Zardon

Considering how fast paced the PC industry moves you would have thought that a delay of over a year since SLI was introduced would have given Nvidia such a massive market segment share that it would be unbeatable. Unfortunately though, despite SLI being available it was far from the perfect solution at the time of launch with issues such as lack of game compatibility and having to use matched cards being factors that made the purchase undesirable for many hardware enthusiasts. It has to be said however that Nvidia have improved SLI game support in recent months and their hardware will take some beating, we aim to not only test crossfire but to show you some comparisons against Nvidia in both single and dual configurations.

read the preview here

studbagel9

This is pretty much the most thorough preview anyone could've asked for. It is also about as unbiased as it gets. Thanks for the excellent arcticle Zardon. The last two major articles I've seen from here (This and the Lost Coast) have been some of the best I've ever read from this or any other site. Alright, enough ass kissin', time to buy me a Crossfire system!

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Vikingod

That was an absolutely great preview guys, thank you very much. Very thorough and and informative. Can't you just give us a hint at how the r5xx series performs, come on, just a hint. lol.

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Sandok

Wow that was amazing. Details, info, the lot! Great work!

WxChaser

I thought the review was hard hitting, accurate and no bias was shown. Excellent job Stu! Kudo's to you for putting in the hard work on the benchmarking and giving all the pertinent details.

Lowfat

14X Super AA looks amazing...

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Drakon

I agree. Very good unbiased review, guys

[hobo]eclipse

does NVIDIA have any type of technology that does similar things wth the AA and AF as ATI does with crossfire and SAA, such as utilizing the power of both card to improve AA\AF. The IQ shot with 14x SAA was quite impressive and would be a major point of consideration in purchasing a pair of either, one question, why no AF in the Lost Coast IQ shots with the SAA??

Thanks alot for the article guys, top notch all the way around, Now for some DOD:S later !!

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No_Style

Good work, DH. Great effort, ATI.

I just have a few questions:

Why such a radical approach? Why external dongles and slave/master cards? It really appears to be a step backwards to me. (Seeing how other areas of computing moved away from Slave/Master relationship.. ie: SATA) Am I wrong to assume ATI went down this path just for the sake of being different?

Oh and the limitation of 1600 x 1200 @ 60 Hz is a real downer for those high-resolution CRT gamers.

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pr0digal jenius

most excellent review *thumbs up*

Looks like a good technological setup, so long as it gets a larger market share then ATi's current IGP chipsets have(and perhaps it'll include an ATi north and southbridge, as opposed to outsourcing the southbridge to companies like ALI)

I'm also worried about whether or not the rabbit in ATi's hat is big enough anymore, seeing how a 7800 in every case except FEAR holds it's own against TWO 850XTs, often times throwing down a 2-3FPS victory. Couple that with the upcoming 80 series Forceware's that are giving the user free reign over SLi as well as fully enabling multithreading, and in some games throwing up an additional 10-14 FPS, and I think ATi may just miss the bus.

But like I said, they've astounded me before(read: 8500, 9700), so let's hope they don't dissappoint



also, I wonder how much that 1600x1200 @ 60Hz is dependent on the drivers telling the cards that's the limit, or if some fancy INF/BIOS work can unlock that? My guess is due to the downsampling used in SSAA, higher resolution isn't possible, but even 1600x1200 @ 85 would be a huge improvement

Necrosis

I know this info wasn't available during testing.

It looks like the Beta 78.05's fix the Lost Coast issues.

Also, shouldn't the 80.40's have these features?

http://fileismissing.blogspot.com/

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brutusmaximus

superb review guys, good information, after reading that I think ill wait on future hardware seems a bit of a mess IMO. I mean what on earth are they thinking about 1600x1200 60hz limitations? I guess they could hand out the hardware to bittech all the time as they ONLY ran tests at 1024x768 !!!!! Lets spend a fortune on hardware to game at 1024x768 and nothing else. I used to love bittech, but its going down the tubes big time this year.

mike2h

great review. was really surprised at your performance reports on the mb. it seems to be performing much better than i expected. think ati might have winners in both areas.
i think it would be a total waste of $$ to buy crossfire with anything but r520+. definetly going to make that release even more interesting.
going to be fun to see what nv has in store to counter the r520/crossfire. dont you just love it when companies compete like this!
bty, could you please try writing a crappy review, or at least a not so good one? i am getting tired of thanking you guys for great reviews.

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Sandok

Ya but tehcreport also just did a review and the USB speed probs and PCI express ethernet prob seem stuck with that ATI southbrigde...

I'm not sure what I'm talking about if ever...

craig5320

Excellent article. good stuff, keep it coming..

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The_Neon_Cowboy

Cool , good read

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klevo

I think a Crossfire setup with current ATi cards (X8xx) is really not the best option. Let`s wait and see what the next generation will bring.

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mike2h

i thought they were using a different southbridge now? will have to wait & see how that plays out. if that is true of their current mb release, it is not good news.
the very good news for ati is that intel is coming out with a chipset that supports cf.

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riles9262

Most excellent, I think that's the best review so far.

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Vikingod

Question...
Do the Crossfire series motherboard support dual 16x PCIe (like the up and coming A8N32-SLI Deluxe) when in crossfire or does it scale down to 8x for each card when running in Crossfire mode?

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mike2h

you are right, just read it. i knew uli had made a compatible sb for this mb, i assumed ati would use it. i am sure several of the better mb manafcturers will.

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Asmoday

Great review Stu!

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WxChaser

There is a new southbridge already under development by ATI to be seen later in next iteration of the motherboards.

mike2h

kinda makes you wonder if ati is pulling one of nvs little tricks of using consumers to beta test(nv does it with drivers) with this mb release. just an observation.
aside from getting these mbs in the pipeline(which is very important) before they release r520 master cards, there is no real point to the release of crossfire at this time. especially as far as the 8xx cards go.

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The_Neon_Cowboy

8x to both cards just like in SLI, unless your useing only one card then it get 16X.
Seems 8X is plenty bandwith so that doesn't matter too much. Also image / data
is passed from one card to the other via the link.

They need to get these boards out!!!

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Falstaff

excellent article Allan and Stewart, worthy of setting an industry standard....
Only one typo...but hey, I can live with that..I make them all the time....LOL

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Drakon

Ain't that the truth!

mike2h

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SFOSOK

I like the pic, Crossfire = backfire the theme?


Also those of you wondering about Super AA, Nvidia has one that works a little better but both are almost pointless right now because of the FPS dive it takes (even at low resolutions).



There was an article on the site but I can't seem to find it now.

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knuth

I'd still opt for a single card solution any day. Duel cards are way too over the top and ineffecient as far as economics go.