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Thread: My Short Time With Hybrid Crossfire - 3870X2 and Regular 3870.

  1. #1
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    My Short Time With Hybrid Crossfire - 3870X2 and Regular 3870.

    First please actually read my post, before asking questions.
    most of the time, the answers are in the first post.


    I have a 3870X2.
    my friend mike has some 3870s in crossfire.
    he loves his gaming, so for me to ask for 1 of his cards for a few hours, is a big deal.
    so as you might guess, I didnt have too long for this experiment.
    I just had to find out...

    does hybrid crossfire really work?

    heres the break down.

    E8400 at 4.6 to 4.7 ghz.
    4 gigs of DDR3.
    my 3870X2, his 3870.
    Vista + SP1.

    Tested, 3dmark2001se, 2003 and 2006.
    Crysis, Hellgate London, and Everquest 2.

    first try, installing the card, required a full reinstall of the driver.
    it wouldnt work without a reinstall of the driver.
    just plain old wouldnt install the 3870.
    the X2 was fine.
    reinstalling the driver made it work fine.

    upon rebooting, its strange, you still wont see the regular 3870, it will just enable a new option.
    "Crossfire X".

    you can verify 3 cards are there with GPUZ, or windows device manager. but not within the driver.

    to make sure its working, I just did a few benchmarks.
    first try, easily beating my X2's score by 3 thousand points.
    yep, its definatly working .

    a few tries at overclocking my cards, got me 860 on the cores (as this is what the regular 3870 tops out at, so I kept the X2 in that range too) 1070 on the X2's ram, and the regular 3870 at 1125 on the ram.
    got me near 22500.
    not bad for 2 tries.

    3dmark2003 proved to be weird.
    getting 766 FPS in GT2 in the first 5-10 tries, but never again, would pass 752. no idea what happend there.
    93,000 was my top score with 2003.
    2001se isnt even worth mentioning, as I forget, vista and 2001se dont like each other, and was a waste of my time.

    Everquest 2 proved to be no different with 3 cards, then 2.
    so nothing interesting to say there.

    Hellgate London just blew up. I've never seen HGL more better in DX10 mode, then with 3 cards running in CFX, which was strange really.
    great, but very unexpected.

    Crysis was a disaster from start to finish.
    GPU test was severly corrupted.
    CPU test was really really slow, about 8 FPS.
    remember, this is with a CPU at 4.65 ghz....
    normally I average 24-32.
    the game was completly unplayable with CFX.
    plainly put, Crysis is a disaster for Multi Card set ups.
    3 cards only made things 3x as worse.
    Corruption of graphics, no playable frame rate.
    horrible waste of time.

    Overall, Hybrid Crossfire showed me one thing.
    its fun.
    when it works, its astounding.
    when it fails, it fails completly.
    you definatly need some major CPU power behind these cards though.
    going from 4.6 to 4.8 ghz, yeilds some pretty big increases in scores, with no real need to OC the cards.
    my set up is just too slow for them.

    its not perfect.
    but its definatly a viable option, for the benchmarker, and gamers alike.
    but have no illusions here.
    you need alot of CPU power to really show what the cards can do.
    if your running 3 ghz, your wasting your time with these.

    now I am curious to buy my own 3870 to try this out even further.

    in all, I had about 3 hours to mess with this set up.
    I dont have the card anymore, so no more hybrid crossfire for me.
    think of this as more like a confirmation, yeah, it really works.
    I am a gamer, I am a benchmarker, take it as you will.

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    "The command and conquer model," said the EA CEO, "doesn't work. If you think you're going to buy a developer and put your name on the label... you're making a profound mistake."

  2. #2
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    Ummm nice score...

    IMHO... crysis is pretty bad in scalling abilities, go with tri-SLI too


  3. #3
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    What method did you use to overclock the 3 cards? I have a 3870 x2 and 3870 but for the life of me cant overclock them. I made a thread here if you don't wanna mess up yours. http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=179571

    I found to get the drivers working I had to get the seperate display and CCC packages. Installed DD then after reboot CCC and it was fine. Terribal installing the 3in1 driver tho. It kept saying the 2nd gpu on the x2 wasn't a ATI card.

