- Jul 18, 2003
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Big edit worth bolding. The texture corruption in 3DMark05 was due to the Accelero X2 not making any contact with the composting chip on the board. I think to make contact, one would have to remove the shim around the core to get the Accelero to work, but it still wouldn't make full contact because that chip would partially overlap with the hole where the heatpipes peak through on the copper plate. If one removed the shim around the core, I still have doubts that the core and composting chip are perfectly level though because the original HSF has an indention for the composting chip to sit in, while the core has a raised copper slug for it to interface with. This leads me to believe the Accelero X2 is just totally incompatible with the X1800XT Crossfire Edition.
Cliffs:
The X1800XT Crossfire Edition is IMO not compatible with the Accelero X2!
It's probably been stated here before, but use ATI Tool (or ATI Tray Tools) to increase your fan speed to 100%, 100% of the time. This made an amazing difference in my temps at idle and load with each one decreasing by 8-12°C. There is also no perceived increase in noise and I'm very picky about noise (running Panaflo low dB and low rpm 120mm fans throughout case).
My average idle temp is about 46-47°C (down from 55-56°C) and load is 65°C (down from 77-78°C). I'll hopefully see how Crossfired X1800XTs, both with Accelero X2s attached and running at 100%, stand up in a system with an overclocked Pentium D 920@3.73-4.0Ghz.
Edit: My internal case temp is pretty reasonable and the cards were running 27% at idle before upping them to 100% through the software. Also, I used Arctic Silver on my new X1800XT Crossfire board and removed the pre-applied silver goop. Don't see much more than 1-2°C improvement compared to the X1800XT I originally had installed in there.
Edit2: Had to use ATI Tray Tools instead of ATI Tool to get the fans up to 100%. ATI Tools doesn't like Crossfire or just isn't coded for it yet, so ATI Tray Tools FTW.
Edit3: I'm having a bit of trouble with choppiness in Quake 4 on X1800XT Crossfire and I'm not sure if it is due to heat issues with the GPUs or the dual core processor. I've heard of choppiness on dual core and also wondered about thermal throttling. I ran Prime95, Folding@Home, the ATI Tool x-wing artifact scanner thingy, and a virus scan to warm things up before running throttle watch. This combination ran all night long with no throttling, so that is eliminated as a culprit at least. The CPU gets up to about 67°C after running like that overnight though, which is pushing the limits of how hot I like things to run. It only runs about 56°C when running Folding@Home or a game though. Also, when running Quake 4 or 3DMark05 I get this yellow counter thingy in the upper right hand corner of my gaming screen. WTF is this, a FPS counter for Crossfire overlayed or something?!
Also, plugging in the EZ-Plug on the ASUS P4WD2 doesn't seem to hurt anything, so I'm just going to leave it plugged in. I figure the more copper feeding current from 12V1 the better with this setup. Also, even though I disabled the Q-fan feature, my power supply fan was still not at 100% of what it could do. ASUS recommends using Chassis1 connection for better thermals and they are correct. Under ludicrious load (TM) the processor only reaches 67°C, whereas it was reaching 70-71°C before. I may install another 80mm fan to exhaust out the back, just to see if that helps at all if the Crossfire choppiness ends up being due to just heat.
Edit4: Looks like the choppiness in Quake 4 was due to dual core, but not thermal throttling. Fix#2 found on Hardforums cleared up pretty much all stuttering problems. After trying to run 3DMark05 again, I still noticed a lot of texture corruption. I didn't think much of this until I started taxing the boards in Quake 4 a bit more with 16xAA and 16xHQAF (gorgeous and still maintains 50-60FPS) and started getting corruption there too. Further testing with ATI Tray Tools and ATI Tool revealed the cores were staying plenty cool during artifact testing at 3D voltages and 3Dcore/memory speeds. However, when they got into a 3D game with high levels of visual goodness for long periods of time I would get periodic crashes, which lead me to suspect the composting chip was not making proper contact (which later proved to be understatement of the year) with the Accelero X2. After removing the Accelero X2 (which is a PITA by the way...those memory pads are extremely sticky) the composting chip still had AS5 on there, but none of it was smeared on the Accelero X2! I cleaned everything up with IPA, reapplied AS5 to the core and composting chip, mounted the original HSF back on, and started playing Quake 4 with 16xAA and 16xHQAF for about an hour without issue. I later tried messing with the fan speeds in ATI Tray Tools and discovered the OSD FPS counter will crash Quake 4 while playing (repeated 3x) also; overall it seems to me Crossfire is very touchy and most 3rd party programs don't like to play nice with it in general. Finally, 3DMark05 still flashes every now and then, but it will complete the benchmark at 1600x1200 with 6xAA and 8xAF just fine now. The original HSF is plenty quiet and never goes above 50% with the temperatures I'm able to maintain in my case, and since the slave card still has an Accelero X2 on it, the noise level is still extremely low. I suppose I'm happy with it and that's all that matters
.
My final configuration is the Crossfire Edition utilizing stock HSF (now with AS5 all interfaced components), the slave card running with an Accelero X2, and a Pentium D 920 running at 3.73Ghz dual core on 1.35V. The Crossfire Edition was definitely exhausting a lot of heat, as my CPU temps can't even break past 62°C (it was just over 70°C before) under ludicrious load now. My motherboard temp also decreased about 2°C (due to the DHES of the stock cooler I imagine). I'm going to loop 3DMark overnight tonight to ensure everything is rock solid stable.
On another note, I am extremely impressed with the Enermax Liberty 620w power supply. It runs extremely quiet, yet effectively powers one of the most power hungry systems one can think of while keeping all voltages stable. ASUS PC Probe II reads 12.14V, 5.15V, and 3.36V for the respective 12V, 5V, and 3V rails running under ludicrious load.
