Hardware

Your M'Board has to support Crossfire Video and without that you have to change the M'Board and it is a AMD Technology which only works on AMD read that as ATI Video Cards.

If you want to use nVidia Cards the Technology is called SLI.

For a full description look here

http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/AMD_CrossFireX

http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/Scalable_Link_Interface

remember to remove the space from between wikipedia and the .org for a working link.

Col

you could add another of the same Video Cards which are Single Processor Video Cards and that may suit your needs.

You could change both Video Cards and use Dual Core GPU's and give yourself a Quad Crossfire arrangement or you could switch to nVidia Video Cards in either a Single arrangement or Dual Card Arrangement in dual triple or Quad Core Arrangements but I would first look at the OS being used.

if it's a 32 Bit OS you'll have Memory Addressing Problems and you need to remember that Video Memory is part of the Total System Memory that is facing somewhere the around 3.25 GIG Upper Memory Limit so while a Dual Arrangement Crossfire Video Display is technically faster if you are up against the 3.25 GIG Limit of a 32 Bit OS you may honestly see no difference or at least no appreciable difference.

If you have a 64 Bit OS it will address all of the System RAM that the current Generation M'Boards can carry so ideally for Pure Performance 2 Dual Processor Video Cards would be the best but then you also have to look at the games that will be used and see if they are optimized for nVidia or ATI Video.

Most gamers that haunt TR prefer nVidia Video however on the few Gaming Rigs I have made I have used ATI Video and the users have not complained but the games that they wanted to play suited ATI Video better.

The question is a bit like How Long is the piece of string in my pocket that no one can see? Without a lot more information and I suppose a lot of Input from Gamers we are all just guessing as to what is Technically Better which may not suit the needs of the individual.

Col

But as the 64 Bit Version wasn't overly popular I would imagine that you have a 32 Bit Version and with 4 GIG of RAM and a 1 GIG Video Card that totals 5 GIG and the M'Board depending on the Chip Set involved can not address or use more than about 3.25 GIG of RAM I would imaging you'll get a improved performance by scrapping XP and loading a 64 Bit OS.

Again depending on what your actual hardware and other connected Devices are you may find that you are better off with a 64 Bit Version of XP however realistically I would think unless expensive Printer/Scanners are involved you would be better off with a 64 Bit Version of 7.

That is where I would be spending any funds that I had personally but then again that's me other people can have a completely different idea.

However XP 64 had a lot of Driver Issues so unless you can be certain that you can get drivers for all your hardware in 64 Bit Versions it's not something I personally would be considering even though there are constantly a lot of copies of it currently available on places like E Bay. Way too much hardware which was made for XP was only made for 32 Bit OS's and simply doesn't work when you attempt to use it with the 64 Bit Version of XP

Personally adding another Video Card in a Crossfire configuration is unlikely to show any improvement.

Col

Crossfire means that you can use two video cards at the same time (in the same computer) to put out a better picture. However, the only real gains you get from using this technology is a better picture at very high resolution. It doesn't make much sense to invest in this unless you have a monitor pumping out 1920x1200 or above, and invest you will - you need a motherboard that supports it, 2 video cards and a PSU that will put out enough power to run it all.

There are two major video card manufacturers, ATI and Nvidia. Crossfire is for ATI cards, SLI is for Nvidia cards and they are not compatible. You have to have a motherboard made for either of the technologies - it must be SLI or Crossfire ready and have two PCI-E slots for each card. If you want to use two ATI cards and you have a motherboard with SLI technology, you have to get another motherboard.

ATI cards are less expensive and as of this posting, the general consensus is that ATI is the better bang for your buck. They are very close when it comes to benchmarking so for a budget upgrade, ATI is the way to go. Generally, choose the highest number that you can and then look for benchmark and comparisons to others of similar lineage.

I would suggest upgrading to Windows 7 if possible, the graphics are much better and XP is essentially dead, it just doesn't know it yet.