Widescreen Gaming Forum

So far I've yet to see a single game that has any benefit from sli. Benchmarks sure but those aren't useful for anyone except bragging rights fanatics.

Right now I'd like some way to patch in the 2nd cards vram to the first so it increases the total. That way I'd have 1536mb of vram to make gta4 happy.

Yeah I couldn't say it better benchmarks means shit if the performance in games are crap. Most benchmarks from people with SLI or CF is just 1 big penis enlargement to show how much score you have and that matter to whom?

So far I've yet to see a single game that has any benefit from sli. Benchmarks sure but those aren't useful for anyone except bragging rights fanatics.

Right now I'd like some way to patch in the 2nd cards vram to the first so it increases the total. That way I'd have 1536mb of vram to make gta4 happy.

accessing VRAM on the second gfx card like you explain would mean very slow VRAM access for this portion which is just almost as bad as using main memory instead of VRAM ...


performance of SLI & CF systems are always more subject to variations than a single gfx card, some rage3D articles explained it way better than I.
More often than not, minimum fps does not increase much in multiple GPU environments ...

Is the EyeFinity gonna work only with the 587os upward or is it gonna be like something that will be enabled on driver when they come out and will work on all the other ones as well?

Is the EyeFinity gonna work only with the 587os upward or is it gonna be like something that will be enabled on driver when they come out and will work on all the other ones as well?

New cards only, AFAIK.

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Dipping bags at Mach1.9

My guess is the way it works is with how many port outs a card can do concurrently. My guess is this might work on previous cards, but only with 2 ports out. This is merely a guess on my part though. This is also why I believe EyeFinity will never be able to bridge GPUs/cards without some driver rewrites. Someone with current ATI cards could always install a beta driver and let us know. :wink:

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Brad Hawthorne
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How long do u guys think it will take ATI to get CF working with Eyefinity multimonitor gaming?

Im going to presume that if eyefinity is available on 5850/5870 on release then they will have it working in crossfire on release - im pretty sure they realise people are going to want as much performance as they can get and would preffer to have an extra card sold.

but in general I can jsut disable CF and all my games will see a single GPU right?

If you buy separate cards, yes you can do this. If you buy a 5870X2 you wont have that option.

hmm, dont think so. heard somewhere amd is currently having difficulties wie the pcb design of the x2 cards. and i also dont think they will bring out 4gb versions at the beginning, most likely 2gb versions, but thats only my belief

Apparently the issue they are having with the X2 cards at the moment is the TDP and power it consumes.. Apparently they are rumoured to be consuming 368 watts. Consuming so much more power means they also put out more heat - which is even more than the current 4870X2. Its still all rumour's - will find out in a month or so.

If they release 2gig cards of the 5870's I do expect them to release 4 gig 5870X2's though so people can run 3 way Crossfire at its best possible performance.. That being said I am expecting ATi to prove me wrong :P

Im going to presume that if eyefinity is available on 5850/5870 on release then they will have it working in crossfire on release - im pretty sure they realise people are going to want as much performance as they can get and would preffer to have an extra card sold.

Is confirmed, in ATI website, that CF support will not be ready on release for eyefinity, but will be in the future.

If they release 2gig cards of the 5870's I do expect them to release 4 gig 5870X2's though so people can run 3 way Crossfire at its best possible performance.. That being said I am expecting ATi to prove me wrong

5870 2GB versión is confirmed and named 5870 Six (for their six miniDP outputs). 5870x2 4GB are not confirmed, and It´s not sure they can be released in a relative long term, because high output for 5870x2 2GB version.

5870 2GB versión is confirmed and named 5870 Six (for their six miniDP outputs).

Mmm it seems ill need some miniDP x DVI adapters. :)

[quote] but in general I can jsut disable CF and all my games will see a single GPU right?

If you buy separate cards, yes you can do this. If you buy a 5870X2 you wont have that option.
true and that's one of the things why I prefer Nvidia after years of buying ATI

ATI choose to hide things from us thinking we are all a bunch of incompetent crap and that their software/hardware don't need to be fully exposed
(in short, they hide the fact that a 5870X2 IS actually using CF to work which means what was quoted : one can't disable CF on a 5870X2...)

ATI choose to hide things from us thinking we are all a bunch of incompetent crap and that their software/hardware don't need to be fully exposed
(in short, they hide the fact that a 5870X2 IS actually using CF to work which means what was quoted : one can't disable CF on a 5870X2...)

Man I didn't know that, that sucks. Buying a 5870x2 seemed a good idea, but if I can't disable CF, that sucks LOADS. Can you do it with something like RivaTuner?

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Dipping bags at Mach1.9