ATI CrossFire

[MisterChief]

Well, it's bout time ATI developed their solution to SLI, and I guess they're on an end-run. Read this article from AnandTech to get an overview: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2432 . I think it will compete quite well with SLI.

[Frakk]

Crossfire will kick the SLI's ass real hard, starting with the hardware optimizations instead of driver profiles. ATI's solution is a lot more compatible with games and other programs plus the x850xt is faster than the 6800Ultra and it is faster in a dual setup as well. however, by the time you will be able to order a master crossfire card, nvidia will bring out the g70 cards and ATI will introduce the R500. a new era in the graphics war it will be nice to see those new cores in a dual setup. anyways, im with ATI all the way, supporting the Canadian funds

[MrSlacker]

what i like about it is that you dont need to run 2 identicle cards. now, i ahve 800XL, if in a year i want to upgrade video card, i can get Crossfire mobo and a master card. no need to spend 1k on graphic cards

[MisterChief]

Crossfire will kick the SLI's ass real hard, starting with the hardware optimizations instead of driver profiles. ATI's solution is a lot more compatible with games and other programs plus the x850xt is faster than the 6800Ultra and it is faster in a dual setup as well. however, by the time you will be able to order a master crossfire card, nvidia will bring out the g70 cards and ATI will introduce the R500. a new era in the graphics war it will be nice to see those new cores in a dual setup. anyways, im with ATI all the way, supporting the Canadian funds

I'll drink to that! :p

[MisterChief]

what i like about it is that you dont need to run 2 identicle cards. now, i ahve 800XL, if in a year i want to upgrade video card, i can get Crossfire mobo and a master card. no need to spend 1k on graphic cards

This will be a big plus for ATI users. They can use their X800 they're using now and slap it together with, say, an X850, or the R5xx.

[Zeus]

as long as the x850 or what not is the base card

[jonopaul01]

Just as a out of interest shouldn't this be in the "Video Killed the Radio Star" section? Any way as to the card, It sounds great whether it is, is another question. SLI's main advantage to the average consumer is that you can buy an "average card" now that will work for all the games you want to play now and then in a year when you need to upgade you just buy another of the same cards which will then be cheaper and give you the overall power of the latest new expensive cards.

However this (in my opinion) could just as much hinder the industry as help it. You see there are two parts to Graphics cards, the Industry and the Consumer. Generally the industry don't care about the consumer as long as they buy their cards. So they raise their prices as much as possible, for the highest profit, even though the consumer doesn't like it.

If you can get the same amount of power from two cheap, low power cards as you can from the brand new, expensive, "Cutting Edge" cards then peope are going to stop buying these as they are too expensive. This will affect the companies as they will soon see that no-one is buying their flagship products but instead buying their budget predecessors. This will then gear the companies towards createing budget GPU's at as low a cost as possible (that is if they can get cheaper!) so that they can make as much profit as possible from the middle of the market.

Of course I have been talking about the general consumer, The power users will still want the brand new GPU's. However the companies tend not to really care about the power users as they are in the minority and so do not invest as much money in the company. They will therefore slow down their pioneering research into brand new cards meaning that new cards will be developed less often.

Okay sure, this is a pretty extreme, worse case scenario (no pun intended) but something that is possible. I personally am looking forward to getting a SLI GPU (though I will need to get a new MoBo) but I still look at it like a "budget" solution, rather than the way the power user would see it as a maximum power solution. Just my thoughts.

[EDIT] Great to see here n00n

[n00n]

This is perfect. Once these babies are released the price of my HIS x800xt Pro iceQ2 is gonna drop like crazy!

I wonder what would happen if you had to combine a feature rich x850 with a low end x300? How would it affect your peformance and looks? Things like pixel shader versions? They would somehow have make a new architecture that would translate it into a simple code for the x300 which could then be converted into something more advanced for the x850, and this would slow down performance. This is very interesting technology indeed. Something like the deathstar (hehe, check my star wars contribution ). Dangerously powerful, but fragile in the opening stages.

btw I am not saying that they will make a x300 version, but just using this as an example.

*edit* I see a nice diagram here . I would say that the most powerful gpu would be the one connection to the monitor.

*edit 2* sort of answer my own question ' the faster board will be throttled back dynamically in order to maintain synchronization.'

[Frakk]

you cannot use an x850 mastercard with an x300 slave. they have specifications that has to match such as: the amount of memory on the 2 cards, the pipelines and has to be from the same series. they have 2 x800 models, 256 and 128mb and a 256mb x850 one.

[n00n]

That fixes the feature problem. But you are still limited to a small selection of cards to mix and match. Still an improvement to SLi. We'll see what the future holds.