CrossFire™

Use CrossFire™ to combine the power and performance of two or more Visual Processing Units to drive a single display. Harness the power of a dual PCI Express® based computer to deliver up to twice the VPU performance when using 3D graphics applications.

a motherboard with two PCI Express® X16 slots

a CrossFire™ Edition Series graphics card

The Radeon® X850 CrossFire™ Edition can be paired with any standard Radeon® X850-based graphics card, or

The Radeon® X800 CrossFire™ Edition can be paired with any standard Radeon® X800-based graphics card.

An interconnect cable, supplied with the CrossFire™ Series graphics card, connecting the two cards to a single monitor.

When CrossFire™ is enabled, any one of the four following display modes are available:

SuperTiling - A graphical load-balancing scheme where CrossFire™ renders alternate small 32x32 pixel squares in a fine-grained checkerboard pattern. This configuration increases image rendering quality, as each card processes half of the complex 3D objects in the pixel squares.

Scissor Mode - A graphical load-balancing scheme where two graphical cards are used to render two halves of an image display. One graphics card renders the top half of the screen while the second graphics card renders the bottom half.

Alternate Frame Rendering - A graphical load-balancing scheme where two graphics cards are used to render alternate frames of the display. This configuration increases the detail of the 3D objects each card can render, as each card handles half of the total number of frames.

Super Anti-aliasing - A feature that improves image quality by combining the results of full-screen anti-aliasing across two graphics cards in a CrossFire™ configuration. The two graphics cards work on different anti-aliasing patterns within each frame.

It is recommended that Catalyst™ A.I. is enabled because it selects the preferred rendering mode for target applications. For applications that are not identified in Catalyst™ A.I., or when Catalyst™ A.I. is disabled, default CrossFire™ rendering modes are used.

By default, either SuperTiling or Scissor modes are applied, depending on the application. Alternate frame rendering mode is used for applications identified in Catalyst™ A.I. when enabled. Super Anti-aliasing is enabled through the Catalyst™ Control Center.


Motherboards
Motherboard with ATI Dual Slot chipset

Two PCIe™ X16 slots

Supported ATI Graphics Cards
Master Cards
Radeon® X850 XT Edition
Radeon® X800 Edition
Slave cards
Radeon® X850 XT
Radeon® X850
Radeon® X800 XL
Radeon® X800 (256MB or 128MB)

Power Supply
500 watt power supply or better

Additional Hardware
Interconnect cable

What do you want to do?

Click CrossFire™ in Advanced View.

Click Enable CrossFire™.

When CrossFire™ is successfully enabled all display devices, except the one used by CrossFire™, will be disabled.

Note: CrossFire™ Higher Quality anti-aliasing can be adjusted in the Catalyst™ Control Center 3D settings aspect.

Expand 3D in Advanced View.

Click Adaptive Anti-Aliasing.

Adjust the Adaptive Anti-Aliasing control slider to the desired setting.

Expand 3D in Advanced View.

Click Catalyst™ A.I.

If necessary, clear the check mark from Disable Catalyst™ A.I.

Click and drag to slider to the desired setting.

Click Apply to save your changes and leave the Catalyst™ Control Center open.

Click OK to save your changes and exit the Catalyst™ Control Center.

Click Discard to ignore any unsaved changes and restore the settings that existed when the Catalyst™ Control Center was opened or the last time Apply was used. Discard does not close the Catalyst™ Control Center.

Clicking Discard applies to all features of an aspect, not just the feature in the current view.

Some motherboards may have a system BIOS option to switch between single or dual PCIe™ slot support. The default setting may be single slot support.

Refer to the motherboard's manual for information to enable dual PCIe™ slot support.

In order for CrossFire™ to function the interconnect cable must be correctly connected to both the Master and Slave graphics cards.

Connect the DMS-59™ connector of the interconnect cable to the DMS-59™ connection on the Master card.

Connect the DVI-I connector of the interconnect cable to the DVI-I connection on the Slave card.

Connect the remaining DVI-I connector of the interconnect cable to your monitor.

Note: On graphics cards with two DVI-I connectors, only one DVI-I connector on the Slave card supports Transition Minimized Differential Signaling (TMDS) required by CrossFire™. If CrossFire™ does not appear in the Catalyst™ Control Center or is not available, try connecting to the second DVI-I connector on the Slave card.

Graphics card with different amounts of memory can by used with CrossFire™. However, restarting your computer is required. This will cause CrossFire™ to reduce the amount of memory on the card with the most amount of memory to match the memory size of the graphics card with the least amount of memory.

Note: When disabling CrossFire™ you will be given the option to restart your computer to restore the original graphics memory size or continue with the reduced memory size.

A recommendation message to reverse the graphics card positions may appear if the master graphics card is not installed into the primary PCIe™ slot. Although CrossFire™ can be enabled, performance may be improved by reversing the graphics card in the computer.

You will not be able to start CrossFire™ if a 3D application, game, or video playback, such as a DVD movie, is running.

Close all open 3D applications, games, and movie player applications then enable CrossFire™.

This error is occurred because CrossFire™ did not correctly detect your graphics hardware or their is a problem with the software.

Check the graphics card are installed correctly.

Check the interconnect cable is installed correctly.

Close all running 3D applications.

Re-install the CATALYST™ Control Center. For information on installing the software see the Getting Started Guide that came with your graphics card.

When CrossFire™ is disabled you will need to restore your graphics settings. It is recommended that you create a Profile that contains all your settings.

Make customized changes by adjusting the various sliders and buttons for the aspects to be included in your profile.

Open the Profiles Manager.

Enter a name for your Profile in Create or Edit Profile.

Enter a description of the profile.

Select the composition, activation, and applications options that you wish to apply to the profile.

Click Save.

CrossFire™

Motherboards

Supported ATI Graphics Cards

Power Supply

Additional Hardware

What do you want to do?