HELP: Dual ATI 5830 Non-Crossfire Mode

[orianthi]

i learned it from here that i am better off using dual ATI cards in non-crossfire (SLI for nVidia). i just got my 2nd card today (same chipset 5830) but my FPS suffered instead of improving.

do i need to install that SLI/Crossfire bridge even i don't intend to enable Crossfire and just turn off Crossfire in the settings, (i guess i can try this)?

i didn't find any settings i need to set in the BIOS or in the ATI driver (catalyst), am i missing something here?

it's frustrating, new SSD and another 4GB or RAM and my PC is slower before the upgrades (at least WoW). i confess i haven't researched that hard yet but i am eager to try a lot of mboxing teams tonight since kids are out so any help is appreciated!

[orianthi]

according to my research, this should be a straightforward installation, like installing two monitors using 2 graphics and nothing special to be done. for a reason my setup doesn't like it.

might be other things i installed and not the graphic cards themselves.

[orianthi]

it's the gfx cards... it seems you can't use both DVI connections even i have 2 physical cards (4 DVI outs). it's not yet as fast as i expected but at least it doesn't go down to 30fps unlike the 11fps i'm getting using two DVI outs. crossfire disabled.

[Tim]

I would go Nvidia instead of ATI since ATI won't let you crossfire windowed mode applications.

Yes, you need to crossfire them and use a single card.

[Davewesh]

I registered just to post to this, granted the thread is a little dated and so on an so forth.

But as with any video card solution i know of, if the cards are not run in sync (Xfire/Sli) You have the ability to use all the outputs of the cards singularly, In ATI's HD 5830 Case 4 dvi, and 2 Display port (separate Eyefinity on each). HOWEVER you claim that your FPS sufferd vs getting better, By how much, Cause your motherboard might have a lack of sufficient PCIe Lanes to keep up with two cards installed. If the Second PCIe slot lowers your Primary Slot down from 16X to 8X you will notice a difference, And if the Second Slot only gets 4X worth of bandwidth your also gonna notice that. Although i find that its hard to believe that you'd get horrible frames when being set down to 8x (unless your NOT running PCIe 2.0)

Whats the reason for not Xfireing em, Having 4 monitors?, for a little bit more then two of those (220-ish/440 for the pair i think now days) you could have gotten an Eyefinity 6 5870 (close to 500-550) and you can get Eyefinity DP-VGA ports all day long for under 20 bucks. If its not to late maybe you'll wanna RMA them for the Eye6 edition?

or i could be stupid and way off ^_^

[orianthi]

well i didn't do my research when i purchased these cards. first, i already had a 5830 and i thought XFire is like SLI that you need to have the same GPU types so i bought another 5830. i am aware that if you use 2 monitors you can plug them in each of the cards and the GPUs don't have to be the same but i also play other games that run on a single monitor so XFire is important to me.

yes i noticed that when i use both of them without XFire and monitors plugged on each of them, it becomes 8x from 16x and my FPS is cut to half than having just a single card. yeah my mobo specs say single x16 or dual x8.

so the best configuration that worked for me is to use XFire and plugged the monitors (2) on the primay card (the ports didn't matter). thanks!