Crossfire? How do I set this up?

[W2hCYK]

When I have both of my gfx cards in, one being a X850XTPE mastercard, and the other being an X850XT(with VGA and DVI plugs) It detects crossfire, but wont let me enable it. When i plug my monitor into the DVI dongle, it doesnt turn back on, and I cant select Crossfire.

Im not sure if I need this or not, but I heard that to do CF, you need a 2nd card with 2 DVI plugs.. This one only has 1. Im not sure how to activate this.. The card overclocks amazing, 585/630 on stock volts, and I'd like to keep it for my crossfire setup, but if I cant use it, my friend said that since it has amazing clocks, he'd swap his X800GTO2(Flashed to X850XTPE with R480 core) with my X850XT.

What should I do???

[Changis]

check out the crossfirejack topic. that kinda "forces" crossfire, might work, might not,

[W2hCYK]

I heard it only works for x1900gts

[W2hCYK]

didnt work for me.. The dongle plug thinger doesnt put anything out to show on the lcd.. its just blank

[infrared]

That's strange, it should work fine. And btw, dvi+vga is ok on the slave card, that's what my x800gto2 has, and that works absolutely fine.

All i can think of to suggest is to reinstall the drivers, clean all the connectors, and plug it all back together. You should at least see the post screen when you turn on the computer.

[W2hCYK]

I dont even see the POST screen.. Is there a BIOS setting I should turn on? I dont see any..

:-( It doesnt work.. waahhh..

What should the PCI-E FSB be when trying to run crossfire? still 100MHz?

I did try reinstalling drivers.. idk why its not going.. :-(

[Changis]

tried plugging the screen into different plugs? you have 4 to choose from i know it's silly, but sometimes we can't see the forrest 'cause there are to many trees in the way

[W2hCYK]

The way crossfire works is:

You plug the dongle into the mastercard, which has 2 lines coming out, One end goes into the slave card, and the other goes to the monitor. You have to use the monitor line if you want to use crossfire, and when I do use it, nothing shows...

this is the card I bought.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102688

[KennyT772]

swap the x850's around. say u have the slave in the top slot it might have to go in the bottom.

[W2hCYK]

The mastercard has to go in the top slot, ive tried the other way around, no go.. :-(

The card works fine, and outputs video on both monitors.. idk why its not turning on... Im searching google for any evidence that crossfire has problems on this motherboard...

[infrared]

No problems on my Asus P5W DH Deluxe, so i don't see why there would be any issues with your board. Perhaps your crossfire dongle is damaged? You shouldn't need to play with any settings in the bios, the pci-e frequency is still 100mhz, and the board will automatically set 8x lanes for each pcie slot.

You seem to be having lots of probs! first the hot watercooling, not no-go on the crossfire

[W2hCYK]

yea idk whats going on.. must be my bad luck.. when I built my last rig, I went for 6 months good up time, it stopped working for a whole year, till I could figure out the problem, happened to be the CPU with issues in my motherboard.. Got my 3E then, and it worked for another 5 months, then that cpu died (4GHz.. tad bit too high) and then I got a 2.8E for it...

This one seems to only have 2 problems, and Im not going to kill it by overclocking. 3GHz @ 1.46v is good... Crappy overclocker though.. alot of conroes do that on stock voltage.. Still having problems with the watercooling actually.. my comp is right next to an ac, and im getting 36c idle @ stock temps.. idk.. :-P

[Terenth]

ya wat a stroke of freakin luck u have i feel bad cuz i have a ATI X850 radeon 256mb 256bit 16 pp master, with a HIS GTO Iceq II vivo/turbo edition that is crossfire ready, and it wouldnt detect the crossfire. i unintstalled all drivers and rebooted still wouldnt. And i knew i might have to flash it from the beginning so i did to an X850xt AND BOOM there it was the crossfire tab. the darn master card had to downclock its pipes but the MOFO runs HOT 70 degrees C, i had to overclock the master card in order to keep up with my slave card LOL, well exept for those unforgotten pixel pipes they woulda boosted my 3dmark a lot, but it the crossfire did rais my score 3000 points , its funny how u have to perfectly compatible cards and i had to flash mine to werk yet you cant get urs.... just try going into device manager and uninstalling EVERYTHING all AT ONCE underneath display adapters, then reboot, if that doesnt werk open ATI tool and make a bios backup of your SLAVE, if it isnt detected put only the slave card in the master slot and boot up, put the atiflash tool and original bios on a floppy, and make sure it'll boot up and work correctly. then check this forum area for CHANGING gpu type/ card name, and follow those instructions, simply try picking a different card name other than X850xt but something like x850 Pro, also pay attention so that you keep your current core type im sure urs is R480, if that fails just use your atiflash disk with original bios and reflash your card back to normal, good luck, maybe someone else can explain it better for you cuz it worked for me im not a very good teacher

