Crossfire + Triple/Quad screen?

[zAAm]

Hi

I'm thinking of getting two 5850's or so in crossfire, but just want to clarify something that I can't seem to find on the net. Don't know if the current drivers fixed the issue yet.

Can you run two cards in crossfire, use display output ports on both (ex 2 DVI's from one and 2 DVI's from another one) and still get output on all of them? Or is there still that limitation that you can't use display ports from the secondary card when in crossfire mode? I'm not interested in Eyefinity though, as I don't have a DisplayPort screen and I'm not going to spend money on that.

Basically I want to run 3/4 screens on the cards and use crossfire on one screen. Is that possible without a restart to enable crossfire etc...?

Thanks!

 

[cadaveca]

Currently, you must you all the ports on the same card. Only these ports are recognized by Windows when in Crossfire mode.

You can get an ACTIVE displayport/Dual-Link DVI adapter to solve lack of DP native on the monitor.

 

[zAAm]

That sucks. So if I want to use 4 screens and I want to play a game using Crossfire I'll have to enable it and restart every time?

 

[cadaveca]

Yep. Depends on the resolution and game though..some just aren't gonna need Crossfire for good performance.

 

[Mussels]

i can use monitors on my secondary card, its just that when i do crossfire turns off automatically.

no need to reboot the PC or anything.


If you want more then 3 monitors off the one card, you need teh eyefinity 5/6 cards.

 

[cadaveca]

I find I get lots of rendering errors without a reboot, after enabling Crossfire. Many apps have flicker like BFBC2 does...kinda annoying.

I have my eyefinity displays, plus Dell 3008WFP, the Dell is connected the the slave card, switching Crossfire OFF is no big deal.

Anyway, all he needs is a DP/DVi adapter, and the issue isn't an issue any more.

 

[zAAm]

Mmmm, ok, so a reboot isn't necessarily needed to enable Crossfire? Unless you get rendering errors on that particular game I guess... That makes it a bit better...

And the normal Eyefinity cards only supports 3 monitors cadaveca - wouldn't work on 4 even if I had an active DP/DVI adapter (which is still insanely expensive by the way, might as well buy a GT240 for the same price and let it do PhysX since I'm not intending to do Eyefinity).

Although I think a single 5850 (or maybe 5870 then?) might even do the trick on 1080p? Coupled with a cheap(ish) nvidia card for driving the other monitors and maybe do some PhysX in between?

*gets ideas*

 

[cadaveca]

Yeah, single 5870 is good enough for me for the Dell 3008WFP in most apps. So 1920x1080 will be fine.

And yeah, four monitors is only possible as Mussels says, on the EF6 cards, with no need to disable/enable crossfire. Three though...

I am very tempted to get an EF6 card jsut because of the issues I get swapping...I hate rebooting, even though SSD makes it far less painful...

 

[Mussels]

ahhh, i see.


i had those rendering errors myself, they eventually got fixed in drivers. i assume 5K cards will get 'fixed' eventually, as well.

 

[cadaveca]

They've changed the way crossfire works, somehow, so I think that's the cause, so yeah, all in due time.