Enermax Liberty 620w is powering: X1800XT Crossfire setup, Dual Core Intel 920@3.73Ghz, 3 hard drives, 1 DVD Burner, 1 Floppy Drive, SB X-Fi Extreme Music, and a PCI Firewire card.
Cliffs:
The X1800XT Crossfire Edition is IMO not compatible with the Accelero X2!
It's probably been stated here before, but use ATI Tool (or ATI Tray Tools) to increase your fan speed to 100%, 100% of the time. This made an amazing difference in my temps at idle and load with each one decreasing by 8-12°C. There is also no perceived increase in noise and I'm very picky about noise (running Panaflo low dB and low rpm 120mm fans throughout case).
My average idle temp is about 46-47°C (down from 55-56°C) and load is 65°C (down from 77-78°C). I'll hopefully see how Crossfired X1800XTs, both with Accelero X2s attached and running at 100%, stand up in a system with an overclocked Pentium D 920@3.73-4.0Ghz.
Edit: My internal case temp is pretty reasonable and the cards were running 27% at idle before upping them to 100% through the software. Also, I used Arctic Silver on my new X1800XT Crossfire board and removed the pre-applied silver goop. Don't see much more than 1-2°C improvement compared to the X1800XT I originally had installed in there.
Edit2: Had to use ATI Tray Tools instead of ATI Tool to get the fans up to 100%. ATI Tools doesn't like Crossfire or just isn't coded for it yet, so ATI Tray Tools FTW.
Edit3: I'm having a bit of trouble with choppiness in Quake 4 on X1800XT Crossfire and I'm not sure if it is due to heat issues with the GPUs or the dual core processor. I've heard of choppiness on dual core and also wondered about thermal throttling. I ran Prime95, Folding@Home, the ATI Tool x-wing artifact scanner thingy, and a virus scan to warm things up before running throttle watch. This combination ran all night long with no throttling, so that is eliminated as a culprit at least. The CPU gets up to about 67°C after running like that overnight though, which is pushing the limits of how hot I like things to run. It only runs about 56°C when running Folding@Home or a game though. Also, when running Quake 4 or 3DMark05 I get this yellow counter thingy in the upper right hand corner of my gaming screen. WTF is this, a FPS counter for Crossfire overlayed or something?!
Also, plugging in the EZ-Plug on the ASUS P4WD2 doesn't seem to hurt anything, so I'm just going to leave it plugged in. I figure the more copper feeding current from 12V1 the better with this setup. Also, even though I disabled the Q-fan feature, my power supply fan was still not at 100% of what it could do. ASUS recommends using Chassis1 connection for better thermals and they are correct. Under ludicrious load (TM) the processor only reaches 67°C, whereas it was reaching 70-71°C before. I may install another 80mm fan to exhaust out the back, just to see if that helps at all if the Crossfire choppiness ends up being due to just heat.
Edit4: Looks like the choppiness in Quake 4 was due to dual core, but not thermal throttling. Fix#2 found on Hardforums cleared up pretty much all stuttering problems. After trying to run 3DMark05 again, I still noticed a lot of texture corruption. I didn't think much of this until I started taxing the boards in Quake 4 a bit more with 16xAA and 16xHQAF (gorgeous and still maintains 50-60FPS) and started getting corruption there too. Further testing with ATI Tray Tools and ATI Tool revealed the cores were staying plenty cool during artifact testing at 3D voltages and 3Dcore/memory speeds. However, when they got into a 3D game with high levels of visual goodness for long periods of time I would get periodic crashes, which lead me to suspect the composting chip was not making proper contact (which later proved to be understatement of the year) with the Accelero X2. After removing the Accelero X2 (which is a PITA by the way...those memory pads are extremely sticky) the composting chip still had AS5 on there, but none of it was smeared on the Accelero X2! I cleaned everything up with IPA, reapplied AS5 to the core and composting chip, mounted the original HSF back on, and started playing Quake 4 with 16xAA and 16xHQAF for about an hour without issue. I later tried messing with the fan speeds in ATI Tray Tools and discovered the OSD FPS counter will crash Quake 4 while playing (repeated 3x) also; overall it seems to me Crossfire is very touchy and most 3rd party programs don't like to play nice with it in general. Finally, 3DMark05 still flashes every now and then, but it will complete the benchmark at 1600x1200 with 6xAA and 8xAF just fine now. The original HSF is plenty quiet and never goes above 50% with the temperatures I'm able to maintain in my case, and since the slave card still has an Accelero X2 on it, the noise level is still extremely low. I suppose I'm happy with it and that's all that matters
.My final configuration is the Crossfire Edition utilizing stock HSF (now with AS5 all interfaced components), the slave card running with an Accelero X2, and a Pentium D 920 running at 3.73Ghz dual core on 1.35V. The Crossfire Edition was definitely exhausting a lot of heat, as my CPU temps can't even break past 62°C (it was just over 70°C before) under ludicrious load now. My motherboard temp also decreased about 2°C (due to the DHES of the stock cooler I imagine). I'm going to loop 3DMark overnight tonight to ensure everything is rock solid stable.
On another note, I am extremely impressed with the Enermax Liberty 620w power supply. It runs extremely quiet, yet effectively powers one of the most power hungry systems one can think of while keeping all voltages stable. ASUS PC Probe II reads 12.14V, 5.15V, and 3.36V for the respective 12V, 5V, and 3V rails running under ludicrious load.
Enermax Liberty 620w is powering: X1800XT Crossfire setup, Dual Core Intel 920@3.73Ghz, 3 hard drives, 1 DVD Burner, 1 Floppy Drive, SB X-Fi Extreme Music, and a PCI Firewire card.
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