hey bought the 3870x2 sometime ago now, not to bad a card i guess, but its a 1gb card shared between 2 gpus 512 each i guess anyway, the graphics settings in GTA4 only detects 512 graphics memory, starting to think the other core isn't active or something... any advice would be much appreciated, thanx Eddie
possibly,b ut then i should be qable to play everything on max i should think, or close to, maybe GTA4 just doesnt have the coding for my card. I'm not sure if you have played it for pc, but its graphics options are quite unusual, you cant just set everything on high it limits you to how much graphics memory you have which says i got 512... well its says 499.
Just a thought, install the latest catalyst drivers, they're meant to help with GTA4. I have a 4870X2 and am about to try the game this afternoon, so I'll let you know how I get on.
already uptodate I hear there's a patch on its way thou. Okay cool I'll be interested to see how the 4870x2 gets on cause I'm thinking of upgrading to that. cheers
What size monitor do you use? The HD4870X2 is a huge step up from the HD3870X2, but it's mostly unnecessary for lower resolutions. A single HD4870 would suffice unless you use a 24" or bigger screen (and yes, one HD4870 is significantly faster than the HD3870X2)
yea i use a 24inch monitor res set to 1920x1200. and i plan on going bigger soon aswell lol so sounds like the 4870x2 will be a good idea. plus if i get another monitor ill keep this one to dual up, that way i can watch a movie while playing a game, dont it before with this card, not to shabby.
I'll warn you now, Crossfire can't be used to run dual monitors if you are using both GPUs to power a game. You will need to disable dual mode if you want to use a second screen while gaming. Additionally, you will need Vista to use two screens at all with the X2, in XP it is not supported.
I use vista 64, I quite like vista, wouldnt go back to xp now, just waiting on windows 7 I havent got the settings to disable dual gpu, is it meant to be in catalyst, probably because im only using 2 6pins rather than an 8 and 6, to run my card, my PSU does not have the 8pin on it, probably should upgrade that too.
You ought to upgrade that, but if I remember rightly, all only using two 6-pins does is prevent you from overclocking. Playing GTA4 it only recognises 1GB of the 2GB on my card, and I realise that is because games can't draw on the memory from both GPUs at once because it is not shared, it is specific to each GPU, so while crossfire may work, the game will never see more than 1GB of video RAM (for a 4870X2) or 512MB (for a 3870X2) - what's also worthy of note is that to max the game out at 2560x1600 requires 1.2GB of video memory according to the game (which is very unlikely to be the case, Crysis barely, if ever, uses that much) meaning that since, as you pointed out, the game does not let you select graphics settings that use too much memory, you are forced into lower graphical quality merely by poor game design than anything to do with your hardware, as at 2560x1600 no such graphics card exists that can share 2GB of memory directly to the game in a way it would notice. I'm going to have a look and see if you can force the detail level above what it offers, but I'm somewhat doubtful.
almost sounds a bit pointless.... Hopefully the patch might deal with some of those issues, i think its very close to being released
