Crossfire - ATi's version of Multi Card Rendering!

[Karma]

Do two SLIed Ultras = 32 pipes? No. Do two Crossfired cards = 32 pipes? No. What the hell is so hard to understand? I've read and re-read MUYAs posts and STILL nothing jumps out at me and says your original assumption is correct. So, I'm still wondering what is so hard about all of this?

And here I am thinking that nVidia had all of the pixel pipelines working when 2 Ultras were in SLI! Apparently seme pipes just stop working then? :rolleyes:

Let me rephrase again: Two 12 pipe cards = 24 pipes working together. Two 16 pipe cards = 32 pipes working. You stating that 2 SLI'd Ultras not = 32 pipes working together pretty much shows your lack of understanding of the whole reason everyone likes SLI/Crossfire.

[superklye]

Let me rephrase again: Two 12 pipe cards = 24 pipes working together. Two 16 pipe cards = 32 pipes working. You stating that 2 SLI'd Ultras not = 32 pipes working together pretty much shows your lack of understanding of the whole reason everyone likes SLI/Crossfire.
Hmm...I guess I missed the memo explaining that SLI creates one super card, not a system of two cards sharing data and doing alternating frames.




Two 6800U in SLI = twp 16 pipe cards with 256MB each NOT one massive 32pipe, 512MB beast.

[Karma]

Hmm...I guess I missed the memo explaining that SLI creates one super card, not a system of two cards sharing data and doing alternating frames.

Two 6800U in SLI = twp 16 pipe cards with 256MB each NOT one massive 32pipe, 512MB beast.

Apparently you did miss the memo, since I never said that there was ever a massive 32 pipe card. I said 32 pipes working together. Do you understand the difference?

I also never mentioned RAM size. Vagrant Zero did. Don't confuse the two of us.

Yup..........fanboi forums.......

[EMunEeE]

Apparently you did miss the memo, since I never said that there was ever a massive 32 pipe card. I said 32 pipes working together. Do you understand the difference?

I also never mentioned RAM size. Vagrant Zero did. Don't confuse the two of us.

Yup..........fanboi forums.......

LOL...

<thread> ooo all this space /////////////////////////////////////////// <topic>

[AthlonXP1800]

Apparently MUYA's source is the Inq's source as well.

Looks like the Crossfire cards will be priced the same as the non-crossfire cards:

X800Xl Crossfire = $299 ; X850XT Crossfire = $549 (http://www.theinquirer.org/?article=23570)

Ah thank for the link. :D

ATI to make Crossfire cards themself? That will be bad news for european, ATI has no market here to sell BBY cards but all ATI partners, they could try with their luck to buy import Crossfire cards through ebay. I wonder whether or not ATI can meet demand for Crossfire cards they make themself.

[Karma]

Ah thank for the link. :D

ATI to make Crossfire cards themself? That will be bad news for european, ATI has no market here to sell BBY cards but all ATI partners, they could try with their luck to buy import Crossfire cards through ebay. I wonder whether or not ATI can meet demand for Crossfire cards they make themself.

No prob. You make a good point about ATi's distribution (you live in the UK, so I guess you'd know better than most). :)

I'm guessing 4-5 month delay for the retail Crossfire cards to show up in Europe?

[AthlonXP1800]

I'm guessing 4-5 month delay for the retail Crossfire cards to show up in Europe?

Actually I am talk about the UK and Europe in whole, the whole market are control by all ATI partners except BBY ATI has no control with Europe market. I think we will never see BBY ATI cards show up in Europe official in the future unless ATI have some control of the market or let the partners make crossfire cards, ATI did had full control a few years back but decided to pulled out of the market soon after. Still we can get BBY ATI crossfire cards unofficial through ebay and might get luck to get it pass through by customs.

[neliz]

TheInquirer just posted some scores of crossfire..
The biggest bonus, it accelerates games that are currently not supported by SLI and the way it renders (NFSU2 and Splinter cell:ct)

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23571

here's the text..

ATI claims that its Crossfire will be compatible with all games. All games should get performance increase while this should not be the case with Nvidia SLI platform.

