Has anyone got IL2 running on a Crossfire enabled PC?
If so is there a marked benefit to having 2 cards?

Depends what hardware you have and the set up.

In my opinion one top end card is just as efficient. 2 cards are only necessary for very high resolutions with full AA and AF etc.

With CF or SLI you also have 2 cards to replace next time round.

I have very high resolutions and I want more AA and AF, which is why I'm here asking for someone who has a gone with the 2900 Xfire route

I'm putting together a new system and am looking for a responce from someone who has 2 x 2900 in Xfire and runs IL2. Is anyone running 2900's in Xfire and does it work better than the 19xx in Xfire?

Also I think your closing statement holds no water, you don't have to swap out two cards for two cards. One single card can replace a pair.

Of course it holds water if you want to continue with Crossfire !!

Obviously I didn't know you wanted very high rez and the extras because you didn't say.

Brigstock-I have 2 2900s on an intel 975XBX mobo. Works better with each new driver update, but I don't know what settings to use with this card. My monitor resolution is 1680x1050 and that's the resolution I am typing in the ini file. With my single 1900XTX in the past, if I did a barrel role over a forrest, it would stutter terribly. This does not happen at the same resolution with 4xAA and 8xAF with the 2900s. BUT, I can not say the framerate is any higher. It just seems to handle the textures thrown at it much easier, if that makes any sense, as the 2 2900s don't seem to stutter as much or at all. I can not say there is a "marked benefit" to 2 cards.

I hope this helps. I am thinking about going with Nvidia next time. The only reason I used ATI is the many driver issues I have read about with this game and Nvidia in the past couple of years. I have had some artifacts with the 2900, but I believe it's a driver issue. Hopper.

Cheers Hopper

That's the sort of thing I'm looking for.
I have a squad mate who used xFire on a pair of 19xx cards and wasn't impressed. He couldn't get them to both work in anything but 4:3 in IL2. But that was nearly two years ago. 2 x 2900 is very tempting to me right now and I was looking for peoples experiences of it in IL2, especially as 90% of my gaming is in IL2.
I have seen various reviews and comparisons on the 2x2900, with some games getting twice the performance and others absolutely no performance increase, but nothing in IL2/Pacific Fighters. I was wondering if IL2 came into the latter category.

I'm going to be buying components over the next few weeks and am in 2 minds whether 2 x 2900 can be justified or not.

I have a squad mate who used xFire on a pair of 19xx cards and wasn't impressed. He couldn't get them to both work

But he got that Crossfire kit from me and on my system they worked fine and very fast, faster in a couple of games than my 7900 GTX OC SLI rig which was on RMA at the time and for many weeks, BFG ran out of replacements, that early 7900 OEM problem. When the SLI rig came back fixed I had to decide which rig to keep and I chose SLI only because the Crossfire kit ran hotter and noisier

I've never teased him about why he couldn't get the Xfire rig to work, unusually for me but then a wingman knows when to keep schtum. Plus he's on safari Devon way so has no right of reply

Crossfire's lovely Brigs, smashing kit. Not much in it between ATI/AMD and Nvidia's offerings.

But the 8800 Ultra is quite another animal: enormously powerful, fast and silent like a ninja rhino with contacts. Av would definitely call it blistering. Bludgeoning

Ming

Brigstock-IL2 comes in that latter category in your post. You won't see twice the performance in IL2. It seems smoother with 2 cards, but even when I first ran a single 2900, it was smoother than the prior 1900XTX card I had. You might be disappointed if you are expecting a big increase. Hopper.

You have to make sure both PCIx slots are true 16x and not 8x. This is a common mistake a lot of people make and will explain the sub par performance. Two true 16x slots will offer a very nice increase in performance and your CPU will never be taxed to make up the difference.

S!

Ming
I was talking about Majik rather than Swoop. Majik could not get his XFire set up to work in W/S with both cards. He did get it working in 4:3 but the performance difference with 2 over the performance of 1 was minimal.
Hopper
Thanks for the info
HaVoK
Can you recomend a M/B that supports 2x16. Most of the 2x16 boards I've looked at will only operate at x16 and x4 for the second. AFAIK I haven't seen any 2 x 16 board that will give x16 to both slots.