Question Are the Radeon R7 250 and FirePro W2100 compatible with CrossFire?

[vixeko_]

I have an Asus board that has 3 PCIe ports and to experiment I wanted to do crossfire with an r7 250 and an hd 6570 and obviously it failed because I didn't know that much about crossfire so I started to investigate and I read that the GPUs are compatible with crossfire among themselves if they have the same architecture
I know that the recommended thing is to do CrossFire with two identical GPUs, but because of experimenting, I had a question about whether the R7 250 is compatible with the FirePro W2100 in CrossFire.
I know that the Radeons are oriented for gaming and the FirePros are for a professional environment.
but the two GPUs mentioned have the same architecture and I know that that is the main requirement for the crossfire (at least that is what I read) and it is not that I use those two GPUs like that for daily use in that way
I actually want to do it out of curiosity but just in case I'm going to ask here before trying and failing in the attempt if it can't be done.
I await your responses and thank you in advance.

 

[fralexandr]

from googling, the w2100 does not support crossfire at all.

some people have had success flashing their firepro to a radeon counterpart, but no mentions exist for the w2100.
it seems unlikely considering the w2100 does not have an exact radeon counterpart.

 

[vixeko_]

from googling, the w2100 does not support crossfire at all.

some people have had success flashing their firepro to a radeon counterpart, but no mentions exist for the w2100.
it seems unlikely considering the w2100 does not have an exact radeon counterpart.

I understand
maybe a firepro w2100 is not much to lose but I still don't want to risk it
And another question to do crossfire with my r7 250 with 2gb of vram, which option would be better? an r7 240 with 2gb of vram or an r7 250 with 1gb of vram

 

[Shmee]

What is the use case here? I assume retro gaming and experimenting? For the sake of discussion, if using CF with an R7 240, you would want both cards to be 2GB cards. The reason being that CF will not combine the video memory of two cards towards a larger amount, but will only use what is available on the card with the least memory. So you would be limited to 1GB.

As for the practical option, I would just get an R9 290 and call it a day, assuming the rest of the system supports it. You could even get 2 R9 290 cards if desired, remember that these cards were the first to have really nice CF support back in the day, due to them running bridgeless and using direct PCIe bandwidth. Another set of cards you could fool around with would be 7950/7970/280/280X. These were all basically the same thing, and should be CF compatible...the 280/280X were rebadged Tahiti cards.

 

[vixeko_]

What is the use case here? I assume retro gaming and experimenting? For the sake of discussion, if using CF with an R7 240, you would want both cards to be 2GB cards. The reason being that CF will not combine the video memory of two cards towards a larger amount, but will only use what is available on the card with the least memory. So you would be limited to 1GB.

As for the practical option, I would just get an R9 290 and call it a day, assuming the rest of the system supports it. You could even get 2 R9 290 cards if desired, remember that these cards were the first to have really nice CF support back in the day, due to them running bridgeless and using direct PCIe bandwidth. Another set of cards you could fool around with would be 7950/7970/280/280X. These were all basically the same thing, and should be CF compatible...the 280/280X were rebadged Tahiti cards.

In fact, I do it to experiment with retro hardware and see what capabilities these types of experiments have.
And now to finish with the last question of the discussion
I tried to do crossfire with two R7 250 and see how it performed but when I connected the two GPUs to my test PC, Windows did not detect the second GPU, it only detected the one in the first PCIe port and I tested the two GPUs alone and none of them. Both are faulty, I even changed the port and put one at the top and the other at the bottom, I even tried using the third PCIe port that my motherboard has but nothing
When I turn on the PC, the fans of both graphics cards spin.
but when checking radeon software only one appears and in the device manager too
I also reinstalled the drivers but nothing
I don't know what I'm doing wrong since they are the same model.
Could it be because one has 2GB of vram in ddr3 and the other 1gb of vram in gddr5? Because as far as I know, that doesn't affect whether they are the same GPU.
I hope you can help me with that last one since I don't want to continue insisting on this topic

 

[Shmee]

In fact, I do it to experiment with retro hardware and see what capabilities these types of experiments have.
And now to finish with the last question of the discussion
I tried to do crossfire with two R7 250 and see how it performed but when I connected the two GPUs to my test PC, Windows did not detect the second GPU, it only detected the one in the first PCIe port and I tested the two GPUs alone and none of them. Both are faulty, I even changed the port and put one at the top and the other at the bottom, I even tried using the third PCIe port that my motherboard has but nothing
When I turn on the PC, the fans of both graphics cards spin.
but when checking radeon software only one appears and in the device manager too
I also reinstalled the drivers but nothing
I don't know what I'm doing wrong since they are the same model.
Could it be because one has 2GB of vram in ddr3 and the other 1gb of vram in gddr5? Because as far as I know, that doesn't affect whether they are the same GPU.
I hope you can help me with that last one since I don't want to continue insisting on this topic

Just to be clear here, you say you tested the GPUs individually to confirm both work, yes? But when both are installed in the motherboard, only one shows up?

Well, to start with, what Windows version are you running, what Radeon driver version, and what are the full hardware specs of the computer? Particularly important would be motherboard model, as well as what models are the two R7 250 cards?

Also, I came acrosss this thread that may be of interest to you, regarding getting CF working on R7 250 cards. https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...entical-radeon-r7-250-graphics-cards.2214360/

 

[vixeko_]

Just to be clear here, you say you tested the GPUs individually to confirm both work, yes? But when both are installed in the motherboard, only one shows up?

Well, to start with, what Windows version are you running, what Radeon driver version, and what are the full hardware specs of the computer? Particularly important would be motherboard model, as well as what models are the two R7 250 cards?

Also, I came acrosss this thread that may be of interest to you, regarding getting CF working on R7 250 cards. https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...entical-radeon-r7-250-graphics-cards.2214360/

Ok, I spent a lot of time researching and I don't think there is any way to do crossfire with these two R7 250s.
but since I don't lose anything, I leave the specifications of my retro test PC and the two GPUs
CPU: AMD FX-8120
Mobo: ASUS M5A99X EVO R2.0
RAM: 4 RAM memories of 4GB DDR3 at 1333mhz
Storage: a 512GB ZADAK TWSS3 SSD in SATA 3
GPU 1: XFX Radeon R7 250 Low Profile 1GB VRAM GDDR5
GPU 2: DELL Radeon R7 250 2GB VRAM GDDR3

Well, I guess there is no possible way to do crossfire with them since they are from a different manufacturer, have different VRAM and different types of bios.
Try the latest driver for the R7 250 which is Radeon Software Adrenalin 22.6.1 and also the latest Catalyst Control Center driver which is version 14.4
and there is a small possibility of being able to do crossfire with these two gpus I will try it since I do this to experiment and because it is something that I like but if there is nothing left to do I will focus on something else