Compared with two 6800 Ultra in SLI, ATI's Crossfire should end up about 10 per cent faster in 3Dmark05 benchmark, about 30 percent in Splinter cell C.T game and more than 60 percent in Need For Speed Underground 2 game. ATI is talking about results gathered from testing SLI and Crossfire platforms on 1600x1200 resolution, with 4X FSAA and 8X aniso, Athlon 64, 1GB DDR 400 memory, RD480 motherboard with 8.151 driver. ATI used two X850 XT Crossfire cards versus Asus SLI Deluxe board, 71.89 drivers, and two 6800 Ultra cards in SLI.

Compared with single X850 XT PE card, Crossfire cards performs 10 percent faster in 3Dmark03, more than 60 percent faster in old Return to Castle Wolfenstein and almost 100 percent faster in Splinter cell game. Interesting choice of games, I wonder are those the games that show the biggest difference. We don’t even doubt that.

Same document implies that Nvidia SLI won't show any performance increase in versus single 6800 Ultra card in The chronicles of Riddick, UT 2004 and Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 games.

[BrianG]

Apparently you did miss the memo, since I never said that there was ever a massive 32 pipe card. I said 32 pipes working together. Do you understand the difference?

I also never mentioned RAM size. Vagrant Zero did. Don't confuse the two of us.

Yup..........fanboi forums.......
Here is where you two are butting heads. The 32 pipes never really "work together". Just like in single card rendering each SLI video card is given a scene to render. Whether that scene is aportion of a frame all of the time, or all of a frame half of the time, the two rendering pipelines never share work on a common pixel. The pipelines and memory for each card are distinct and seperate. After running through the rendering process, info is dumped from the secondary frame buffer to the primary for queueing/assembly and it is shipped out to the monitor. So, no, 32 pipelines are not working together but, yes, all 32 pipelines are working.

Oversimplifying can create misunderstanding on message boards. :afro:

[justacow]

Pic of two x850 Crossfire Cards (http://games.tiscali.cz/news/news.asp?id=13881)

[ChrisRay]

And here I am thinking that nVidia had all of the pixel pipelines working when 2 Ultras were in SLI! Apparently seme pipes just stop working then? :rolleyes:

Let me rephrase again: Two 12 pipe cards = 24 pipes working together. Two 16 pipe cards = 32 pipes working. You stating that 2 SLI'd Ultras not = 32 pipes working together pretty much shows your lack of understanding of the whole reason everyone likes SLI/Crossfire.


The point is. Despite the fillrate. 2 Cards will "Never" scale as if they were a single card of the same design. Having a two 12 pipeline cards with four vertex units running @ 250 mhz will not be as fast as one one 24 pipeline card with 8 vertex units.

There are numerous reasons for this. Most importantly. With Tiling and Split Frame Rendering aproaches. Those additional vertex engines do not scale. Which is why you're usually lucky to see a 60% performance boost from SFR, And Likely Tiling will suffer the same issue. While AFR does scale geomety. It doesnt scale anywhere near 100% either in almost 95% of applications.


P.S. People. Cut with the trolling and arguing.

[BrianG]

Pic of two x850 Crossfire Cards (http://games.tiscali.cz/news/news.asp?id=13881)
Good thing ATI did away with that inconvenient internal bridge.

I know I'm asking for trouble, heh. ;)

[superklye]

Thank you, Brian and Chris. I could've sworn I said basically the same thing both of you did, but I guess not.

[BrianG]

Thank you, Brian and Chris. I could've sworn I said basically the same thing both of you did, but I guess not.
On occasion, mediation is required to get people to agree that they are actually saying the same thing...

[rohit]

:confused: The damn Crossfire thing isnt goin in my head. :@. i hope wen i see the system running, and some pics of it, i will prolly understand.

Y have they made it so confusing. jus wy cant two x850xtpe's be MVR'd together. y do u require an extra Crossfire edition x850xtpe.?

Why cant there exist simplicity? :confused:

[Cota]

Will it work with CRTs?

I ask because it seems the x850 crossfire has 2 dvi ports and the dongle cable is connected to the dual-link DVI port.

AFAIK dual-link dvi can't handle analog signals.

edit...

ok I figured it out... it just took a couple of bangs on my head...

