Well, I just bought a second 5870 for CrossFire

[SlowSpyder]

The problem is I haven't used multiple cards since the GeForce 6800 days, and that left me rather unimpressed. The Radeon 6xxx cards aren't worth an upgrade. The GeForce GTX580 offers a decent jump, but hardly worth the money for that upgrade. So, seeing as the upgrade bug bit me, this is what made sense to me.

But, I have a few questions that I hope you guys can help me out with.

I really don't know much about game profiles. If I play a game that does not work with CrossFire, the game will still run fine, but on only one card, right? I guess I want to know what happens when a game doesn't support CrossFire.

Also, I play a lot of older games. Should I expect any kind of compatability issues? I guess what I'm looking for is CrossFire 101. I didn't buy this because I couldn't play games at the settings I wanted, it was more of a 'I have some extra money and want to buy a toy' purchase. Anyway, any feedback is appreciated (Yea, I know solofly, you weren't happy with your CrossFire'd cards )

 

[busydude]

Just download and install the latest game profiles, they are additive so the new application profile contains all the game profiles of the previous ones.

There are a few games which I personally had issues with.. GTA 4 and F1 2010(Solved now).. and in a few rare cases there were instances of negative scaling. I just disable crossfire if I face any issues with games.

 

[happy medium]

I would just: Manually uninstall drivers, reboot into safe mode, run Driver Cleaner Pro, shut computer down, install second card, boot up and install drivers / enable CF. Basically start fresh.

Then download profiles and install.

 

[five_seven]

I'll be keeping tabs on this thread. I was in a similar boat for deciding on a 2nd 5870 or a new single card until the Monitor Resolution Police busted me for trying to get away with 1280x1024 on a multi-card setup!! Thread is here. (But that's why I came here-- for straight up advice.)

Definitely give your impressions on it when you have it up and running. I'd be interested, and it'd help my graphics decision after I decide on a monitor upgrade.

 

[Castiel]

I've said it once and i'll say it again. Amd drivers are garbage

 

[happy medium]

I've said it once and i'll say it again. Amd drivers are garbage

I would have to disagree, since the 6800 series, the crossfire drivers are better. Haven't heard too much bad crap about them.
I think quadfire drivers blow, the 4870x2 series drivers were not so good, but that has changed for the better in the past 8 months. Even tri-fire seems to be ok now.

Do I think they are on the level of Nvidia drivers ? No ,but garbage, naaa.

 

[Castiel]

I would have to disagree, since the 6800 series, the crossfire drivers are better. Haven't heard too much bad crap about them.
I think quadfire drivers blow, the 4870x2 series drivers were not so good, but that has changed for the better in the past 8 months. Even tri-fire seems to be ok now.

Do I think they are on the level of Nvidia drivers ? No ,but garbage, naaa.

What about Crappy? Would that work?

 

[SlowSpyder]

I've said it once and i'll say it again. Amd drivers are garbage

You are brave trying to get use out of four GPU's. I'm not making any excuses for AMD, they offer it, so they should do a better job of making it work. But, I would imagine that the scaling has to be pretty bad. Not to mention I doubt AMD is optimizing drivers for the 4xxx cards any more.

I haven't had any problems with drivers for my single 5870 (except when I overclocked it too far). But I imagine as more cards are added there is more chance for problems. I guess we'll see. If I don't like the CrossFire set up, no big deal. I'll sell the second one. I guess we'll see.

I finally bought a somewhat modern game. Battlefield Bad Company 2 is downloading from Steam right now. My monitor's resolution is 1920x1200.. time to make this card stretch it's legs a bit. The only really taxing game I've played on it was Age of Conan.