Ive taken the plunge into a new rig- so far ive got a Wavemaster with an extra 80mm fan in top (and another in the mounting thing-) also ive got an Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro HSF- ive decided to make a x-fire rig as i want mega gaming performance, and i personally preffer ATI over nVidia- so ive come up with the following list- Wavemaster- Opteron 144/6/8 X-fire motherboard- unfortunately i hve no idea what to get- i definately want to oC the CPU, RAM and VGA but the DFI board eats chips- so any ideas- 1 GB or 2gb Giel/G-Skill/Mushkin RAM - (anything upto £150 with best OCability) 250 GB Samsung Spinpoint (allready got) 36 GB Raptor X-Fi - the biggest problem is with GPUs i know that i want an HIS IceQ III model but only whant one to start with, so do i go eith an XT or XTX, and then which one goes where ect- My total budget for the rest is about £1k-£1,250 unfortunaely dont know to much about X-fire so help is required Thanks- MAnkz
The best reccomendations I can offer are as follows Opteron 146 (dual core) Asus A8R32-MVP 2 Gigabytes of solid RAM (Corsair and OCZ are good) Dont bother with the raptor; they really arent all that great at the end of the day. For graphics, start with an XT; the XTX doesnt gain you that much in reality. You can also purchase that graphics cooler aftermarket, potentially at a lower price. Its just as highland3r said in another thread; newbies are coming into the forum and splashing out on high performance systems, but dont know where to look when the thing goes bad. Read up on some articles about crossfire and do some research. Come back with further questions when you know what youre getting yourself into
For crossfire you need a master card that is crossfire enabled, you can't get one in XTX and as far as I know ATI have no intentions of making one. You could run an X1900XT Crossfire card with an XTX but it would just slow down to the same speed. If you're definately going Crossfire you may as well just get an XT. The best Crossfire motherboard available at the moment is the Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe, you can find a review of that on this site.
14x series are single-core... 165 or X2 3800+ for best dual-core overclocking. Aside from that, I'd have to agree with Roto's specification You'd be advised to read up before even considering an investment in such a pricey technology. Bit-Tech, along with a myriad of other handware sites, has extensive information on the ins and outs of CrossFire. Please at least browse through it before asking for help.
This might be useful to you: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/06/02/crossfire_preview/1.html http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/09/26/ati_crossfire_detail/1.html http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/01/24/x1900xtx_crossfire/1.html http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/03/01/ati_rd580_asus_a8r32-mvp/1.html
The new DFI & Abit RD580 boards are due out very shortly. Probably worth waiting to see how they do. & make sure that you get a good PSU
As said above, it's worth the wait for the RD580 boards, I reccomend/prefer Sapphire & ASUS mobos (not sure when they will be out tho. Also you should deffanitly considor a Dual Core cpu, since you want/know how to overclock I'd reccomend a 3800 X2 or a 4200 X2 both these are pretty much garenteed to hit atleast 2.5ghz+ -Fr4nk
you will need a "slave" and a "master card" take a look at this link for what i consider the best x-fire board avalible > http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=15&l3=268&model=1042&modelmenu=1
He doesnt need to worry about Mastercards just yet, since he plans on starting off with just one; subsequently, a single X1900XT will make a good initial investment. Heres something to think about though; once you feel the need to upgrade again, RD570, and perhaps even the next generation ATI cards, will be coming out, or pending. These will not require mastercards or external dongles, which will make for a much more viable dual graphics solution.
will a rig of Rotosequenences description be significantly faster than a 3500 @ 2.4 and a X800XL- also im not a noob- i justy still dont understand why ATI desided to make X-fire so complicated unlike SLI, where you put 2 cards in connect the bridge, BIOS fiddle and bam! Mankz
That comes down to the methodology where the solution was applied. SLI was planned from the beginning, so the drivers, chip design, and the solution in general is much better engineered than ATI's solution, which was, at the time, a desperate counter to nVidia's SLI technology. As a result, the solution isnt quite as clean as nVidias. However, ATI is learning fast, and they are making significant progress in the dual graphics arena.
