Crossfire: As i see it (Debateable)

Judas · Jun 1, 2006, 04:58 PM

So, you got a crossfire system, perhaps even in the case of not running in a crossfire mode at all, that the unique abilities of your "slave" card such as VIVO itself would be present and accounted for.

Low and behold i've finally got to the bottom of it.

Ok heres the issue at hand.

In crossfire mode, with crossfire enabled and all that good stuff, The cards are combined to provide superior 3D Performance and quality.

That's all great and dandy (if it worked most of the time i might add).

But in the case of running more then just one monitor, things get difficult straight out and out. You have to disable Crossfire to do so, not a big deal, bit of a pain in the ass though but no biggy.

with 2 cards in the machine, your video output options increase from 2 to 4 possible monitors. (although 3 would be more efficient due to the dongle being where it is with taking up 2 connections).

So 3 monitors (or more)? shouldn't be a hassle but alass, it is about as nightmarish as one could even comprehend, some of the monitor designation issues are astounding if not utterly rediculious. Get your setup finally working you figure, a reboot later, and your greeted with a welcome screen perhaps on the wrong screen. And it just gets worse from there on. Hint: if you totally go nutz, just enabled crossfire mode a few times, it generally lets you FINALLY get back to square one instead of manually trying to get back there with nothing but issues.

And finally, Got yourself a slave card with say VIVO? ya do? pretty slick, disable crossfire to use vivo, wouldn't that be a great idea? nay, theres no such thing, the moment you stick in a mastercard, the vivo features are instantly disabled completely, However, they are obtainable if you firstly, disabled crossfire, secondly, go into the bios and set to boot from the slave card, which forcefully totally will ruin your day in the end, as the driver reinstallation takes place and several reboots later, you lose ALL crossfire abilities (obviously) and your mastercard can officially be considered dead weight as it's both pointless to use and it's sucking power, your monitor cables may need some throwing around to get a screen at all sometimes.... and all this just to get vivo to work again.... going back to play a game in crossfire? reverse what you just did, plus add about 15 minutes to that while things reset themselves into the right order and you pluck the last hair from your head to get your a video signal as the dongle screws with your mind.

Long story short

ATI made so many mistakes with crossfire, i haven't and i don't think i could name them all..

Obviously the above is a start for one thing.

But the dongle connectors are an obvious must be removed emediately and a "Should have never made it outa the engineering labs" screwup. I mean the tighteners themselves are of such a light metal, that they either strip or break so easily, theres no way to make a "Snug Solid Connection"

Don't know about you, but there are so many little issues with 3D apps/games that it makes having crossfire more of a waste in general on power, but the dollar value alone is sickening. Various 3D settings have a habit of not working properly at all in crossfire mode, performance has been seen where you may as well be running a card by itself due to not running "crossfire" mode even though it is enabled. Try alt tabbing out of a few games, or screw playing in windowed mode...

Seriously:

10% of the things out there use crossfire decently. the rest it either royally screws up or causes problems or you see absalutely no benifits.

ATM, if i can, i stir people completely AWAY from crossfire, it's both pointless and useless and in general, more of a hassle then anything. Save your the time in your life by just getting sli atm.

Coolasmoo · Jun 2, 2006, 05:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Judas

ATM, if i can, i stir people completely AWAY from crossfire, it's both pointless and useless and in general, more of a hassle then anything. Save your the time in your life by just getting sli atm.

I dont think you need to to be honest,

The amount of people ive heard with so many Crossfire problems, None of them will be burnt twice including myself

I dont think Ati have done themselves any favours at all,

I even bought a laptop the other day with an x1400 Mobility card, and guess what no driver support since december last year.

Im so pissed at Ati right now

***Zardon*** · Jun 2, 2006, 06:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Coolasmoo

I even bought a laptop the other day with an x1400 Mobility card, and guess what no driver support since december last year.

Im so pissed at Ati right now

get the offical drivers and mod them with www.driverheaven.net/patje

MiDri · Jun 2, 2006, 06:39 PM

Why has ATI not given offical driver support though? That seems kind of asinine being that they still sell laptops with that card...

Spyre · Jun 2, 2006, 08:48 PM

They aren't allowed to (short version of the answer)

Coolasmoo · Jun 3, 2006, 02:29 PM

Sorry if i sounded a bit harsh with my post above,

Its just that i have been using Ati since i owned a Geforce 1 many years ago.

I have no problems with any single slot card they have produced since then

I just wish us crossfire users had some of the bugs aknowledged a bit more often.

On the x1400, i have been contemplating using the modded drivers but is it safe to do so ?

