Hybrid Crossfire on 880G chipset...

[Gameman]

4670 just became unavailable (too far to travel)
so i'm gonna grab a cheap and I MEAN REALLY cheap Radeon 4350/5450 and give this new Hybrid Crossfire deal a try...
Since I have the lower end 880G AMD chipset and a 1055T Thuban I figured why not..

I know when I was looking for info on this on the net it was impossible to find any user experiences with aTI Hybrid Crossfire..so I'll provide some here...

in case any of you can't afford the best GFX card right away and have to wait...

The first will be with a 4350 and the onboard 4250 880G in Xfire...
I'll post some results...

Tomorrow I'll post some results of the better 5450 DDR3 GPU in Xfire with the 4250...
You know mostly just for the fun of it...(and knowledge)

as I mentioned in the Thuban thread it appears the 880g/4250 can handle crysis - just barely at 30 fps on LOW.... it is playable just not very enjoyable since all the eye-candy is turned off...




update: hmmm catalyst doesn't seem to wanna play ball...

I know someone used this combination...if not then i'll switch it for the 5450...

[demonkevy666]

4670 just became unavailable (too far to travel)
so i'm gonna grab a cheap and I MEAN REALLY cheap Radeon 4350/5450 and give this new Hybrid Crossfire deal a try...
Since I have the lower end 880G AMD chipset and a 1055T Thuban I figured why not..

I know when I was looking for info on this on the net it was impossible to find any user experiences with aTI Hybrid Crossfire..so I'll provide some here...

in case any of you can't afford the best GFX card right away and have to wait...

The first will be with a 4350 and the onboard 4250 880G in Xfire...
I'll post some results...

Tomorrow I'll post some results of the better 5450 DDR3 GPU in Xfire with the 4250...
You know mostly just for the fun of it...(and knowledge)

as I mentioned in the Thuban thread it appears the 880g/4250 can handle crysis - just barely at 30 fps on LOW.... it is playable just not very enjoyable since all the eye-candy is turned off...




update: hmmm catalyst doesn't seem to wanna play ball...

I know someone used this combination...if not then i'll switch it for the 5450...

what operating system are you using ?

[Gameman]

first xp and jack all - seemed to know it was there, but no option to enable..so I am now tryingVista 32 Home Premium with exactly the same results...zip

I'll try the 5450 Gigabyte seems to recommend..although i don't see why - the 4350 and 5450 are very close in shaders and clock speed... funny, you'd thing two 4XXX series cards would work together

As you can see in this shot, gpuz and vista seems to know they're both there but Catalyst won't give me the option when i look in the upper left menu...



oh well... I'll get it working eventually.... but so far the recommended settings in the UD2H manual don't work...


I guess that's Gigabyte for you...

also as you can see the 5450 i'll be gettin tomorrow doesn't seem to have any major differences in the 10$$ cheaper 4350, same shaders and similar clock and bus....

[BeepBeep2]

what operating system are you using ?

Based on the XP-esque window I'd have to say FreeBSD.

[Gameman]

nope, the xp i own, it's the Vista that's "on loan"...so to speak...

[Gameman]

Well I've tried absolutely everything and bugger all....
The guy on line who made the 4350 work with the onboard must have been using the OLDER chipset...

funny though, you'd think a 4250 would co-operate with a 4350..I mean they're like brothers...

but like I said I guess that's Gigabyte for you...

I will give the 5450 gpu a try tonight since Gigabyet actually mentions that very card on their website...

The 5450 is way better anyway (eyefinity,atistream and 14 gb of bandwidth compared to the 4350's pidley 6 gb...

I figure if I can Xfire this with the 4250 i might get 16gb of bandwidth combined if i'm lucky...and that's enough for crysis on medium as i remember with my 3650...

this will have to do until I get my replacement 5830 in September

[Gameman]

Success....I knew this is what they meant...

got the 5450 instead (only DDR2 was available sadly) and once I rebooted, installed it, reinstaled catalyst from the Gigabyte AMD motherboard drivers it detected it..

In the bios I had to: enable surround view
set frame buffer to 256mb
and initial display set to "PEG"
plugged tv into 5450 HDMI port and the first time after Catalyst reinstall it knew what it was... (although you'd think they'd enable it for the 43XX series..) I personaly think this is just their way of getting you to move up and buy a new 5XXX series card and boost sales...



and then this next....





so there you go 880G possibly 890GX too is non compatible with HD43XX series (only 34XX series and 5450 etc...)

Good to clear that up...since 1 or 2 of you might be wondering that....

Thanks - i'll put some results up tomorrow....if there's any point...I wanted the DDR3 Version but this was all they had...

[Gameman]

update: trying the same platform on a reinstall of XP-Home 32 bit and no luck

tried every setting and all versions of drivers...this 5450 is going back by the way... the colour is fXXXked above 1280x800...must be defective...

maybe I'll try a 5570/5670 instead... only 45.00 more....

anyone think it's worth the 45.00 extra bucks?????

I was getting 45-50 fps in Crysis but that was only on LOW at 1024x768...and PCSX2 had to have all the hacks enabled to get a constant 60fps...which doesn't technically count...

cause I can get me a 5670 1 GB GDDR5 on sale today only...and I'm sure that would beat any sub-standard crossfire setup...

I mean geez...


anyways...

hopefully I answered someones question here...at least people with cheap htpc's googling this subject will now know....

by the way overall: I personally don't think it was worth all the effort, especially if you gotta go back to garbage Vista ...you only gain about 10-12 frames and that's IF it uses it...I watched the onboard gpu usage and it always stayed at zero...

so it may just be a gimmick to sell 5450's...

[SubZero.it]

Use Win7 64Bit. Will solve you many problems

[Gameman]

Well there you go some confirmed results and some confirmed non-results in XP even using the 8.7 Catalyst/Gigabyte chipset drivers package and the settings they recommend...

I did not choose to stick with that "Hybrid" setup cause even with the better 5450 and onboard it was just roughly twice as good as the original onboard...

no I'm opting to skip the Crossfire idea and go with a 5670 instead... out performs both of them combined by up to 3 or 4 times on it's own...

some people may think the Crossfire is worth it, just not THAT particular setup..only if it's for a low end htpc with games from previous generations...

because as nice as it was to have crossfire enabled with the onboard and actually get it to work, that 5450 really wasn't pulling it's weight....