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LOSTCIRCUITS	SHORTCUTS: SLI under CrossFire Chipset Overview At One Glance What You Get VRM and Layout Integrated Peripherals BIOS Installation and Overclocking Test Configuration and Benchmark Overview Memory Performance ATA and USB Rendering and OpenGL Gaming More Gaming Final Thoughts Discuss this article in the LostCircuits Forums
Sapphire Pure Crossfire AM2RD580 SLI under CrossFire
(Review by MS, October 8, 2007)

Installation and setup of the PC-AM2RD580 went like a breeze regardless of which hard disk configuration was used, courtesy of the included floppy disks with the appropriate drivers. We can't stress enough, how important the inclusion of these disks with the shipped bundle is for overall customer satisfaction, there is nothing more frustrating than the Catch22 situation of trying to do a fresh install of the operating system and not being able to access the hard disk since the necessary drivers are buried within a self-launching utility that only works on the specific motherboard it is geared for - and which cannot be accessed until the OS has been installed. One thing to bear in mind is that adding a RAID configuration to an existing installation will require not only the installation of the appropriate drivers but also the initialization and activation of the "logical array" or partitions thereof. Depending on the operating system, this is done differently, in WindowsXP, the necessary steps include accessing the Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Local Storage window to perform the necessary steps.

   

If a RAID configuration is added, the array (showing up as "disk") needs to be initialized in the Adminstrative Tools section of the Control Panel as shown above.

Overclocking

The sample we had for testing did not turn out to be a stellar overclocker at all. Using the FX62 processor, we managed to crank up the bus speed to 210 MHz before things got shaky. The CPU -multiplier was set to 10x in this case for a total core frequency of 2100 MHz. Above 215 MHz, the system would not POST at all. Part of this appeared to relate still to the CPU itself, since we were able to reach 235 MHz stable with an X2-3800 using an 8 x multiplier. In one case we managed to boot into WindowsXP at 250 MHz HT reference clock, however, it was not possible to run any application other than CPUZ without crashing. In all cases, the HT link was reduced to 600 or 800 MHz respectively and the memory was set to DDR667 to exclude memory failure as the culprit. In order to get past 220 MHz HT frequency, the chipset supply voltages needed to be increased to a minimum of 1.299 V (1.201 nominal voltage), otherwise, the system would perhaps POST but hang during the boot into Windows. Interestingly, on a cold boot - in this case meaning after everything had cooled down - the system clocked (temporarily) higher, in fact, a simple reboot, caused POST failure in almost all overclocked cases, suggesting that maybe chipset cooling needs to be improved.

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