[jigga211]

so as the topic says i want to setup crossfire, right now i own an MSI x1900 XTX its "Crossfire Ready" so to complete it I would need a "Crossfire Edition" card, is this the card I would have to get to complete my crossfire? MSI x1900 Crossfire

My next question is this, i see crossfire requires 550W psu with 38amps for 12rail, im running a 700W and it has from what i see 4x +12v rails with 18 on each, so i add those rails up which ofcourse surpasses 38 so im good right?

Edited by jigga211, 04 August 2006 - 10:08 PM.

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Well I did some exploring on ATI's site and I found this:

http://www.ati.com/t...ildyourown.html

That list has no MSI video cards on it, not quite sure what that means, but if possible I would go with another brand (Connect3D and Sapphire are my favorites). And on a personal note, I would just stay away from MSI, heard more bad than good about them.

Also, looking at comparison charts of single X1900's and Crossfired X1900's the difference in performance is probably not worth your money. Just buy one (if you HAVE to buy a new video card now). DX10 is coming out soon with Vista and in my opinion it'd be better to wait and spend your money then instead of wasting it now just to be outdated in a couple months.

[BlackPandemic]

Well I did some exploring on ATI's site and I found this:

http://www.ati.com/t...ildyourown.html

That list has no MSI video cards on it, not quite sure what that means, but if possible I would go with another brand (Connect3D and Sapphire are my favorites). And on a personal note, I would just stay away from MSI, heard more bad than good about them.

Also, looking at comparison charts of single X1900's and Crossfired X1900's the difference in performance is probably not worth your money. Just buy one (if you HAVE to buy a new video card now). DX10 is coming out soon with Vista and in my opinion it'd be better to wait and spend your money then instead of wasting it now just to be outdated in a couple months.

[BlackPandemic]

ADMINS DELTE

*double post*

Edited by BlackPandemic, 05 August 2006 - 08:12 AM.

[jigga211]

Yes I have seen that list but that doesnt really mean anything, they just havent tested the Msi's cards in crosffire. I would have to disagree with you on the whole Msi thing since I have been using them from video cards to motherboards for years and its actually the only brand I trust never had a problem.

I am also not sure where your looking exactly and what games they are using in comparison but the performance is HUGE. You can run games at 4aa and 16AF for the most amazing graphics while still getting 100+ fps in 1600x1200. Every CF review I look at shows 50+ fps gain.

I know DX10 Cards are coming and if anything im looking forward to ati's r600 but thats still a long ways away, your not going to see them until end of 1Q 2007 in the least, not to mention that there will not be a huge variety of games to take on the new dx engine right away, so waiting a few months after they are released will not be a big deal either. Vista is coming out sooner but Vista doesnt require you to run a dx10 card with it nor will having one give you any kind of extra performance.

After doing some more thinking I will probably hang on until the end of August when the new x1950's come out and just Crossfire those.....

Thanx for your advice tho, its appriciated.

Edited by jigga211, 05 August 2006 - 12:31 PM.

[warriorscot]

I dont know where you are getting your info but R600s are 1st quarter 2007 maybe even last of this year NOT 2008. And thats from ATIs roadmap and people talking to the engineers Nvidias is coming in earliest with its DX10 cards with them ready to ship in september or october this year and the R600s will follow a month or two later after that, DX10 cards will be readily available BEFORE the release of Windows Vista and the release of the complete DX10 although dx9L will probably be released by that point.

Yes the performance boost is large on paper but in reality its nothing unoticable 1600x1200 is definately in the x1900XTXs usage range and it can give good performance(over minimum discernable FPS) at pretty much any game at any setting you want, the extra 50 isnt going to make a difference if you had a monitor that supports reolutions above 1600x1200 then crossfire becomes more feasible as its designed for those high resolutions where single cards struggle but at lower resolutions most of that extra power is wasted. And given that the optimum gaming resolution for most at the moment is 1280x1024 dual cards are larely unnecesary and often its spending money for spendings sake.

