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4850/3870 crossfire?

daelnordaelnor Member UncommonPosts: 1,556
in Hardware

Interesting article I stumbled across.

A source close to AMD told us that there will be “inter-generation compatibility” between the Radeon 3800 and 4850: “Since they're both DirectX 10.1 parts, there is no reason why those two should not work together. (…) We will probably not qualify this interoperability, but who stops you from trying?"

It appears that ATI did not integrate a driver lock or something else that would stop you from combining a 3870 card with a 4850 or with a 4870 model. Just keep in mind that these two cards need to include the same amount of memory. If you mix and match a 3850 with 256 MB of memory with a 4850 512 MB, the 4850 card will default to 256 MB. If you wonder whether you will be able to combine a 3870 X2 card with a 4850 board, our sources indicated that this scenario should work as well.

-By Theo Valich
Monday, June 23, 2008 00:01
TG Daily.
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38056/135/

/discuss.

edit #2: looking in the comments on that article, someone linked an article at fudzilla saying that this is not true...so...draw your own conclusions.

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Comments

  • CleffyIICleffyII Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 3,440

    ATI's CrossfireX has been able to run different generation cards since September.  It should be no surprise that this one is also capable of it.  One thing AMD has been trying to promote since they lost the performance race is that with AMD your parts don't become useless 6 months later.  Personally, I don't trust Fudzilla, especially on rumors.  One particular thing they do is improper testing.  They test ATI for instance on motherboard with nVidia chipsets which give an advantage to nVidia cards.  They also comment that live gameplay instead of using the games benchmarking tools is better.  Even though gameplay environments aren't consistent in this way.

    image

  • daelnordaelnor Member UncommonPosts: 1,556

    Yeah, their reasoning sounded a bit shiesty in that blurb. It sounded more like " a friend of a friend of a freind told me...."

    And even the AMD guys state that if you could do it, the cards would have the same memory, etc. So if you stick a 256mb 3850 with a 1gb 3870...it's not gonna work.

    image

  • CleffyIICleffyII Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 3,440

    Its gonna work, its just gonna limit the amount of memory on the one with the higher memory.  There are no 3870's with 1024 memory, so I think you are talking about the 3870x2 thats already in crossfire.  So it would clock all 3 cards at 256.

    image

  • OrcaOrca Member UncommonPosts: 629

    Originally posted by daelnor
    Yeah, their reasoning sounded a bit shiesty in that blurb. It sounded more like " a friend of a friend of a freind told me...."

    And even the AMD guys state that if you could do it, the cards would have the same memory, etc. So if you stick a 256mb 3850 with a 1gb 3870...it's not gonna work.

    It's just that both the card will be limited by the slowest one.

    Meaning, if the 3870 runs at 600Mhz, and the 4850 runs at 700Mhz, they will both will run 600Mhz. Same goes with memory. (Atleast this is how they planned it was going to work, back when they introduced CF)

    Futilez - Mature MMORPG Community

    Correcting people since birth.

  • daelnordaelnor Member UncommonPosts: 1,556

    Originally posted by CleffyII
    Its gonna work, its just gonna limit the amount of memory on the one with the higher memory.  There are no 3870's with 1024 memory, so I think you are talking about the 3870x2 thats already in crossfire.  So it would clock all 3 cards at 256.


    Diamond Viper Radeon HD 3870 1GB GDDR3 256-bit 825 MHZ PCI-E x16 HDCP Supported Video Card - 3870PE31G
    http://www.buy.com/prod/diamond-viper-radeon-hd-3870-1gb-gddr3-256-bit-825-mhz-pci-e-x16-hdcp/q/loc/101/207953010.html

    image

  • Kevyne-ShandrisKevyne-Shandris Member UncommonPosts: 2,077

    All I can say: mix and match any hardware designed to match and run together = hardware forums are going to be busy with a-l-o-t of gamers with problems.

    Just because there's no lock, doesn't mean it'll operate as a matched pair. Have mix and match memory in this rig, for example. It can be done, but I won't do it again, as it never gets to spec speed of matched memory.

    SLI/Crossfire is just not to switch parts in and out of. It's for "need for speed" folks, who would cry if they can't get 2 extra fps in their game. Now add the ability to even slow clock/mem down (as adding a slower card = both will go the speed of the slowest one)?

    :shudder:

  • daelnordaelnor Member UncommonPosts: 1,556

    I think you're missing the point a bit. Even ATI themselves wouldn't suggest it as a really good idea, or a way to try and pimp performance...but if you have an old 3870, you upgrade to a 4870...what if you COULD pair them and get some use out of your old card instead of scrapping it?

    It won't be the ideal performance that you would get from pairing 4870's, but it may be greater than a single card..and you don't just throw the old card into a box with all your other old components that you swear you will find a use for "one day."

    Personally, I wouldn't really want to do it either..but the possiblility is intriguing.

    image

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