TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

Hello everyone
I have been wanting to create a crossfire setup for so long now I finally decided to purchase a second Sapphire HD 3850 (512MB DDR3). Before I doing so, my 3D Benchmark score for one score was ~8300. I installed the second card in, enabled 'crossfire' on ATI Catalyst(most recent) and still my score is around ~8300. Do I have the right setup? Is my mobo 'crossfire' certified? Also I read somewhere that my mobo does have two 16x PCI-E, however one is running at 4x. Is there a way to change within BIOS or is that a hardware issue?

thanks in advance

Generally, unless you have a high-end motherboard - when you enable SLI or CrossFire the second PCI-E slot is throttled to 8x for both slots, or one ones slower etc. The case could be that your motherboard restricts the second PCI-E slot as such in CrossFire mode and so 4x is a hardware issue, not changeable in the BIOS.

What motherboard do you have? Enabling CrossFire/SLI doesn't always double the performance of your gaming expeience either, most times it is a 1/3 increase, and in some circumstances, enabling CrossFire in certain games has caused the game to run poorer than it would on a single card.

SLI has better drivers for dual GPU and so doesn't tend to have that issue as much as CrossFire does. Perhaps the benchmark score you ran wasn't utilizing both cards? Play a game and turn the settings up and see if you notice a performance increase.

Just noticed you listed your mobo.

Expansion Slots
PCI Express x16 1 x PCI-E X16, 1 x PCI-E X16 (x4 bandwidth)

Hardware restriction. It is also not a CrossFire certified motherboard I don't think.

I have an Abit P35 Pro who I purchase Newegg and recently had it setup not so long ago. Wow, I should have read more about crossfire before I bought this MOBO. With the CPU and memory that I already have, which motherboard would be an ideal crossfire setup. I'm thinking of purchasing another board with at least two 16x PCI-E and install everything I currently have on to the new board.

Depends how much you wanna spend. Only the more expensive motherboards have full x16 CrossFire slots. The Gigabyte EP35-DS3P for example is mid-range price, CrossFire certified, but only has x4 on the second PCI-E slot as well.

This board however: Gigabyte GA-EX38-DS4 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128089)

Expansion Slots
2 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots

"Supports ATI CrossFireX™ with Dual PCI-E 2.0 x16 graphics for extreme gaming performance."

Should be a decent board for the price. PCI-E 2.0 over standard PCI-E and appears to have x16 on both slots.