OH yeah DUH i forgot just make sure you have the cards in the correct slots . in other words if you havent tried it already just swap the cards around in the slots and see if that werks for ya

[W2hCYK]

I tried swapping cards. The next thing I was thinking was flashing actually. I have the drive all ready and i was about to do it..

My CF card is an XTPE, and the other slave is an XT, im going to flash it to XTPE and see if that helps.

Crossfire shows, but I cant check off the box..

Im also thinking that the dongle may be broken. If I plug it in without another card attached, nothing shows on the screen @ post.. idk.. :-P

[Terenth]

yeahh...ok well i had a problem where i couldnt check the box, untill i closed ati tool in the icon tray would it be able to en able. gave me some crap that i must close all 3d applications before i can enable it :P....... lol and i thought i had nothing open. hope it all werks out. also note that it has some kinda moniter requierments, i think its just my moniter i hope, but i have to use the adapter to change over from DVI to the standard port, and i have some kinda flickering bars all across my screen while in desktop mode, i dont seem to notice it while in fullscreen 3d so its it could be non existant there. and for the love of god make sure you have at least a 600watt powersupply, mine ive come to find out "WAS" a total peice of geniric SHIT, it did not have a overheat shutdown OR a overload shutdown. i was fricking playin counterstrike 1.6 for a half hour or so no probs so i try out counterstrike :source (a bit more grfx intensive) and after about 20 mins, FLASH BANG bboooooooowwwwww powersupply fries, was 450 watt one too. just got my 650 watter in today everthing is good now... beware....BEWARE...... lol

[W2hCYK]

I have a 700w one, so its all good. Ive already RMA'd the card, hoping that it was the card @ fault, so I'll try the ATItool thing after I recieve the card...

[Terenth]

ya but mine gave me an error, so if you didnt get an error then it might not be ati tool :0 gotta fix this damn flickering thing, i kinda looks like i set the refresh rate too high and its not likeing it, but its only 60hz ive already tried different resolutions, if u get urs workin lemme know if you have the same prob. and wat kinda moniter u have

[Terenth]

also wat are the detailed specs on that card you got ? x850xt, like pipelines, that score is messed up, cuz i only get 8100 with 2 cards, up from about 6000???? its like my secondary card isnt even used ?????? i kno it is when i go to AA 14x post ur score also, im really pissed off my score only increased 2000, it shoulda nearly doubled, maybe i dont have enough system ram ??

[W2hCYK]

I have a Sceptre 19" LCD, 8ms.. no flicker right now, and its stuck on 60hz, like all other LCD's.

**Before tweaking, i started @ 6400~, then I OC'd to 580/600, got 7400~, and then memory tweaked, and pushed memory to about 640MHz, and it went up into the 7800+ range..


***The E6600 @ 3.2GHz also adds about 600pts vs my friends AMD Opteron Denmark 165 @ 3GHz

[Terenth]

omfg thank you that sounds resonable, well im sadly hoping that you score about 9000-10000 if you do get is set up lol, cuz i dont wanna imagine that id be better off with just the master card at 16pp that would mean i have a 180$ card for nothing, i would be very upset

[W2hCYK]

My last rig with a P4E 3GHz @ 4GHz got 7282 after tweaking and voltmods, only hit 545/610.. The card that I had was a god, i hope the next one is the same...

[Terenth]

ok thank god i think i hit a sweet spot with my settings, that and i updated CCC from 6.7-6.9 and i got a score of 9200.... starting to look damn good now

[W2hCYK]

tweak your memory.. that gives the biggest performance +, but takes about 2 hours to really master it properly... Start tweaking it 4 values at a time, usually just skip the first timing, I think it starts with a 7, go right to(what my card says for 2, 3, 4, and 5.) 4-6-14-5.. I got my first 5 timings down to 7-3-5-13-5 from 7-4-6-14-5.

You should be able to set CL+3 down to 2, and then the last value, MemTrfc, can be safely put down from 22 to 18~