Chaos · Jun 3, 2006, 02:35 PM

using modified drivers is fine if they come from a reputable source

Coolasmoo · Jun 3, 2006, 02:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chaos

using modified drivers is fine if they come from a reputable source

I will give them a try tomorrow then,

Thanks

SirPauly · Jun 3, 2006, 05:41 PM

I knew for the most part when I purchased a CrossFIre card that the so-called unique abilities of the slave card will be replaced by more performance in games and more IQ in games over traditional one card abilities. That was the trade-off for me. CrossFire has delivered exactly what I thought it would and so pleased over-all considering I am an IQ fruitcake. 3d gaming has always been about trade-offs with me. No product offers the end-all-be-all with everything!

Nothing pains me more is when I read posts from end-users that expect more than they actually receive. Feel bad quite frankly, but this doesn't help you in any way what-so-ever.

Hopefully, with future generations of CrossFire, the platform will be more polished, meaning, that all the features with one card can be offered with two cards, etc..

From my selfish perspective I would love to see a CrossFire profile abilitiy to be integrated into the CCC -- for more flexibility for the end-user!

MiDri · Jun 3, 2006, 07:33 PM

I would really like to see a smart-crossfire intigrated into the CCC, which when running in 2d mode (desktop) you could run 4 monitors. When you switch to an OpenGL or D3D fullscreen mode it would switch over to crossfire mode and send all data to the primary monitor.

~~hackerx~~ · Jun 3, 2006, 10:38 PM

well there is good news.ATI's r6xx graphics card series which support dx 10 will run crossfire without dongles.Thats right the external dongle will be history.And right now they got the x1800 gto's and below working in dongle less crossfire.So the future is seemingly bright.
And as for mobile driver support,coolasmoo u should use the omega drivers.They are modified drivers but they have support for mobile gfx carda and they are reputed.
Ask anyone in driver heaven.

Mitolo · Jun 3, 2006, 11:33 PM

I had Crossfire X1900/X1900XTX issue and now all is good in Windows X64 and 32bit

as I only needed to disable ATi HotKey Poller and ATi Smart. No more blank screens when games load and I have done like 4 re-install just to make sure of it. What a PAIN in the ASS till I ran across this info from MACCI and Sampsa

http://www.muropaketti.com/3dmark/r520/cf/oc/

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...sfire+settings

And to think ATi never wrote back with any thing close to help and this should be an easy fix for them

I must say my games look better or more clean in X64 than 32 and my BF2 now has no more shadow glitching on my guns

Hope this can help some one as it did help me.......

ChOnG · Jun 4, 2006, 05:03 PM

Would this explain my problem then. When i have both my cards(x1900's) in my machine and go into CCC the "Monitor Properties" with AVIVO Color is missing from there. And if i remove one card and run only on one the option reappears in the list?

Ive been talkin to ATI support for a long time about this and they have always said "yes its just with the x1900CF and should be fixed in updates" Now after the 6.5s ive replyed to them telling them the option is still missing and this time they replied. "This is actually design. Unfortunatley, i couldnt gather any other information as to why they have decided to do this but it was specifically built into software to be like that"

So looks like ill never have the function to adjust my Color in my desktop to make my images more vivid color or sharper etc like i loved with my old NVIDIA cards where you had Digital Vibrance,Image Sharpen etc.

I do however love my cards, they do produce great framerates and nice gfx but i do agree with having there problems.When i first bought them i fried a 550W PSU when there recommended was 500 i think lol

MiDri · Jun 4, 2006, 07:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChOnG

Would this explain my problem then. When i have both my cards(x1900's) in my machine and go into CCC the "Monitor Properties" with AVIVO Color is missing from there. And if i remove one card and run only on one the option reappears in the list?

Ive been talkin to ATI support for a long time about this and they have always said "yes its just with the x1900CF and should be fixed in updates" Now after the 6.5s ive replyed to them telling them the option is still missing and this time they replied. "This is actually design. Unfortunatley, i couldnt gather any other information as to why they have decided to do this but it was specifically built into software to be like that"

So looks like ill never have the function to adjust my Color in my desktop to make my images more vivid color or sharper etc like i loved with my old NVIDIA cards where you had Digital Vibrance,Image Sharpen etc.

I do however love my cards, they do produce great framerates and nice gfx but i do agree with having there problems.When i first bought them i fried a 550W PSU when there recommended was 500 i think lol

You can find 3rd party software to do it.

SirPauly · Jun 4, 2006, 09:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChOnG

Would this explain my problem then. When i have both my cards(x1900's) in my machine and go into CCC the "Monitor Properties" with AVIVO Color is missing from there. And if i remove one card and run only on one the option reappears in the list?

