New to this Cross thingy and AMD hybrid boards

[jouleblu]

Hi all,

I just purchased a phenom II x2 940, and a sapphire 4870 ati video card. I also bought a asus P4a78- Pro motherboard with 2 gig of 800mhz memory.

The motherboard says it has a build in 3800 video hybrid booster chip or something that sorta gives you some of the benefits of having more than one vidio card. How do I get this to work and how will I know if it is working. Myself I felt that one video card was enough and yet sorta wanted benefit of some of this cross thingy stuff. I assumed this would do it but just dont have a grip on what to look for or how to install correctly.

Also, I installed the latest catalyst drivers and it still reports that I have directx 9. how do I upgrade it to directx 10?

These are my questions.

Oh, what is a good tester to make sure my system is running up to snuff.

Thank you

[InspectahACE]

DirectX 10 = Windows Vista(assuming you are not running it already)..I've never done Crossfire or SLi but I would imagine it would be in the Catalyst Control Center<--as far as configuring the crossfire

[Apoptosis]

In order to run DirectX 10 you must have Windows Vista and in order to run DirectX 10.1 only specific games like Stalker Clear Sky and Tom Clancy's Hawk support DirectX 10.1. I personally own and play Stalker Clear Sky and you have to have the latest patch installed as DirectX 10.1 was part of a recent update that came via the patch.

As for enabling and disabling CrossFire, you do that through CCC. Once to cards are installed the CrossFire tree will pop up in the left navigation menu and you can enable/disable the feature there.

A good benchmark to run is 3DMark Vantage as 3DMark is a free benchmark utility that millions of people have run over the years.

[jouleblu]

I only have windows xp pro. Is there a way to install Directx 10 to this?

Also, I checked the control center and could not find any reference to hybrid crossfire or adjustments to utlized the onboard 3800 gpu to assist the speed of my 4870.

The answers so far are excellent, but I havent been able to find fruit so far.

Please help clear up these two points so I can understand please.

thank you

[InspectahACE]

like said, you need Vista for Directx 10..XP only does 9 or lower..no way to install DX10 that i know of..that and it wouldn't really be DX10 im sure(much like the Crysis hack, which is cool but shifty)..I would say it might still be in the CCC, but possibly check your bios to see if that hybrid option is enabled..I wouldn't know for sure on that part but it is a logical step I would take if I was in your position(since I have no multi-gpu knowledge yet)

[jouleblu]

I kept researching and found that if you have a hybrid crossfire board, they only work with 2400 and 3400 series video cards. So they only support sucky cards to be medium sucky. If you have a decent card, the hybrid thing does nothing for you to help.

[Apoptosis]

Yeah Hybrid CrossFire only works on low end cards as faster cards would actually be slowed down when paired with the chipset (IGP)...