M9750 + ATi Mobility 3870. Does it work?

The only physical difference between master and slave cards, when speaking about the 3870s at least, is that the slave has an 'S' sticker on it.

 

Good to know, I remember that someone told me that they were different...

 

that is true the cards are the same but the motherboard recognize one as a slave

 

It only reconizes it's a slave if it has a slave vbios.


The asus w90p is running a master master setup

 

So if you get 2 3870's Master, you have to flash one of them in Slave bios right?

or 2 masters would work?

 

You don't have to flash your slave card.
You can run dual master 3870s also, so you can get a second master and it will work beautifully. What you can NOT do is run Dual Slaves, that wont work. But Master & Slave or Master & Master will work without issue. The advantage to Master & Master is that you can select if you want to use Xfire or not (saving power when your on battery).

 

Wait, can you explain a bit more?

how come Master + master = MAster + slave?

there is a purpose to master + slave right? what is it then?

When you do master + slave you are in xfire mode anyway right? isn't it teh same with master + master?.

is it possible to flash a slave => master?

thanks martynask

 

Yes

All I know that its better to have two master cards, because you can disable one of them to save battery.

Yes, its the same. You just have to enable X-Fire.

I read at some forums that it is possible to do that, but I don't know how

 

Ok,
i managed to simply replace my original 8700m GT master with the first 3870 card => 3870 master.

Bios was 0c03.
Cpu: T7200
Ram: 2 gb
I simply swapped cards, with no modification of the pads etc... I just added AS5 on the GPU and northbridge.

Don't know what my temps where before though (stupid me).

before: single master 8700m GT
3dmark 2006 : 5086 pts
3dmark vantage : P2097 (CPU: 10185 Gpu:1658)
temps: don't know

After: single master 3870
3dmark 2006: around 7871 pts
3d Mark vantage : P3360 (CPU:3460 Gpu:3327)
Temp Idle : 46 °C
temp Load : 84 °C (which I find very high)

Still waiting for the crossfire cable to put the second card.

And i have to think maybe about increasing heat exchange with newer and better pads for the RAM.

 

One thing I forgot to mention!

The fan speed was stuck at 30% during all my bench tests...

have to find a way to fix this... means bios editing... ouch...

 

Has anyone tested this before : Master 3870 + master 3870 in crossfire?

 

Apparantly you can run a 4850 in master/master setup as per this guys sig so i suppose a 3870 master/master setup would work just fine.

 

well his laptop is a M17...

M9750 is the previous build so not sure we can compare...