ATI Crossfire Confusion

[nowsharing]

I'm buying the parts to put together a new system, and I'm a bit confused about the benefits of using ATI Crossfire on their low-end video cards.

All of the motherboards that I'm looking at have Radeon 4200 onboard w/Crossfire support. I currently own this older 3450. I generally sell off all of my old parts on Ebay, but I feel like there might be a benefit in keeping this?

Could the old card still offer some performance gains?

[Brian8bit]

Doesn't the stronger card ramp down to the weaker card when you crossfire?

[kill will]

I think this youtube video might be able to help you out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCwn1NTK-50

[nowsharing]

Doesn't the stronger card ramp down to the weaker card when you crossfire?

I've no idea.

I think this youtube video might be able to help you out.

Oh you made a little joke... Thanks for not linking to Goatse at least.

[Brian8bit]

I think it's using two dedicated cards will have the stronger one ramp down to perform the same as the weaker one. Though with a single card, apparently the onboard can be used to help the one card. But I can't remember exactly. I know Asus latest Crosshair IV extreme features a hybrid option that lets you mix and match cards with different chipsets. So you could have a 5970 and a 580 working together. You're pretty much unlimited in how you can mix and match.

[nraymond]

The only time combining two cards in Crossfire or SLI makes practical sense is when you have the money to spend on two top-end cards, so you can exceed the performance of the current single top-end card, but that lead will only last some months until the new top-end card comes out, and generally is only necessary when gaming at 2560x1440 (or similar high resolutions spanning multiple monitors) and above in 2D, or gaming in 3D on polarized dual sandwich screens or alternate frame rendered gaming on 120Hz screens with shutter glasses.  There is also the issue of micro-stutter which is sometimes introduced by micro-synchronization issues with Crossfire/SLI which some people can notice and are bothered by.  Utilizing Crossfire/SLI also requires profiles created by ATI/NVIDIA (or the adventurous user) to kick in when certain executables are launched, and without a profile for an exe, Crossfire/SLI will not be enabled and you'll only be using one card.

Most people in most scenarios are best served by one single strong card.  Less complicated, less hassle, and in many cases, more consistent performance.

[nowsharing]

That clears things up. Thank you!!

[CodeChef]

Basically, to answer your question, I personally would keep it (an extra working video card kicking around is always useful) but no, you can go ahead and sell it. Not only can you not Crossfire that, even if you did, you would only be able to use an identical card to see any performance increase, and even *then* you wouldn't see much of a boost. Those cards are so low-end and so old anyways that you could honestly spend 100 dollars and get 10x better performance than spending 30-50 on another one and get maybe a 10-15% increase...

[Azuremen]

Keep the older one for an HTPC or some other setup. Makes it nice for when you hook up to a large TV etc.

That aside, it is generally better to get a slightly better single graphics card than to run in Crossfire with lower end cards. The 5770 has come down quite a bit in cost and I quite like it thus far for all the games I play (though mostly SC2)

[nowsharing]

Good advice. Actually after reading nraymond's response, I threw out the Crossfire idea and bought a Sapphire HD-5570 1GB ddr3 ($35 today) at Newegg. The deal just showed up at Slickdeals.

The 5 free bottles of Rum coupon was the deal that truly made my day though.

Cheers!