ASUS EAX1950 Crossfire Edition Video Card Review :: Setup and Usage

With the recent release of Microsoft Vista, setup of the X1950 Crossfire Edition was a little different than the previous ATI cards I have reviewed. From now until we change our video card test platform to Vista I will run all tests in XP, then install Vista on a clean system and play games on it. In this way the reader can keep up to date on the latest operating system and driver stability but still have a common test platform for comparison purposes.

One of the keys to Vista is the removal of the SATA F6 floppy disk install requirement that Windows XP had. Virtually every system on the market today uses SATA hard disks. One of the issues that motherboard manufacturers have had is that the OS didn't support the SATA controllers. Vista has native SATA controller support, just attach the hard disks, set up the RAID and install Vista.

X1950 Crossfire Edition card

After installing Vista and the latest chipset drivers my system was ready to have the video card drivers installed. Note, the X1950 Crossfire Edition card was installed with the WDDM drivers from the Vista inf files. ATI has worked closely with Microsoft insuring that the drivers were available on Vista launch. ATI's website lists the drivers by OS (XP, Vista, 2000 or Linux), by Product Line (Radeon, All-In-Wonder, TV Tuner, FireMV, Mobility Radeon, Integrated/Motherboard), then by Product name (Radeon x1950 series, Radeon x1900 series etc..). Choose the driver off their website, download the correct package and install the driver.

Open Air Test Station

Loose Crossfire Cable

Crossfire Cable attached

Setting up two cards in Crossfire mode is also easy. I didn't have access to a X1950XTX card, but did have a X1900XTX which would cause the X1950 Crossfire Edition to be lowered to X1900XTX standards. In any event, the two cards will likely be CPU limited in testing and shouldn't make much of a difference. The open-air test station we use for testing is pictured along with a ASUS M2R32-MVP Crossfire motherboard used for testing. Note the Zalman cooler that I used to cool the CPU. The Crossfire cable loops to the 2nd ATI card then to the monitor. Pretty easy to setup, but it can get loose while a cableless solution like SLI will not.