Ive been talkin to ATI support for a long time about this and they have always said "yes its just with the x1900CF and should be fixed in updates" Now after the 6.5s ive replyed to them telling them the option is still missing and this time they replied. "This is actually design. Unfortunatley, i couldnt gather any other information as to why they have decided to do this but it was specifically built into software to be like that"

So looks like ill never have the function to adjust my Color in my desktop to make my images more vivid color or sharper etc like i loved with my old NVIDIA cards where you had Digital Vibrance,Image Sharpen etc.

I do however love my cards, they do produce great framerates and nice gfx but i do agree with having there problems.When i first bought them i fried a 550W PSU when there recommended was 500 i think lol

Me, too. I sent a bug report last month or two, but I think it may be a limitation,imho. Digital Flat Panels get the properties page and Avivo Color with CrossFire.

Customgamer1 · Jun 4, 2006, 10:14 PM

Well I love ATI and I don't have a crossfire system yet but I am just hoping they can fix the problems with the DirectX 10 cards come out! So then everyone can be happy

IndianScout · Jun 4, 2006, 10:51 PM

I have a pair of X1800XT sitting here, and I only run the 1 card, havent really seen the need to upgrade the hardware to Crossfire yet..

twistedpain183 · Jun 5, 2006, 12:07 AM

i have x1600pro's crossfired and im really not impressed with it at all... i upgraded from an x700 and to tell you the truth besides the slight increase in frame rates and resoulution sizes i really really cant tell them apart im upset i spent the money on two cards but it may just be because they are sapphires...

im trying to sell the cards so i can go to an x1800xt and hopefully that will be the big chunk iv been waiting for... when i first built my system i didnt think i would have to many problems...

and i did i had some black screen that took over my computer everytime i ran something 3d for the longest time...

i tried everything and then i ran in to this site which everyone has helped me get though the problems i was having. finally after increaseing some power to the ram the system stablised and i changed some LDT settings and 2 other things it finnally let me enable a working version of crossfire...

though when i ran a 3d mark it wasnt as impressive as i was hoping for...

oh well i guess i learned my lesson about crossfire...

i will probally never build another crossfire pc...

BTW whats a good motherboard that has good a good SPDIF out sound card that would go good with an x1800 XT and a good set of duel channel ram that would go with it? i have used gigabyte in the past and DFI has some cool stuff in it anything thats a mixture of the both

thanks in advance

MiDri · Jun 5, 2006, 12:20 AM

This makes me wonder, do you still need a dongle if you have a X1800XL and then added a X1600? would this even be possible (being the X1800XL is not a master board)

Spyre · Jun 5, 2006, 12:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MiDri

This makes me wonder, do you still need a dongle if you have a X1800XL and then added a X1600? would this even be possible (being the X1800XL is not a master board)

Why would you when you aren't running them in crossfire.

MiDri · Jun 5, 2006, 12:59 AM

I mean in crossfire, if you ran them in crossfire would you still need dongle? I would guess yes (probably would not work at all with no master card), but just checking.

~~hackerx~~ · Jun 5, 2006, 05:54 AM

u can't run them in crossfire(with or without dongle)cause the 2 cores aren't the same.And cause the x18800 xl is not a master board.
U can run 2 x1600 xt's in crossfire cause they have same core.

ChOnG · Jun 5, 2006, 07:02 AM

Hmm Digital Flat Panels = LCD monitor? coz ive just ordered one.

Hopefully this solves me prob

Judas · Jun 5, 2006, 02:20 PM

CRTs don't show up correctly while in crossfire.. lots of features and whatnot screw up there..

The whole point in getting a highend rig is to use all the highend stuff....

vivo isn't a huge concern.. .but i find it quite difficult as to why it was completely ignored in a crossfire situation which in turn leads me to beleive once again they "rushed" the crossfire setup out the door just to get it out there... even though this is easily 2nd if not 3-4 generation crossfire.

Once again, the external dongle should never have left the engineering lab....

Also, i'd like to see more multi monitor capabilities.... seriously, 3 monitors... all identical (or not).... in tri monitor gaming is utterly amazing.... i really wish someone would jump on this... atm, only solution is tripleheadtogo by matrox using VGA connectors... and only available on anything BUT ATI cards due to the limitations of the ATI's cards per port output and crossfires own limitation of 3200x2400 on the x1xxx series and 1600x1200 on the previous.

SirPauly · Jun 5, 2006, 03:00 PM

I'd like to see the monitor aspects be more flexible, too. I'm not going to hold my breath for it because I doubt I'll ever see it this generation. Hope I'm wrong. Dongle doesn't bother me at all. Don't care if it has a dongle or not -- as long as I receive performance and nice image quality with performance - which is by-far the biggest thing to me.