    So you think a Q6600 @ stock isn't enough for these cards? I might try the E8400 after.

    I found on 3D 03 with everything stock speeds I got ~11k increase, but my 3D06 runs have not improved by much, I think because I can't get the cards to OC.

    I see the 3 cards in CCC, gpu-z, everest.

  4. #4
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    Do you use Vista 64bit? I've heard people having problem getting it to work with Vista 64bit, but seems like you got it to work without any hassle.

  5. #5
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    what fsb were u on 500mhz, and if u get anouther chance can u see how fat the gpu score gows down with a lower multi
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  6. #6
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    Anyone ran a 3870 x2 and a 3850 in CrossFireX yet?
    A+ Blockbuster case (full acryan mesh conversion), Asus Maximus III Gene, Intel Core I5 @ 4ghz (watch this space!!) , scythe zipang 2 cooler, 2 x 2gb gskill ripjaw 1600mhz ddr3, Powercolor HD 5770 1gb , tagan pipe rock 1100w bz psu, dvdrw, 1 x 320 ,1 x 750 ,1 x 1tb hdd's, 1 x shuttle sg55 server c/w 2 x 1tb green power hdd's.


  7. #7
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    Interesting, at least it's actually working now. For those without a matched set of cards this might be fun to try out.

  8. #8
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    Interesting.

    When you run 3dmark does it put you in the 3870 tables or the 3870x2? Hopefully the latter.

    Regards

    Andy

  9. #9
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    Interesting results. I was hoping to be able to compare my Tri SLI to Tri Fire 3870 in Crysis, but it seems there is some driver issues left to be sorted with CF and Crysis.

    With 174.12 drivers and my E8400 @ 4.2Ghz I can avg about 45-60 fps in Crysis @ 1680x1050 DX10 very high settings with no mods no AA.
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  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by zakelwe View Post
    Interesting.

    When you run 3dmark does it put you in the 3870 tables or the 3870x2? Hopefully the latter.

    Regards

    Andy
    Hey Andy!
    As you wished, it puts the x2 in there...
    look at the last picture .

    Regards
    Quote Originally Posted by Xeon th MG Pony View Post
    ....and avoid being a total venting loser!

  11. #11
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    Awesome! Keep up the good work my friend.
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  12. #12
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    looks like it puts you in the X2 catagory.

    http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=5610084

    http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=5760459
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    "The command and conquer model," said the EA CEO, "doesn't work. If you think you're going to buy a developer and put your name on the label... you're making a profound mistake."

  13. #13
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    Good work! Too bad CrossfireX and Crysis hate each other.

  14. #14
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    Hi All! Just want to try and keep this thread alive... good info... If we can't rely on decent Tech Support, we have to do it ourselves.

    Here is a comparison of my system running 2 HD3870s in CrossfireX, compared to Kunaak's Hybrid Rig.

    I think the whole 4.0 GHz theory (in regards to needing this much power) is relavent, but I also think that Kunaak needs that much power because he is using a Dual Core Processor.

    Someone should post 3DMark06 benchmarks on a Quad-Fire Rig

    I can run Crysis fine ( I had trouble before I installed 1.1 patch) at Very High settings and at 1920 x 1080 res no AA or AF.
    I don't think that running AA or AF is necessary at these settings, I have absolutely no pixelation in my picture. PLUS, Direct X 10.1 is already defaulted
    to run AA at 4x. Look it up.







    Q6600 @ 3.6 GHz
    Asus Maximus Formula
    4GB Mushkin XP DDR2 800 @ 1066 5-5-5-18
    HD3870 Crossfire X (800/1150)
    Zalman Cooler
    WD Raptor 150 + 500GB @ 7200
    Vista Ultimate 32bit
    47" Westinghouse LCD 1080p - HDMI in
    Last edited by texasreefer; 07-06-2008 at 06:58 AM. Reason: bad pics

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