[mmatrix]

I have a question to ask regarding crossfire.. Brothers and sisters here please help..

Say I have a crossfire featured mobo and cx850xt crossfire edition. Can I use a x800xt non-crossfire as a slave gpu?

[<<neO.n>>]

Yes!

You can. However, Crossfire adopts the characteristics of the lowest common denominator- This means that clockspeeds etc. will all follow the X800XT instead of the X850XT. While this suggests flexibility - my criticism is that any users going this way would normally get a set of matching cards for best performance as well as price... It's a little odd that you should choose any mismatched pairs you see...

<<neO.n>>

[mmatrix]

So i need to get a x800xt crossfire edition to match the performance??

Is the Sapphire X800 CrossFire 256MB the best for my Sapphire x800xt?

[thaddeus]

if lets say you have a sapphire x800xt now... you should get something higher or same level as the x800xt... or else as neon said... it will run slower... and its under-utilising the ability of your card...

[<<neO.n>>]

Hello,

Well, here's the tricky part... a) I'm not even sure that ATi will produce the X800 crossfire part... even if they do, which is highly debatable, I'm not even sure that it will make it to the retail channel in quantity, which could mean that you won't even be able to get your hands on it.
b) (This sorta ties into point a) ) ATi already has their next gen parts on hand, the advent of the X18XX series means that the wisdom of getting 2 X800 series cards is a little erroded. Simply put, it's probably more cost effective to upgrade to a single X1800 series card instead of going for 2 X800s... any performance gains of the 2 X800s would easily be overridden by the issues such as the lower cost of ownership and upkeep of a single X1800 solution, as well as the increased capability of the X1800 and the option to upgrade that single X1800 card to a crossfire setup. With this in mind, ATi would logically focus production on their X1800 series rather than come up with a back catalog of parts for their previous gen just so that people can satisfy their Crossfire desires with older hardware.

Dual-Video card setups for high-end videocard solutions are, in my opinion, not really good sense for those who intend to run a so called "budget" conscious upgrade path. It's best utilized for with the "I want it all NOW" mentality. The total cost of your Crossfire setup would be rather disheartening when you consider the performance that a similarly priced X1800 based setup would provide...

<<neO.n>>

[ragnarok95]

Sorry mmatrix, i dun think it will work. Its already been brought up over at HWZ.
For crossfire to work,
X850 crossfire must pair with X850pro/xt/xype
X800 crossfire must pair with X800/pro/xl/xt/xtpe
Thats why ATI came out with 2 diff crossfire card and not 1

[<<neO.n>>]

Hello,

Just to add to what ragnarok has said - it seems that I overlooked that issue as well.

Here's the official word from ATi regarding compatibility:

A.CrossFire requires a CrossFire Edition graphics card and a compatible standard Radeon (CrossFire Ready) graphics card from the same series.
The Radeon® X850 CrossFire Edition card can be paired with any PCI Express Radeon X850 graphics card (Radeon X850 PRO, Radeon X850 XT or Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition) from ATI or any of its partners including cards previously sold.
The Radeon X800 CrossFire Edition cards can be paired with any PCI Express Radeon X800 graphics card (Radeon X800, Radeon X800 PRO, Radeon X800 XL, Radeon X800 GTO, Radeon X800 XT or Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition) from ATI or any of its partners.

While is might be said that ATi's Crossfire solution does offer quiite a bit of flexibility... I would argue that this point is a little moot because of the stipulation that the cards take the characteristics of the lowest common denominator.

I would therefore suggest getting matched cards if going for a crossfire setup - the problems as stated before are: a) Product availability, b) Performance relative to that of current gen. cards.

To be sure, the Crossfire solutions are interesting... but the Crossfire cards that are just coming into the market are basically previous gen already...

<<neO.n>>
- Pardon my earlier mistake

[tckrto]

crossfire hehe
eagerly waiting for x1800 master card

[mmatrix]

Wow, seems abit confusing...

Ok, my situation now is that my Sapphrie x800xt is spoiled and I sent it for RMA.. The storekeeper said that it will be back in about 5 weeks time. Therefore, my desktop is left there without a graphic card now.

I want to use my desktop asap. What should I do now? Buy a x1800xt and sell my graphic card when its fixed or get a crossfire ed. x800 then add in my sapphire x800xt when it is fixed?

[ragnarok95]

Just buy a X1800XT

[mmatrix]

Originally Posted by ragnarok95

Just buy a X1800XT

So, this is the best price-performance ratio?

[Jade_Monkey]

Actually going Nvidia would be the best price/performance ratio, but if you want to stick with ATI, then yes, that would be your best price/performance ratio.

[thaddeus]

Originally Posted by mmatrix

Wow, seems abit confusing...

Ok, my situation now is that my Sapphrie x800xt is spoiled and I sent it for RMA.. The storekeeper said that it will be back in about 5 weeks time. Therefore, my desktop is left there without a graphic card now.

I want to use my desktop asap. What should I do now? Buy a x1800xt and sell my graphic card when its fixed or get a crossfire ed. x800 then add in my sapphire x800xt when it is fixed?

if you get a crossfire x800 then your x800xt will run at x800speeds only.
so go for x1800xt if you have the $$$.

[mmatrix]

Then is there a crossfire edition x800xt?

[ragnarok95]

X800 crossfire should be at the speed of either XT/XTPE so that it will not slow down the slave card
For example, a X850 crossfire card has the same speed as X850XT