[Butter Bandit]

So Crossfire systems will require that external DVI Dongel?

"Same document implies that Nvidia SLI won't show any performance increase in versus single 6800 Ultra card in The chronicles of Riddick, UT 2004 and Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 games."

Aren't these all CPU limited anyways?

And Crossfire being 60% faster in RTCW...I don't even see how that could be possible, RTCW isn't graphically demanding at all, I thought it was completely CPU bound...I mean, I think I got like 80 FPS on my GeForce 4 in RTCW.

These articles look like alot of rubbish to me so far. I'm not saying that Crossfire won't perform well, I hope it does, but I'd like to see something that sounded more legitimate...it sounds like someone was just making up these numbers.

[rohit]

This one's good. a comment by hardware analysis.
We’ll have to give it to ATI for keeping our gaze fixed upon their new product for so long, whilst being fed all sorts of incomplete information about prospective performance and features. Now that the curtain has dropped on ATI’s multi graphics processor solution we can only wonder what they’ve been doing for the past six months. Initially ATI commented that their solution would be a flexible and elegant one, and would, for example, work on any motherboard that has two PCIe slots, regardless of configuration. We would also be able to combine any two ATI PCIe graphics cards and get a boost in performance.

ATI was also quick to comment on NVIDIA’s solution being a cumbersome one, requiring a special SLI motherboard, two identical graphics cards and last but not least a internal SLI connector to establish communication between the two cards. From looking at the ATI Crossfire solution they’ve managed to eliminate none of these ‘drawbacks’ as their solution has about the same requirements as NVIDIA’s. You’ll also need a new motherboard sporting an ATI chipset with Crossfire support, a ‘master’ graphics card that will work with any 2nd ATI PCIe graphics card and last, but not least, an external dongle to enable the two cards talk to each other.

So we’re left scratching our heads, exactly how is this solution more elegant and flexible than NVIDIA’s? At least NVIDIA’s solution works with any 6800 or 6600 series graphics card, the Crossfire solution requires the purchase of a +$500 master card, so much for flexibility. And what’s with that external dongle? An internal connector to establish communication and freeing the bracket of cable clutter and enabling a 2nd DVI or S-Video output is a far more elegant solution. By the looks of it the affordable SLI alternative that Crossfire was pitched as a few months ago has now turned into an expensive and not at all flexible solution that doesn’t offer anything substantial over NVIDIA’s. For the time being we’d suggest you stick with NVIDIA’s solution and don’t get caught in the crossfire.

Sander Sassen.

[SH64]

For the time being we’d suggest you stick with NVIDIA’s solution and don’t get caught in the crossfire.
Heh .. looks like ATi didnt choose thier logo carefully :p

[rohit]

what i still dont get, as in why to create such complications, is why a MASTERCARD???
also wtf is Crossfire support? :S

[SH64]

what i still dont get, as in why to create such complications, is why a MASTERCARD???
also wtf is Crossfire support? :S

Yeah instead of Master Card they could use VISA .. j/k

seriously though that master & slave might be the way for getting the 2 cards to work with each other in all games or at least is whats helping to make any combos of GPUs work OR thats the reuquirment for the Supertiling as TheINQ said .. there should be an important need for them to do something otherwise i dont see a point for that in the time being.

[T-Spoon]

Tom's Hardware has the CrossFire preview online:

Translated Conclusion: With CrossFire ATi didn't do everything better, but they did many things better than nVidia: A free choise of card configuration, for instance any card from the X800 or X850 series card can be put together, more dual rendering modes and SuperAA which improves the imagequality. And moreover CrossFire supports all DirectX and OpenGL games.

http://www.de.tomshardware.com/graphic/20050530/index.html

Unfortunately no benchmarks yet. :(

[SH64]

So rumores where correct , but they didnt say anything about Crossfire working with all games , right?

[Clay]

So rumores where correct , but they didnt say anything about Crossfire working with all games , right?
Correct. The terms "supports, compatible, or works with" are far from absolutes in this industry. :)

[SH64]

I'm interested to see how the new Super AA modes will work & at what performance cost. afterall its always good to have more AA options even i you can't use 'em all.