

You will have to enable advanced settings(Menu->Options->Graphics and Sound, enable Advanced Graphics settings). Also, the bloom effects can hide some of the rough edges.

If you think you have a fps issue, in the chat bar type /showfps 1 and you can see your fps(top right) and make adjustments and see how they work(always leave the menu to test, it oddly enough can effect fps as does the WW/BM screens). Sometimes Vsync causes big hits in fps on this game(sudden drops). But with it off you get page tearing. So test it out. Also remember certain times fps drops are not avoidable. Invasions are one of those times.

I do not think COH/COV will get a boost from SLI/Xfire

Hope this helps, have fun.

EDIT, Also enable triple buffering for COH/COV in the Nvidia control panel.[/quotemsg


Thank you so much Nuke

I didn't really need to build one with this spec, but my husband do alot of video editing so I figured if I'm going to build one, I might as well build a decent one.

Anyway, it was a pretty simple fix. He went to Nvidia site and update the driver (even though windows says everything was up to date) and that seemed to fix the issue

 

[Maziar]

Windows doesn't say anything about the VGA,if you don't install the VGA driver from Nvidia/ATI site,windows automatically installs a display driver for you which is a basic driver just to show your graphic card is showing images.
So you have to install the latest driver from Nvidia/ATI site,glad your problem is fixed now

 

[russianbossman97301]

hybrid sli and ati crossfire are a waste of time and actually decrease performance

 

[nukemaster]

hybrid sli and ati crossfire are a waste of time and actually decrease performance

That depends greatly on the game/drivers. Some get a great boost others run a bit slower or the same as a single card. Not a waste for those games that use it.

 

[Maziar]

hybrid sli and ati crossfire are a waste of time and actually decrease performance

Can you prove it with some links please ?
Hybrid SLI/CF may not give a great performance boost in games but i don't think they will decrease performance

 

[Maziar]

Yes because its a CPU limited game,so it benefits more from a fast CPU than a VGA

 

[Maziar]

Edited with some information about pairing cards in multiGPU mode.

 

[cris_35]

Hi. Is it possible to run a 9400GT 1GB and a 6800GT 256MB on the same board? It's an SLi board in a Dell XPS 600 with 2GB Ram

Cheers

Cris

 

[Maziar]

Hello and welcome to the forums
Did you even read the first page no its not possible because the cards have to be the same

 

[cris_35]

Ahh. Sorry I did try to keep up with the first page but it's all a little too in depth for me. Oh well not to worry then. I guess I'll just have to get another 9400. I just want to be able to play Assassins creed 2 without any hiccups when it come out

 

[Maziar]

Don't do it,because 9400GT isn't a high-end card,even 2 of them won't perform well,go with a single fast card if your budget allows otherwise don't waste your money on getting another 9400GT