Hotfix_BRO70929???

[roses2at]

Does any know what it means by Hotfix_BRO70929??

See ASRock > Products > A770DE > CrossFire Support List to see what I mean.

Is it a fix from ASRock, or Microsoft or from Radeon (the graphics card maker)?

I am having an issue with trying to run two Sapphire/Radeon HD 4350 cards in a ASRock ALive XFire-eSATA2 R3.0 with a fully updated BIOS in Win XP Pro 32-bit SP3.

Both cards are visible in Device Manager (and also in other utilities such as GPU-Z and AMD System monitor) but CCC (latest version) does not show the CrossFire option. (Both cards work on their own in the lower PCI-e slot with the Switch card installed.)

As I understand it, these cards have to be linked via software and not with the usual XFire method of connecting them via a special cable. So I presume it is the lack of this Hotfix which is preventing it working properly.

Thanx in advance.

[roses2at]

Re: Hotfix_BRO70929???

Well, after a few days, there have been 100 reads of my post but still no replies.

So I thought I'd relate my further experiences with this problem in the hope it might help someone in the future.

I still don't know what this Hotfix means or where to get it from but I have solved the problem in a roundabout way.

I originally bought two Sapphire (SAPPHIRE- HOME) ATI Radeon HD4350 512MB cards. Don't get me wrong, they're good cards, you can run a total of 4 monitors (2 x digital, 2 x analogue), they give an excellent picture, and I was able to play games such as Colin McRae DiRT 2 and Renault Truck Racing quite successfully and without hitches.

But if you read carefully the ASRock website card compatibility page I referred to in the first post (as I obviously DIDN'T do), it clearly specifies the ASUS version of this card using the same Radeon chip, namely the EAH4350 Silent 512MB. (I thought only the type of graphics chip was important.)

So I went back to the shop (DI Tech in Austria - BTW, completely useless & unhelpful, and they gave me wrong information and advice) and exchanged the two Sapphire cards for the Asus ones (price difference about 2 Euros per card more), and hey presto, it all worked. As soon as I had deleted the ATI version of CCC and replaced it with the CCC version from the Asus site, I was able to see the Crossfire option and enable it. All the games worked as before, GPU-Z and AMD System monitor both reported both cards and Crossfire functioning OK. (Am still evaluating if there is a significant improvement in graphics output with CF enabled.....)

And I still have the 2nd, 3rd and 4th monitor(s) option if I want it - of course, as you all know, CF only works on one screen and you have to disable it if you're using more than one monitor.

And so this is my summary of the problem: the Sapphire cards, even though they have the same Radeon GPU chip, do not seem to work in the ALiveXfire-eSATA 2 R3.0 MoBo.

Only the Asus ones work. I'm guessing the Hotfix I was looking for is all part and parcel of the latest version of CCC (v 2010.0622.2308.39722) I got from the Asus website but I cannot find any Release Notes to confirm or deny this.

The only downside is that the Asus cards are considerably thicker (they have a MASSIVE heatsink!!!) and because of this, I have lost the use of one PCI socket with the lower card; the upper card has lots of of space below it although it does cover up the battery and the CMOS jumpers. The former disadvantage is a bit of a bummer as this MoBo only has 3 PCI slots to start with so I'm down to 2, but we all have to make sacrifices sometimes.

Hope all my ramblings will be of use to someone else on this board.