DH Article: ATI's Crossfire Discussed

***Zardon*** · May 31, 2005, 06:28 AM

Its been a long time coming but ATI have finally answered the call of Nvidia's SLI with the release of their dual card technology codenamed "Crossfire". Right now we dont have a suitable test rig to bring you figures or results but rest assured when samples are made available we will be bringing you the full rundown. For now Ill go over the information presented to me at a recent meeting and how you should expect Crossfire to improve your gaming experience. At the end of the article ill include an ATI Q&A session which will answer a good selection of questions and act as a reference.

Read here

Mort_Cinder · May 31, 2005, 06:32 AM

thanx for the article, very informative

bananaman · May 31, 2005, 07:20 AM

good article - solution doesnt seem like the most elegant, but looks like it will work ok

one thing i am liking the sound (excuse pun) is the HD Audio on AMD - does this mean DDL encoding - is this the new soundstorm!!!

nana

**Asmoday** · May 31, 2005, 07:40 AM

cool!

Falstaff · May 31, 2005, 07:41 AM

I can see that ATI and NVIDA will be neck and neck on this technology until a newer generation of cards will surpass this particuler approach, it can only get better, cant wait to see the benchmarkis.....

**Vikingod** · May 31, 2005, 08:18 AM

Cant wait for the benchmarks, great article.

knuth · May 31, 2005, 08:20 AM

A real teaser Zardon.

Im wondering what intel chipsets have been tested to work with crossfire, it sounds like it could save one from having to purchase a new (ATI) motherboard. The extreme levels of anti-aliasing are what im really curious about, with all that rendering power it makes sense that you'd need something that extreme to use it all.

riles9262 · May 31, 2005, 08:40 AM

Thanks for the article guys. This looks pretty exciting, especially if the performance is not driver dependent.

pr0digal jenius · May 31, 2005, 09:40 AM

oh I do hope it works on nForce boards....that'd be funny as hell

zamac_man · May 31, 2005, 09:49 AM

can't wait to see the benches

mike2h · May 31, 2005, 11:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pr0digal jenius

oh I do hope it works on nForce boards....that'd be funny as hell

yeh it would

, but no way. different design.

bake15 · May 31, 2005, 11:27 AM

Nice preview Allan, looks like im gonna be upgrading again(a lot sooner than i thought

)

Drakon · May 31, 2005, 11:42 AM

Does that board have room for a sound card? It didn't seem so in those pictures...

Lowfat · May 31, 2005, 01:36 PM

Finally I must say. It kind of makes me angry that the Intel mobo's will have an onboard video while the AMD's will not.. and bananaman, I believe the HD audio is the same as the ones that some Intel chipsets use, the Azalia codec. Which i believe does encode Dolby Digital.

YAYitsAndrew · May 31, 2005, 01:44 PM

Crossfire, you'll get caught up in the
Crossfire
(dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun)
Crossfire...
Crossfire......
CROSSFIRE!!!!!
*explosions*
"Yeah!"

Anyone else thinking of the old board game right now?

Lelisevis · May 31, 2005, 03:18 PM

Love ATI, Love Nvidia. Dont love having a £350 AGP X800XT sitting here that will not be able to take advantage of this technology. I'd love to see a mainboard manufacturer bring out a hybrid board which would ease the already slow transition to PCI-E and allow us to combine the two technologies (agp and pci-e). Im sure there would be a massive market for this. Very much doubt that will happen though as when was the last time a major manufacturer gave something back to it's user base?
Might seem fantasy but consider the recent board that supports both intel and amd processors.
On a side note HOW MUCH HEAT WILL THIS GENERATE LOL

Vapor · May 31, 2005, 05:12 PM

Any word on multimonitor or widescreen compatibilty?

BWX · May 31, 2005, 05:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vapor

Any word on multi-monitor or wide-screen compatibility?

I was wondering the same thing- Imagine FINALLY being able to have one main screen and one screen on each side like the Matrox card failed at (with any performance)

Imagine being able to play all your games (FPS, race sim, flight sim, etc) with 3 screens, all running fairly high resolution and AA and AF..

