ATI CRossfire Questions...

[BoboKatt]

Good morning all,
I just added a second card to my original X1900XT setup running on an X2-3800+ on an asus MVP deluxe mobo. The new card, the master is actually an ATI x1950XT Crossfire and installing it and connecting the dongle and all was not an issue.

However it did take a while to figure out how the heck to install that dongle. Then it just clicked and I guess it really makes no difference how you install it. It can only go on one of the ports on the master CF edition (since the connection is different) and then it goes to any of the 2 DVI on the slave card and then you hook up the remaining dongle to your monitor.

Anyhow when I run my CCC (using 7.1 CCC and 7.2 drivers as 7.2 CCC simply wont start and run)... I can see the crossfire option and I enable it. It works and I can run benchmarks and games but I can tell it's really not working in crossfire as my 3D5 marks are just a smidgen above what I had on one card before. In fact I know for sure I am getting the score of one 1950XT and I am assuming somehow that one card is running in 2D mode or maybe both not sure.

Anyhow my question is in regards to the crossfire modes... do we get to choose modes? Are there profiles for games? I can't seem to see ANY of these options. Just all the CCC stuff (3D, monitor, temp, avivo, oc'ing etc) but in the Crossfire tab all there is, is the option to enable it or disable it.

Am I doing something wrong? Am I missing something? I removed ATI Tray tools as it was causing issues running with 2 different cards and CCC. I will try ATI tools or winclock and see how that works.

 

[BFG10K]

Anyhow my question is in regards to the crossfire modes... do we get to choose modes? Are there profiles for games?

No and no. The best you can do is set Cat AI to high and it'll force AFR in games that don't have an internal profile.

 

[BoboKatt]

Ahh that makes sense. Ok will do then or at least try out the 3 options for Cat AI. Disabled, enabled low and enabled high and see how that goes. I really don't think Everquest or the other older games I play take advantage of anything crossfire related. But Oblivion does I hope.

On a side note, is there any way to actually see what the speed of the core and mem are for the 2 different cards? I was never sure what I was seeing with ATI Tray Tools so again I will check tonight with ATI tools and see if I can make 2 distinct profiles for the 2 different cards.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

For Crossfire AA, simply slide AA >6xAA
For Checkboard (coughcrapcough) disable catalyst AI
For AFR Leave Catalyst to Standard. Since Cat 6.11 (IIRC) leaving Cat AI to standard will default to AFR mode.

For all but the newest of games, there's no need to do anything.
Stalker is a good example of a game that will need Catalyst 7.3 to enable AFR without doing anything. In the meantime, renaming the .exe to something else should/may help (like graw.exe of fear.exe)