ATI HD4870 & HD4850 Crossfire Performance Review

Driver Installation & Catalyst Control Center

For this section (and the performance tests) we are using the Catalyst 8.7 drivers with the Catalyst Control Center installed. While we did encounter some issues with the installation and performance of these drivers, we will keep the discussion about it until the end of the review.

Before we go about showing you the installation process, it is VERY important that you properly clean your system of any old video drivers which all starts with installing a driver cleaning program (we recommend Driver Cleaner Pro).

If you are replacing an Nvidia card this process starts with going into the Device Manager, and uninstalling whatever Nvidia card you have. Then reboot your system into Safe Mode, use your driver cleaning program of choice and shut down. You will then be ready to install the ATI drivers.

Even though ATI has stated that it is perfectly safe to install one of their driver sets over another, we do not recommend this in the least. Rather, begin the process by reinstalling your currently installed driver and when it prompts you to Install or Uninstall, click “Uninstall” to properly remove the drivers. Then reboot into safe mode and use Driver Cleaner to uninstall any last hangers-on of the drivers. Then shut down, install your two new cards and reboot into Windows to install the new drivers.

After the drivers are installed you will be prompted to reboot so do so right away. The following screen should pop up after a reboot:


This is the Crossfire X support panel which tells you that Crossfire has been successfully enabled. If this does not pop up after your first reboot into Windows, you should reboot once again since we had one or two instances where it didn’t and found that Crossfire wasn’t working. Rebooting solved the problem so give it a try.

In this screen we highly recommend that you hit Go to continue on to the Catalyst Control Center Advanced view since the Basic view is just a bit too sparse for our liking. Clicking on Exit will not cause any adverse effects to Crossfire but the next time you go to open the Catalyst Control Center you will be prompted to choose either the Basic or Advanced mode once again like so:


Once again, we recommend going with the Advanced Mode since it gives you more troubleshooting options and the ability to unlock the Overdrive (overclocking) control panel.


The Advanced Mode has a ton of options, many of which are beyond the scope of this review so we will only be touching on those that have a direct impact on Crossfire. To begin with, if Crossfire was successfully enabled you should have a Crossfire X option as the last selectable section in the main list on the left. This section allows you to enable or disable Crossfire while you can also use the Identify GPU button to tell you which screen is running off which GPU if you are running a dual monitor setup.

The other CrossfireX section allows you to see a real-time diagnosis of the Crossfire status of your setup. For some reason, even if Crossfire wasn’t working properly this screen always stayed blank.


In order to keep this relatively short and sweet, the last screen we wanted to touch upon is the one holding the Catalyst AI dialog. Without AI enabled, Crossfire will not work; it is as simple as that. The first thing we always do after installing the drivers is to check that this is enabled and set to Standard.

So, that rounds up our whirlwind tour of the Crossfire options in the Catalyst Control Center. We will be discussing troubleshooting and work-arounds if things somehow go wrong in a section after the performance tests. But, for now let’s take have a look at what you have all been waiting for: the performance of the 4800-series in Crossfire.