So my first post shall be a story question... Just because. 
I had a dual 8800GTX setup running on an XFX 780i motherboard and Q9450 cpu.
Decided I wanted to go to a single card solution I could upgrade later. The prices on the ATI cards bang-for-buck looked good even though I hadn't owned one since the 9800XT was the king of the hill.
Now I know that the nforce boards don't do crossfire, but I figured the X2 cards were a single card... the crossfire was internal to them... and I hadn't seen anything that would indicate they couldn't work on that motherboard. So a 2 gig 4850X2 was in my future... 249.99 on newegg (and have since dropped to 219.
)
I went to install it in my case and holy CRAP those cards are large. Approximately 3/4 inch TOO long for my Thermaltake Shark case. Sigh... So, with the intent of testing it and buying a new case, I bent the crap out of my case and managed to squeeze it in.
The machine powered up fine and the card worked. Well. Kinda. It booted up into windows fine. But crashed constantly in games after a few minutes.
I figured it MIGHT be power. So I run over to my "source" and pick up an Antec P190 case with 1200 watts of power (dual PSU - 650 for video/mobo and 550 for everything else). Transplant everything into that case (the X2 fits with probably 5 inches to spare) and power it up again. Everything works fine now. Well. Kinda. ARGH!
I had no crossfire tab in the CCC. Well ok. Not 100% unexpected since it's an nforce board. SO...
I run to the local stealer and grab me an ASUS P5E Deluxe (x48 based) and perform yet another teardown and rebuild. I power up the system and uh oh... cpu running at 87c. Crap. Damn stock cpu fan and heatsink. I try to reseat it and one of the corner posts just literally falls off...
I run to the local stealer AGAIN and grab me a thermaltake heatsink and fan. Ok. Now it's running at a rather nice 38c.
I rebuild my array and reinstall Windows 7 RC1. No joy in ATI Town. No crossfire tab and my Vantage score sitting around 7500 marks. I open a ticket with Sapphire. (This was saturday).
I flash the bios to the latest version... Reinstall Windows Vista Ultimate (x64)... Try various drivers... Nothing. Still no crossfire tab in the CCC. GPU-Z reports no crossfire. Vantage says I'm not running linked display adapters. Right clicking on the ATI icon in the task tray DOES show two 4850s though so I'm pretty sure it's not dead.
I've searched and searched and have found numerous people that have had this issue with X2 cards, but have not yet found a reason for it, or a solution... So. I turn to this... The Computer Forum. Has ANYBODY seen this phenomenon before? Or more importantly, been able to remedy it?
I had a dual 8800GTX setup running on an XFX 780i motherboard and Q9450 cpu.
Decided I wanted to go to a single card solution I could upgrade later. The prices on the ATI cards bang-for-buck looked good even though I hadn't owned one since the 9800XT was the king of the hill.
Now I know that the nforce boards don't do crossfire, but I figured the X2 cards were a single card... the crossfire was internal to them... and I hadn't seen anything that would indicate they couldn't work on that motherboard. So a 2 gig 4850X2 was in my future... 249.99 on newegg (and have since dropped to 219.
) I went to install it in my case and holy CRAP those cards are large. Approximately 3/4 inch TOO long for my Thermaltake Shark case. Sigh... So, with the intent of testing it and buying a new case, I bent the crap out of my case and managed to squeeze it in.
The machine powered up fine and the card worked. Well. Kinda. It booted up into windows fine. But crashed constantly in games after a few minutes.
I figured it MIGHT be power. So I run over to my "source" and pick up an Antec P190 case with 1200 watts of power (dual PSU - 650 for video/mobo and 550 for everything else). Transplant everything into that case (the X2 fits with probably 5 inches to spare) and power it up again. Everything works fine now. Well. Kinda. ARGH!
I had no crossfire tab in the CCC. Well ok. Not 100% unexpected since it's an nforce board. SO...
I run to the local stealer and grab me an ASUS P5E Deluxe (x48 based) and perform yet another teardown and rebuild. I power up the system and uh oh... cpu running at 87c. Crap. Damn stock cpu fan and heatsink. I try to reseat it and one of the corner posts just literally falls off...
I run to the local stealer AGAIN and grab me a thermaltake heatsink and fan. Ok. Now it's running at a rather nice 38c.
I rebuild my array and reinstall Windows 7 RC1. No joy in ATI Town. No crossfire tab and my Vantage score sitting around 7500 marks. I open a ticket with Sapphire. (This was saturday).
I flash the bios to the latest version... Reinstall Windows Vista Ultimate (x64)... Try various drivers... Nothing. Still no crossfire tab in the CCC. GPU-Z reports no crossfire. Vantage says I'm not running linked display adapters. Right clicking on the ATI icon in the task tray DOES show two 4850s though so I'm pretty sure it's not dead.
I've searched and searched and have found numerous people that have had this issue with X2 cards, but have not yet found a reason for it, or a solution... So. I turn to this... The Computer Forum. Has ANYBODY seen this phenomenon before? Or more importantly, been able to remedy it?
