hmmm... Modded Xp crossfire drivers request?

campcreekdude

Interestingly enough... i feel the desire to have someone mod the recent 12.4 drivers so that crossfire works on the 7970 in XP.

its obviously unsupported.. but but... i'd give them drivers an attempt if you were to mod them.....

It might be someones hobby to play with drivers. currently GPUZ says crossfire is disabled... is there some sort of switch to get them working on the driver level?

If it is your hobby to do something like that Im interested in testing.

kn00tcn · **Memory**: OCZ 2x2gb 5-4-4-15 840mhz

i thought 12.4 gives 7900 xp support, wouldnt expect CF to 'not' be supported

now i'm not sure but does gpuz say cf is disabled when the 2nd card is powered off/ULPS is enabled? (does ULPS even exist in xp?)

does CCC have CF settings?

campcreekdude · 04-28-2012, 05:55 | posts: 172

The Catalyst Control Center for 12.4 for windows XP does not have a section for Crossfire enable/disable.

Apparently they do not "officially support" crossfire in XP for the 7000 series.

So its up to someone to mod a driver package for XP.

I have my GPU's linked but again no official support.

need someone to mod it... (or teach me to mod it so then i can just do the thing with future revisions of the driver)

V1tol · 04-28-2012, 08:38 | posts: 274 | Location: Sevastopol, Crimea, Ukraine

What? 7970, XP, Crossfire? Omg, why do you need this? Single 6870 will be much more than enough to run any DX9 game at any resolution. I just want to know what are you doing on your machine to need so much compute power.

campcreekdude · 04-28-2012, 22:50 | posts: 172

I do hit 100% GPU useage in several games in XP.

Crossfire helps keep the minimum frame rates up.

kn00tcn · **Memory**: OCZ 2x2gb 5-4-4-15 840mhz

ya a few games still have pretty low minimums even if they're in dx9 mode (cry2, metro, witcher2, etc)

is there an official statement about not supporting? or maybe it will just take a few driver releases for it to be supported?

i'm not sure if such a thing can be modded, they need actual code in the driver dlls for the initial set of CF.... 'features', then minor updates to profiles (those would be easier to mod/create)

campcreekdude · 04-28-2012, 23:52 | posts: 172

Quote:

Please note that AMD Crossfire™, OpenCL, and AMD Eyefinity are not supported by the AMD Radeon HD 7900 and HD 7700 Series GPUs on Windows XP.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...xpsupport.aspx

Its true they wont bring crossfire to XP officially.

I believe the entire 7000 series as the 7850/7870 is included but not mentioned because it was not released at the time of that article.

Hmmm... so its not as easy as taking the Vista/Windows 7 Crossfire files and modding them for XP?

Im pretty sure you can crossfire in Vista 32-bit with the new 7000 series.

Falkentyne · 04-29-2012, 00:54 | posts: 367

Quote:

Originally Posted by campcreekdude

I do hit 100% GPU useage in several games in XP.

Crossfire helps keep the minimum frame rates up.

This^
Also keep in mind that even on windows 7, many recent games are UNPLAYABLE (meaning; not more than 30 fps) if you turn on 8x supersampling AA at a standard resolution (1680x1050). Then throw on some edge detect and well....you get the point. You can bring even 5 year old games (long before W7 was even announced) to their knees.

I use a single card and I game at 1024x768, because I even see FPS drops with just 8x AA when going higher. And I like to maintain 100 FPS as much as possible (Vsync on/CRT).

campcreekdude · 04-29-2012, 22:32 | posts: 172

I'm reading that some people are modding so that the 6950/6970 uses some of the driver features that the 7900 series has with modding the inf file to install 7900 series drivers for a 6970 or 6950.

I know that the 6950/6970 can be crossfired in XP.

Just food for thought... maybe steal some 6950/6970 crossfire files dll and mod them for the 7970 driver ...lol

Probably wont work... if i only knew how to do stuff.

popeye · 04-30-2012, 01:34 | posts: 452 | Location: USA

Quote:

Originally Posted by campcreekdude

I'm reading that some people are modding so that the 6950/6970 uses some of the driver features that the 7900 series has with modding the inf file to install 7900 series drivers for a 6970 or 6950.

I know that the 6950/6970 can be crossfired in XP.

Just food for thought... maybe steal some 6950/6970 crossfire files dll and mod them for the 7970 driver ...lol

Probably wont work... if i only knew how to do stuff.

