crossfire

[calsonic]

so im looking to upgrade my system to a dual video card one, i currently have an asus eaX1650pro 400MHz crossfire ready, and the closest new card i can find to add is a HIS x1650pro 600MHz crossfire ready.
my mobo is a Saphire Tech Crossfire Xpress 3200 PC-A9RD580Adv.

anyway, as far as i know you need either a "dongle" type cable or a "bridge" interconnect type cable to connect two crossfire cards, however my original video card, and the new HIS one don't have the separate connector(s) on them for either cable.
so, what im wondering is, how do i connect the two cards? is it just through the catalyst control center and the board works with some crossfire bus or what?

thanx.

 

[calsonic]

anyone?

 

[NightSurge]

You don't need to have the bridge, but this will only enable software crossfire, and not hardware, so the performance will not be top, but an improvement. Also, you well need two of the same card. (Maybe not same brand, but same memory, clocks, etc.). And yes you enable crossfire from the CCC. Also some boards do not support full x16 x16 crossfire and may only support x16 x8. I'm not sure about your board, but you may want to look into that.

If anything, you should have received the bridge with your motherboard, not the cards.

EDIT: I looked up your board and it says it has 2 x16 lanes, but I do not know if that necessarily means they both run at x16 in crossfire.

 

[Trotter]

Two x1650Pro's? you would do better with a single, more powerful card.

 

[NightSurge]

Two x1650Pro's? you would do better with a single, more powerful card.

He's probably right. Given the age of those cards, your best upgrade would probably be to a single newer card.

 

[calsonic]

You don't need to have the bridge, but this will only enable software crossfire, and not hardware, so the performance will not be top, but an improvement. Also, you well need two of the same card. (Maybe not same brand, but same memory, clocks, etc.).

so it won't work unless the cards have matching specs? i thought that if the clocks weren't the same it would just ruin at the slower one.

i think that getting a second card is the most cost effective upgrade, considering it is only $50. Newegg.com - HIS Hightech H165PRF512N-R Radeon X1650PRO 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 CrossFire Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards why do the new cards have the "HD" prefix anyways?

 

[zedman3d]

Not worth it even for that $50. Save up another $50 and buy something better. Your performance increase if you get another 1650 will be very minimal.

And for the record, it will scale down the clock speed if the second one is higher.

 

[darksideleader]

Try to look for a HD 3850 or 8800GS at the 80 dollar mark, so much better than x1650 PRO crossfire.