With that system your performance looking at the data i have if its properly set up should run ANY game at full settings with a FPS consistently over 50-60 FPS at 1280 or 1600 so the extra card would be superflous.

Vista doesnt require a DX10 card however there IS a performance advantage to having one due to the inherantly greater efficiency of the DX10 API, just based on the DX version a DX9 version of an r600 would be several factors slower than the 10 version. And coupled with the fact that there are certain elements that DX9 is incapable of producing compared to 10 you should facotr that in.

R600s will also be better for crossfire as they fulfil the original ATI design brief of not requiring a master card, they will also as far as i know have the PPU retasking ability although thats less certain.

[jigga211]

That was a typo on my part, i meant to put 2007 ofcourse lol...i edited my post to reflect that. I know that dx10 cards will be available before Vista but from what I hear XP will not support dx10 so getting one before vista would make little to no sence, since youd only be running it on dx9. I like many others also skeptical on getting the first gen of dx10, I say the same for Vista, I would only try it after they release the first Service Pack for it as I bet it will have a lot of holes just like XP.

I still stick to my point of a small range of games available for dx10 in the first year maybe more, mainstream uses dx9 and once the new gen comes out not everyone will run out and pickup the new toy there for developers will still focus mainly on dx9 games for year or more until more people switch and there is a bigger market.

The r600 will deffinately be true Crossfire, no master card or any sort of cables to link the two. I think its about time, still dont understand why they couldnt do it to the 1900 series as your able to CF 2x 1800GTO's with no master card right now, but the bandwidth between them is crappy.

[warriorscot]

It was a practical matter because crossfire wasnt designed into them from the start it was partly rushed and partly implemented.

There are actually a fair few dx10 games the fist few come out in october most notable being the new flight simulator there will then be about a dozen or so next year most games scheduled for release next year will be DX10, DX10 gfx cards will be supported under XP using the new version of dx9 as DX is a back compatible standard. I dont think the first vista service pack will be for a while if at all Vista is MSs biggest windows development yet and its having its biggest beta of them all i doubt it will have all that many bugs and most of those will be intentional or down to personal preferance and XP didnt have all that many holes at least not usage wise its biggest flaws were in security and the fact it started betraying its age as hardware outstripped its initial capabilities, its doubtful vista will have such restrictions and i doubt it will have ANY service packs at all as MS dont intend for Vista to be around the 6 years they used XP the next windows OS is scheduled for release in 2 to 3 years although with the new design philosophy it will be more of a very big service pack than a whole new OS as they have decided to stop doing OSs totally from scratch unless neccesary.

Again XP wont have native DX10 support but it will support the USE of dx10 hardware operating in DX9 mode which will probably use the latest dx9 release which incorporates the neccesary modifications to allow the use of SOME dx10 features as well as improving dx9 which actually still has alot of potential left in it.

DX10 hardware like i said is also inherantly more powerful than dx9 hardware by the way it is designed with no fixed pipelines.

[BlackPandemic]

Yes the performance boost is large on paper but in reality its nothing unoticable 1600x1200 is definately in the x1900XTXs usage range and it can give good performance(over minimum discernable FPS) at pretty much any game at any setting you want, the extra 50 isnt going to make a difference if you had a monitor that supports reolutions above 1600x1200 then crossfire becomes more feasible as its designed for those high resolutions where single cards struggle but at lower resolutions most of that extra power is wasted. And given that the optimum gaming resolution for most at the moment is 1280x1024 dual cards are larely unnecesary and often its spending money for spendings sake.

Finally, warrior agrees with me on something

And maybe everyone but me is greedy, but if I'm running a game at constant 40 FPS, I'm good. What's with the sudden obsession to get 100+ frames?

[troppo]

its because people think that they are getting heaps of smoother movement but in reality your eyes cant even see over 26 frames per second

so it seems a little stupid really 40 FPS is fine there is absoultly nothing wrong with that

troppo

[BlackPandemic]

Alright, just makin' sure I'm not crazy One X1900XTX or whatever will be fine, two will be a waste of money in the short run.