Crossfire Questions

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Ethereal_Dragon

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Been a long time everyone... It's been so long that I feel like a hardware NewB all over again. Lame.

Anywho... My rig is in my sig, SHOULD be correct, couple of TB short on the drives listed, but eh. Anyways, I'm finally getting my office set up again, computer has been shut down sitting up there for almost 18 months now. My plan is multiple monitors, a Dell 27", a Sony 19", and a 17" currently, will possibly grow. Right now I have the XFX 4780 single card, but the mobo supports crossfire. SOOOO, I'm not sure what to do to expand to the other monitors. I know a junky wimpy card would do it, but I was thinking with prices whatever are, maybe I could set up some crossfire action. Now, I'm not very familiar with it, but from what I gather, the cards need to be running around the same clock rates. If one card is faster, if will underclock itself to mat h the slower card, no? If that's the case, would it be better to get another 4870, or would it be worth-while to get a 6790 with dual dvi, hdmi and display port? If my thoughts are correct, the 6790 will underclock itself to match the 4870, which kind of
Defeats the purpose of looking at such a higher end model right?

As far as use goes, its been off for 18 months, so I have no new games, and I don't game too often, in addition to my first born coming in a month keeps the budget low. I play on getting BF3 at some point in the future, and I want multiple monitors, so what should I look into? Sittin here on my phone right now, so research is a bit of a PITA.

Thanks all!!

Could just be my phone, but it looks like my sig didn't show up.
 
Sig showed up in the second post, but vanished when I merged them. >.<

CrossfireX will run with different speed cards (I think), but at the speed of the slower card. You could go with a more powerful Eyefinity card and run three monitors on just the one card, though. maybe even sell the other card to help make up the difference.
 
If I am not mistaken, when doing crossfire, you can only use the outputs of a single card, which would limit you.

You will be better off with either two seperate GPUs or a single card that supports 3+ monitors on it alone.

Crossfire/SLI is really meant to get far more processing power for one or two high resolution displays while gaming or doing other graphics intensive tasks on a budget, not really for multi-monitor support when it comes to several monitors.
 
My bad Trotter. I was typing that up on my phone from the doctors office the other day. Not sure why the sig didn't show up.

Those are both good points. SO.... what if I was to get a more powerful card, but for the sake of arguement only supports 2 monitors. If I leave BOTH cards in the computer, but NOT running in crossfire mode, does that then have the displays being driven from the powerful card, but just physically attached via the weak card?

For the life of me, I can't remember how I had it set up a while back. I used to have an AGP video card, with a weak passivly cooled PCI card that also had a monitor on it. I can't recall, but I think both monitors had the same quality, as if it was the AGP card processing all the video info, and the 2nd monitor info was sent to the other card, and displayed on the monitor...

Does that sound plausable?


EDIT: I should note that the 27" is the main monitor which will be used for gaming. The 19" and 17" are used/will be used for multitasking. Ex: If I'm surfing the web, I will usually have a movie or tv show running on the other monitor. Basically, I am trying to figure out what upgrades I will need to run BF3 decently on this machine. I am thinking upgrading to Win 7 at some point, and getting an 6970, but I am not sure yet, not that it matters, and the funds won't be available till income tax return in March, if even then. Ugh, sad face. /EDIT
 
One GPU will not handle the load for another unless your in an SLI/Crossfire setup.

IMO, I would get a decently high end card and a mid range card, have the higher end card push the 27 inch monitor by it self, and leave the mid-range one pushing the 19 and 17 if your not going to use those for gaming. There will be enough power in that setup to run the monitors nicely, just make sure your CPU can keep up in the end.
 
Cool, that's probably what I will end up doing then (budget allowing). I figure I might as well keep the 4870, more than good to drive the extra monitors. Now just to deciede on a card to get for the main monitor, and see if it will work with the system.

Thanks!!
 
A good eyefinity card like the 6970 would have no problem running all 3 displays. I've tried both the single eyefinity card and dual card setups with my triple displays and there is no reason to go the dual card route IMO.
 
c0rr0sive:1932199 said:
What about running all 3 displays and them games of his?

That's what I am doing, running games on one main display with the two secondary displays showing something else and I haven't noticed any impact on performance
 
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