Crossfire on EVGA 790i

[robnox]

I have an old EVGA 790i I would like to hook up with a crossfire solution.

Still putting it back together as we speak but I thought I would ask a few questions in the meantime:

Is bios modification still necessary to run crossfire or will the latest official P10 BIOS from EVGA work?

And if bios modification is necessary, Will the Blackbird 002-01C Bios work on an early A1 revision of the EVGA 790i Ultra board?

Thanks guys!

 

[robnox]

I'm happy to report the mod was successful and my system now identifies itself as an HP on boot.

So now in theory I should be able to run Crossfire 16x/16x/16x 2.0. Going to test that now. CHEERS!!!

 

[NumericalMethods]

Hey Robnox, glad you got your system working Can you elaborate a little? I have a friend with a 750i board that won't do crossfire. I take it, from what you have posted so far, that there a BIOS lockout on no SLI setups.

How come your board shows up as HP? Does the modded BIOS support all your board features? Any details would be appreciated. Ta!

 

[RiDE]

What cards are you running? I was under the impression that you could only crossfire 38xx and 48xx cards.

 

[robnox]

I'm running the eVGA 790i FTW. This is the article that gave me the idea to flash my board with the blackbird BIOS: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2325/3

All the board features do seem to be supported, although I have yet to get crossfire working. For some reason when I install the two 6970's I get a blank screen and the computer doesnt boot, it acts like its turning on then keeps restarting. If I remove the second video card the system boots perfectly. One card is a 1GB and the other is a 2GB, could this be causing the problem?

 

[NumericalMethods]

That boot problem is exactly what my friend described to me. He is using a pair of 6850 1GB cards. I highly doubt that the memory mismatch is making the difference to your setup.

I'm reading that link you supplied now. Very interesting info there. I'll keep you updated if I find any more solutions. Thanks a lot

 

[RiDE]

I'm running the eVGA 790i FTW. This is the article that gave me the idea to flash my board with the blackbird BIOS: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2325/3

All the board features do seem to be supported, although I have yet to get crossfire working. For some reason when I install the two 6970's I get a blank screen and the computer doesnt boot, it acts like its turning on then keeps restarting. If I remove the second video card the system boots perfectly. One card is a 1GB and the other is a 2GB, could this be causing the problem?

I have a Blackbird with a 790i board as well and from what I've read Crossfire only works for the ATI 38xx and 48xx series video cards with the the official HP ATI Catalyst Driver Package 8.7. Somebody correct me if they've gotten it to work with more recent Radeons.