Powercolor Radeon HD 3870 X2 seriously a headache

[nach0 party]

lol thanks, he was standing right behind me when i was typing that haha

[Horrorcosmic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nach0 party

The card recommends an AMD chipset of at least 770 or greater to operate.

Quick Question, I'm planning on buying 2 of these for Crossfire. When you said that the card recommends and AMD chipset, do you mean that it will only work on AMD chipsets and not Intel, or just nothing later than the 770's?

Because my computer is almost done this was the last part to finish it.
My current spec.

CPU: Intel Core2 Quad (Q6600) planning to overclock
RAM: 4gig OCZ Reaper 1066mhz
Mobo: GIGABYTE GA-P35-DQ6... Has the Intel P35 chipset
HDD: WD Raptor 170Gb
PSU: ULTRA X3 X-connect 1000W SLi ready (been told for PSU, SLi ready will work for crossfire)
Cooling: Zalman Resorator (planning on watercooling the CPU and the GPUs)
NIC: Killer Gaming NIC
Case: Zalman Fatality
Drive: LG Blu-ray Burner


Please tell me that this card will work on a P35 chipset

[nach0 party]

The minimum intel chipset on the box claims to require a 965 or greater. I purchased a 770 amd chipset (Abit ax78), and it turns out it was not supported by this card, the card has been a huge pain in the ass (I purchased it a month ago and STILL have not seen any results and am now ordering a new mobo lol). However, do some digging around and make sure that your mobo will work completely with this card because it seems that there are technical issues with it cooperating with certain brands, BIOS, and motherboards. I dug around, and for my setup I had to order a mobo with a 790fx chipset which was primarily designed for ATI radeon GPU's. However, maybe you'll have more luck with intel it's all about compatibility here. Other than that your specs look good for running 2 of these cards. On the box it recommends having 750 W for dual 3870x2's so you're fine in the psu area. Also these cards take up 2 slots (the one below the PCIx16 slot) so make sure you have room. You'll have one hell of a gaming rig btw

[nach0 party]

Thats pretty much it

[Horrorcosmic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nach0 party

The minimum intel chipset on the box claims to require a 965 or greater. I purchased a 770 amd chipset (Abit ax78), and it turns out it was not supported by this card, the card has been a huge pain in the ass (I purchased it a month ago and STILL have not seen any results and am now ordering a new mobo lol). However, do some digging around and make sure that your mobo will work completely with this card because it seems that there are technical issues with it cooperating with certain brands, BIOS, and motherboards. I dug around, and for my setup I had to order a mobo with a 790fx chipset which was primarily designed for ATI radeon GPU's. However, maybe you'll have more luck with intel it's all about compatibility here. Other than that your specs look good for running 2 of these cards. On the box it recommends having 750 W for dual 3870x2's so you're fine in the psu area. Also these cards take up 2 slots (the one below the PCIx16 slot) so make sure you have room. You'll have one hell of a gaming rig btw

Lol thanks man, i tryed to make an extreme gaming system so i won't have to worry about upgrade for next 10 years.

On the Mobo box it says its Crossfire compatible, and P35 is fairly new so i would assume it would be compatible, the Mobo has 2 PCI-E X16 slots, its made for crossfire. The case has plenty of room, so as long as its compatible which i have a feeling it will be, Gigabyte and Intel are good about that. I shouldn't have any problems, just wanted to double check, your post scared the hell out of me


This comp is a major upgrade compared to my current rig, Playing Warhammer online is a pain right now.

CPU: P4 2.2Ghz (overclock 3.2Ghz) (Zalman cooler)
Mobo: Gigabyte P4 Titan
RAM: 2gig G-Skill 800mhz
HDD: WD 250gig SATA
Drive: Sony Dvd burner
OS: XP
VC: Geforce 6600 (Zalman cooler)
PSU: 550watt, don't remember the make.

Oh i forgot to add i'm going with Windows XP 64-bit on the new rig, you know any complications from the card in 64-bit?

[nach0 party]

eh, honestly i use 32 bit unfortunately and haven't looked into it. I wish I knew more about chosing a correct OS because I have 3 gigs of ram and supposively 32 bit only recognizes around 2 gigs of it

[ShyguyXPC]

no, 32-bit recognizes 4GB's max, but will only be able to use around 3, 3.5GB on average... basically you have to deduct the total amount of other Memory used in the system (except Hard drive storage etc), add up all the extra memory like Video card RAM, BIOS, CPU Cache, Cache from Hard drives & CD/DVD Drives, if you have one of those X-fi sound cards with RAM on it, that too, anything like that, add that together, subtract it from the 4GB max & that should/would be the amount that windows 32-bit will be able to use... so if for example you had 2 vid cards each with 1GB of RAM, right there, thats 2GB's, & you'll be left with just under 2GB's of RAM to use... (factoring in the small remaining bits else where in the system)

but thats mainly why many mention to go with a 64-bit OS... for example if you were to run 2 HD4870x2's with 2GB each, right there, thats your 4GB total, or at least should be... so would/should almost require you to go 64-bit OS.

[nach0 party]

oh ok, in the future i'll be making a larger upgrade to my pc and i'll keep that in mind, thats important stuff too wish i had known that a year ago to the specifics like that lol. So what you're saying at the moment when i get my 3870x2 to work, thats 1 gig of ram, then my 3 gigs of ram together will end up recognizing only around 3.5 system over? also i do have a x-fi card so that would be distibuted along with all the other stuff you mentioned. Is there any way to know the proportions of how these share together?

[Horrorcosmic]

Shyguy that doesn't sound right, The video cards ram should not be viewed or added to the system ram, Its video dedicated, 32-bit uses a max of 3.5gb of Ram, I may have misunderstood you but from what i got from your post is that the Ram from your Video, cache, X-Fi cards, and even NIC cards is added to your system Rams total meaning that is you have 2gigs of Ram + 1gig Video card + lets say Killer NIC with 256mb + X-FI with 256 that all that equals your total 3.5gb that your 32-bit comp can only read.

I may have misunderstood you cuz thats the idea i got, 32-bit does only see 3.5gb of ram it shouldn't add your total memory in your system, 3.5gb of RAM, and should only see 3.5 gb of Video ram IE: CrossfireX or Quad SLI, those will pose a problem.

[ShyguyXPC]

Someone else want to explain this for them?