Question for m17 owners with 3870 xfire

All, when you are selecting a driver in the update window, do you select the hd radeon 3870 or the one that says hd radeon 3870 x2

Just curious if this makes a difference enabling crossfire in games.

Thanks!

StevenX

 

hd radeon x2 bud is the desktop card which has two gpu cores.

you only want the 3870, not sure if it makes a difference tho.

try both let us know if theirs any improvement

 

I think I know one issue.. If you download ccc 9.7 or 9.8 it shows the card as 3870 x2. This is the only option... no other available. The older driver i am using is 8.52 and it shows the card as 3870 (single). CCC shows it correctly as 3870 primary and 3870 slave. I dont get it.. I wonder it this is causing some issues with crossfire... Thanks, StevenX

 

It doesnt matter since both point to the same installation settings.

Just out of curiosity, where exactly do you select which one to install ? Are you using the have disk method ? And if yes, why ?

 

I do choose the have disc method. Just out of habit I guess. The modded INF files are there and they should be ok... Again I wonder if the 3870 x2 is messing with the ability to run things in crossfire...

 

Nop, as i said above both 3870x2 and 3870 point at the same installation settings, so as long as the drivers apply to both cards (which they should) you wont notice a difference apart from the cards been labelled as 3870x2 instead of 3870.

 

You are 100 percent correct sir! I checked the now the Crossfire icon pops up from CCC when I go into games. Coolmine, do you know if CCC is mandatory for crossfire to function? It seems after installing CCC back on the laptop that crossfire functions correctly and I do see a big improvement in games. Thanks for all your help. I know it gets tiresome. The sticky'd threads do help but sometimes we newbie's have specific questions that may not always be identified in those theads. Thanks again sir!!!!!

 

Im not entirely sure since i have always been using it to play with colors/contrast, but i dont think features like powerplay and catalyst AI actually work if CCC is not present. Why wouldnt you use CCC though ? Just disable the service since thats for hotkeys and you have like 5mb usage from CCC which isnt really a big thing.

Now if its actually boost performance in games i guess it depends on two things.
a) if crossfire still works without CCC which should be easy to verify in a few minutes (since im not entirely sure about it myself)
b) if putting catalyst AI on advanced increases your fps by an X amount (which is not always the case depending on the game).

If crossfire actually works without CCC then the difference should be negligible IMO.

But as i already said it also depends if you use your notebook while on battery. Since powerplay might not work it will deplete your battery even faster.