I know i have been onthis for some time now but, I have finally given up on trying to get my separate card 4850 Crossfire to work and now im going to sell both cards and get me a 4850X2. However, is it possible for a dual GPU card to give me the same CF problems as the separate card issue? 

Does your motherboard support Crossfire? What Drivers are you using? What version of windows are you using?

Crossfire works fine for me... obviously some games don't support it but all that means is it uses just one card, shouldn't be an issue.

Well, you shouldn't have your previous issues as the Crossfire is contained to one single card. It will still likely suffer from the issues that occur with new unprofiled games or games that don't play nice with Crossfire.

"Does your motherboard support Crossfire? What Drivers are you using? What version of windows are you using?

Crossfire works fine for me... obviously some games don't support it but all that means is it uses just one card, shouldn't be an issue."

Fallout 3 sucked with CF until the 8.12 driver came out. Far Cry 2 flickers shadows on and off if you don't disable Catalyst AI.

How much memory are you using? Anything over 4gb and Crossfire doesn't like it.

I'm using XP 32 and havn't had any problems with crossfire.


Try just having 2GB of ram in and then enabling crossfire to see if it is a driver issue.

Is your vista patched to SP1?


I think crossfire just hates 64bit tbh.

Also make sure you use a driver cleaner so you don't have any conflicting drivers and you motherboard BIOS + drivers are upto date. You could also try restoring your BIOS back to factory and then updating the BIOS again after. Make sure your PSU is good enough to handle the two gpu's and also make sure you disable any onboard graphics if your motherboard has anything like that.

Play around with the ram first like try 4gb and then 2gb and also run each card on their own to check that one isn't faulty.

Papal, I have tried all of this numerous times and I still have not had any luck, I'm still hanging arou the issue that it is the BIOS of my ASUS 4850.  I even attempted RMAing it and they sent my back my EXACT same card back. This is all very depresing, but I jsut talked to my friend and he agreed to sell my cards on eBay so as soon as I get my money im newegging my 4850X2,

U tried XP 32? Hmm works for me.


I'd go with Nvidia though atm cause of the inbuilt Physx thing... abit of a gimmick but that basically gives them the advantage in games like Mirror's Edge until ATI come up with their version of physx.

No, Havent done that but come on, why am i goign to go back to another OS when I have been with Vista 64 so long, in my opinion, its not worth droping another $100 fora  new, lesser than what I have OS. Thanks for the help though.

You'd get better performance outta XP anyways it is a much better OS and the only advantage Vista has really is DX10 which hasn't done anything and Windows 7 will be out soon. I've looked around on alot of posts on forums and the same two things keep popping up.... 1. Having over 4gb ram and 2. Vista 64 and vista 64 gives alot of problems with other things too because 64 bit just isn't stable like 32 is with software right now and nothing really supports it anyways.

Try Windows 7 beta 32bit if you don't want to use XP cause I've used it and it uses all the vista drivers and crossfire works for me on it.


+ ATI stock coolers are functional but they run hotter and just arn't great, I'd suggest buying custom cooling like I have done, very easy to unscrew and stick thermal paste on.

yes well I am a big fan of buying aftermarket coolers for my cards but I hasven't found an aftermarket one to fit a 4850X2, any suggestions?

Aslong as you aint gonna overclock then the stock fan is fine and theres no reason to overclock that cad right now anyways.

Ok well thanks for all the input and I should be getting this card rather soon, probably in my hands near the middle of this month, Will most back on what I think.