Help with 1950XTX Crossfire and Drivers

[UltimaBoB]

I live in korea (Canadian teaching English here) and just purchased:

*E6700
*Asus P5W DH
*2 x HIS ATI x1950XTX Crossfire GPU
*2 GB Ram
*very slightly used HP-P1230 Monitor manu. March/05
*SB X-Fi card

I got my machine from my shop today. And a guy is coming over tomorrow to double check everything. He said that they honestly are having troubles with the drivers for my 1950s in crossfire.

They are trying to use Catalyst 6.9 and say that even when it says crossfire is enabled, the 3D Mark scores will fluctuate between ~16,000 and 12,000. They tell me that they don;t know what to do - they think crossfire is not always working. Their idea is to wait until 6.10 post-beta drivers come out.

Is there anything I can do in the meantime to make sure crossfire always works? I am pretty noobish with computers myself but I will try.

 

[rbV5]

I don't think the Catalyst 6.9 drivers have support for the x1950 cards. You may have to use the drivers that shipped with the cards untill the next Catalyst release?

 

[Matt2]

is ATI making a habit of releasing cards without proper driver support.

Same situation occured when R580 was released too.

 

[UltimaBoB]

The machine is running with x1950s and 6.9 - i will have to ask how they did that.

Their are maybe drivers in the box on the cds - i wonder if they just allow each card to work or if they allow crossfire to work.

Anyone know any way to get 1950 crossfire to work now?

 

[rbV5]

Originally posted by: UltimaBoB
The machine is running with x1950s and 6.9 - i will have to ask how they did that.

Their are maybe drivers in the box on the cds - i wonder if they just allow each card to work or if they allow crossfire to work.

Anyone know any way to get 1950 crossfire to work now?

I turned up beta Cat 10 drivers at ATI ( Link ) I see the x1950 is on the supported card list, otherwise you'll have to use the drivers that shipped with the cards, since IIRC they are a special version of the drivers and do have the x1950 card support. The beta's are worth a shot IMO.

 

[UltimaBoB]

Hmm...you think if you can make them work at all then you can also make them crossfire or would those be separate driver issues?

 

[Elfear]

The Beta 6.10 drivers should work just from what I've been reading. You're other option is to find the 6.9's that some guy modded so that the X1950XTX showed up in the .inf file. Either should allow Crossfire to work.

 

[rbV5]

Originally posted by: UltimaBoB
Hmm...you think if you can make them work at all then you can also make them crossfire or would those be separate driver issues?

I dunno?

I think that if they indeed have the Cat 6.9 drivers installed, they aren't on the supported card list for the drivers and are apparently experiencing crossfire/driver issues.....its worth trying either the drivers that shipped with the card, or the beta's that have the x1950 support.

4000 point swings in 3DM06 is huge, so something seems amiss if the 3DM and driver settings remained the same for those tests, I'd suspect drivers.

Edit: in fact those 3D mark scores look high for 3DM06, what version are they running?'05?

 

[josh6079]

I don't think the Catalyst 6.9 drivers have support for the x1950 cards. You may have to use the drivers that shipped with the cards untill the next Catalyst release?

This is true if you want WHQL-certified ones. However, Codebasher tweaked the 6.9's to allow the X1950XTX here.

is ATI making a habit of releasing cards without proper driver support.

Same situation occured when R580 was released too.

They do need to get their act together. First a "delay" in the actual prodcut, then even after the "delay" the most recent drivers that were around its launch didn't even support them officially. Now, several weeks since the X1950XTX's have gone from paper to available, there are still next to nill CrossFire Mastercards compared to how many slave cards there are. God I'll be glad when this master/slave card business is over and CF becomes more like SLI. /rant.

Their are maybe drivers in the box on the cds - i wonder if they just allow each card to work or if they allow crossfire to work.

"There" should be drivers within the packaging that the card came in. Pop in the CD and just go through the installation process. You will have to install .NET 1.1 at least and the CCC + Display driver in order to use CrossFire, and all of that should be present on the installation CD.