Are two crossfire bridges necessary

Question

I have two Gigabyte HD4850's on a P5Q pro. The manual says 2 bridges are necessary but some fora sayit isn't. Can anyone clear this out?

What's the benefit you get from two bridges over having only one?

Sein Oxygen · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-08 22:43:29Z

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Use two bridges assure more stability. But the real meaning of the second crossfire is to add a third card.

Also provides more stability in benchmarks (second link)

Refs:

edited Apr 8 '12 at 22:43

answered Apr 8 '12 at 21:18

Sein Oxygen
302

1

Can you add a reference for this? Is there some official source that has this information? – nhinkle♦ Apr 8 '12 at 21:26

There, I can't add more references because of the limited reputation. – Sein Oxygen Apr 8 '12 at 22:45

Thanks @SeinOxygen for adding more info! You'll get the ability to add more links soon. – nhinkle♦ Apr 8 '12 at 22:47

slhck · Answer 2 · 2012-04-14 13:58:32Z

Intel chipset + HD 4850s + 1 crossfire bridge = yes to crossfire (some of the earlier HD xxxx require 2).
Nvidia chipset = crossfire not possible.
AMD chipset = crossfireX (no bridge needed depends on chipset & GPU) or crossfire with a bridge is a yes.
890gx,890fx, 990x or 990fx = crossfire faster and the 990s will SLI too.

Last but not least, there is asymetrical crossfire with an AMD APU (Llano) and specific GPUs.

2 Answers