Yea, opening binaries and hex coding and such. I understand the idea but no way do I know how to do it.
Are AMD driver files copyrighted? I think it is one of those fine lines.
Guess I'm in violation myself with leshcat drivers.

kn00tcn · **Memory**: OCZ 2x2gb 5-4-4-15 840mhz

inf modding is different from dll modding, the 5/6 to 7 mod only tells CCC to adjust some optimizations or settings, both sets of cards support the identical dll files already

but to go backwards from a new card to old using old files, that usually will not work (to complicate things, the vista/7 drivers use different names for the dlls than xp)

i have a more interesting question though, does lucid support 7 series? how about xp?

campcreekdude · 05-02-2012, 04:32 | posts: 172

Yea your correct... inf modding does not seem to enable the ability to enable crossfire for my card.

I went as far as pointing the drivers to install manually the 6900 series driver in order to see if Crossfire tab will show up in Catalyst Control Center.Fail

Radeon Pro will not enable Crossfire either (with the 6900 series driver on the 7970) Fail

AMD bugged it so that crossfire (or the dll's using crossfire or whatever) wont work in xp with thier drivers on a 7000 series card.

I dont see a point in totally disabling it... just cause its unsupported. They definately dont support overclocking but they have it in the drivers...

It will be interesting though if the 7990 comes out with XP drivers.

kn00tcn · **Memory**: OCZ 2x2gb 5-4-4-15 840mhz

i doubt they actually 'disabled' it, the code just isnt there (probably)

CF is more complicated than overclocking (which is just 'hey gpu #1, go to this mhz', doubt individual cards need code for that)

campcreekdude · 05-02-2012, 05:05 | posts: 172

I see now... would have taken man power to create the code for a ending operating system...(yes i admit its ending)

Im guessing that the 6970 crossfire code just cant be copied and pasted?

lol maybe not would try it if i knew how...

anywayz... i wasted an evening with this inf tweaks and driver installing...

for something that might not even work properly if it even did start working...

that last sentence dont make sense but i do just want the glory of it saying enabled ... lol

kn00tcn · **Memory**: OCZ 2x2gb 5-4-4-15 840mhz

well there's always the incredibly risky idea of changing the identification of the card within bios

campcreekdude · 05-03-2012, 05:13 | posts: 172

If i did that ... would i have to manually switch the bios so that everything would work in windows 7 (as a 7970) when i decide to boot that up?
And switch back to boot up in Windows Xp?

If I'm right your last proposed thing would make me have to switch everytime i think i want to boot up windows 7.. (and back for XP)...

I have Dual-Bios but i wish there was a way to use software to switch between the bios's ... instead of the manual switch. I do dislike opening up my case its not easy access on my desk. (requires me to unhook keyboards/speakers/everything)

However Radeon Pro has a vendor/Id spoofing feature for 3d applications...
Is there any known way software of spoofing things. I dont think I tried spoofing my vender ID with Catalyst Control Center. I dont know exactly how to use Radeon Pro totally either... ..

It would be interesting if we could spoof the id for Catalyst Control Center... then the Crossfire tab would show up.

Before I start doing bios modifications it would be better to wait to see if the 7990 comes out and works as a crossfired unit for XP.

However that idea... again I dont think there are any bios editors for the 7000 series...

kn00tcn · **Memory**: OCZ 2x2gb 5-4-4-15 840mhz

i would just not bother, the few games that are too slow for 1 card in xp, just boot into 7

i wonder about spoofing too, if you saw benchmark3d's modded drivers, it seems CCC starts opening options/settings (including performance boosts o_O) based on what the .inf thinks is your card, so that might be a 'soft' thing to try (still risky)

bryonhowley · 05-05-2012, 10:19 | posts: 83 | Location: Topeka

Personally I think it is time to stop supporting such an old OS anyway. The manpower can be put to better use with Windows 7 and 8. It is time to drop support for XP and move to the current OS.

campcreekdude · 05-05-2012, 17:16 | posts: 172

The problem with most people is that they dont know or notice that alot of games in the next little while wont even work in XP.

There wont be alot of "man-power" required since games like BF3... they dont need to bug fix that game for XP... An old example would be Halo 2... no need to bug fix XP drivers for that game...

However having the video card promised to work in XP made the sale for me.
Im not the only one dual booting and wants to continue dual booting.

And its not like they are putting alot of manpower into the XP drivers either.

They released the first XP drivers in April while the card was released in January. It wont take alot of man power to fix a few Operating system things and the odd game. Its not subtracting at all. Its actually creating sales/revenue.

Im not even a normal customer either... I'll probably buy another 7970 and have tri-fire (in win 7 obviously)... i'll be buying three times the normal number of video cards a person buys... getting me to buy their cards with limited XP support as a condition.. was good for AMD.