Also if that ever does become a reality, I think it would be great to run the main center screen at a higher resolution and different graphic settings than the two outer screens.

If you want to turn and shoot the guy you see on one of the outer screens, you just move him into the more detailed center monitor..

Kind of like the way our own vision works- peripheral vision is not nearly as detailed as the inner 30 degrees or so, so in a system like that, the outer screens could be made just to see whats going on around you (if you want it like that)..

Maybe they could use the main master-card to render the main screen, and the slave card to run the two outer screens, or something like that. It seems like it would be possible with all that horsepower under the hood.

Maybe I am just dreaming like Lelisevis who wants a mobo to support crossfire in AGP and PCI-e at the same time. But features like this would be really cool. So close, yet so far...

BWX · May 31, 2005, 05:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pr0digal jenius

oh I do hope it works on nForce boards....that'd be funny as hell

Quote:

As some of you had already expected you will need a new motherboard, this will be based on a new ATI Chipset codenamed RD and RS480, for Amd and Intel solutions.

Fraid not!

Vapor · May 31, 2005, 06:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BWX

I was wondering the same thing- Imagine FINALLY being able to have one main screen and one screen on each side like the Matrox card failed at (with any performance)

Imagine being able to play all your games (FPS, race sim, flight sim, etc) with 3 screens, all running fairly high resolution and AA and AF..

Also if that ever does become a reality, I think it would be great to run the main center screen at a higher resolution and different graphic settings than the two outer screens.

If you want to turn and shoot the guy you see on one of the outer screens, you just move him into the more detailed center monitor..

Kind of like the way our own vision works- peripheral vision is not nearly as detailed as the inner 30 degrees or so, so in a system like that, the outer screens could be made just to see whats going on around you (if you want it like that)..

Maybe they could use the main master-card to render the main screen, and the slave card to run the two outer screens, or something like that. It seems like it would be possible with all that horsepower under the hood.

Maybe I am just dreaming like Lelisevis who wants a mobo to support crossfire in AGP and PCI-e at the same time. But features like this would be really cool. So close, yet so far...

Wasn't quite thinking about games, per se (but the prospect of multimonitor gaming with actual performance is interesting, to say the least), but rather just regular old multimonitor and widescreen support that is lacking in SLI right now.

Necrosis · May 31, 2005, 06:59 PM

Still not quite sure why you would need a special motherboard since the master card and dongle does all the communication, and setup for rendering?

BWX · May 31, 2005, 07:21 PM

Yeah - but they have two PCI-e x 8 slots. And some of the info passes through the slots right?

Necrosis · May 31, 2005, 07:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BWX

Yeah - but they have two PCI-e x 8 slots. And some of the info passes through the slots right?

I have two 16x slots but I don't have an SLI board, it's little brother to be exact. I wonder if it's possible to mod an nforce 4 board to do 16x(2)? 8x would be slower of course but I suppose nvidia pci-e boards are also supposed to work too. What I mean is a single nvidia GPU should work. Over all I don't seem all that impressed with it so far. I would love to get my hands on some schematics for both boards. Also note ATI said they may look at nforce 4 boards later on so who knows. I think it would be a great idea on ATI's behalf to make this also work with nforce 4 boards. It would be funny, and a great business tactic.

somekindazombie · May 31, 2005, 10:22 PM

Assuming we can't get ATI's Crossfire working on an nforce 4 mobo then I must say I have to hold off to hear more about ATI's new mobos before I get too excited about this. I don't know about you guys but I believe a mobo is a pretty important part of any system. ATI's current mobo isn't up to par with nvidia's offerings, and it would make sence since it was their first attempt in the market. Nvidia has proven that they can make solid mobos with incredible performance and features. If ATI's second generation of mobos have the performance, feature set, and price to equal or even out do the incredible nforce 4 family of chipsets then count me onboard for this Crossfire stuff.

Sandok · Jun 1, 2005, 06:14 AM

wow a really interesting topic I just found... Seems there is a better way to have two X850XTs running without the need of the real crossfire...

http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/8390

I'd rather go DFI way than the dongle way!