View Full Version : Crossfire - ATi's version of Multi Card Rendering!
ChrisRay
05-30-05, 08:32 PM
Correct. The terms "supports, compatible, or works with" are far from absolutes in this industry. :)
My understanding is Cat AI assigns Tiling automatically, to D3d, SFR to OpenGL, And will use AFR dependent on application detection. Hopefully ATI will allow some over riding of this. I would want to use AFR in any situation possible. I'm also unsure if the new AA modes will work in anything but tiling rendering mode. ((I'm not sure about that. Just what I read))
Other than the new AA modes look kinda cool. Assuming they look good.
T-Spoon
05-30-05, 08:56 PM
The new AA is a seperate rendering mode which is not targeted at a performanceboost. It just uses both cards to create a higher level of AA. So you get 12x AA at the same performance as 6xAA. To me it looks a bit like temporal AA with one card rendering 4 or 6 samplepositions while the other also renders 4 or 6 samplepositions (creating 12xAA). The 14xAA (12x + 2x SS) looks to be the most interesting though since it finally brings a mixed SS mode to ATi cards.
Hard OCP has a preview of Crossfire http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=Nzc4LDE=
Seems the board has a plus over the NF4 boards, Hi def O/B Audio
From the sounds of that Preview it could be that the boards supports 2x PCI-Ex 16x and 2x PCI-Ex 1x. However is a two ship board unlike NV offering but it is passvily cooled so that is a plus.
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drool!!!!!! TAA would mean 28x FSAA!!!!!!!!!! Freaking insaine man!! Even 640x480 will be sharper then 1600x1200 @ 4x AA!!
Also from that it's possible to have upto 32x AF too!!
Also Anandtech have their Preview also very quick on the mark.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2432
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Not bad at all still no NV killer in Doom 3 but what did you expect?
From Anandtech...If ATI can get CrossFire out to the market in good volume (for its potential demand), we could have an excellent alternative to SLI on our hands. ATI is also working on licensing CrossFire to SiS, so we may see SiS based boards with CrossFire support early next year as well.So far, the only actual motherboard manufacturer to implement the Xpress 200 CrossFire chipset that I've seen mentioned is SiS (above). I'm re-reading the Anandtech and [H] articles to confirm. Maybe it has something to do with ATI's buggy Southbridge. It doesn't have SATA2 but that's not really a big deal to many since SATA 150 isn't stressed by today's HDs that usually only push sustained transfer rates of about 40~60MB/s. It'll be interesting to see more details in the coming weeks.
Intels new boards 9xx range apparently support Crossfire also. Bare in mind that the work is don on the video cards and not the board it's self. SO long as the board can give the PCI-Ex lanes it should work, may even work on NV'd boards too, as they are ATi cards will set it up as dual cards rather then SLi cards.
Intels new boards 9xx range apparently support Crossfire also. Bare in mind that the work is don on the video cards and not the board it's self. SO long as the board can give the PCI-Ex lanes it should work, may even work on NV'd boards too, as they are ATi cards will set it up as dual cards rather then SLi cards.
Hmm, maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying...but from page 2 of the [H] article:We’ll start off with the motherboard chipset. Much as NVIDIA’s SLI requires the nForce4 SLI chipset with PCI-Express, ATI’s solution also requires a special motherboard chipset. ATI is using their Radeon Xpress 200 chipset to provide the necessary support for CrossFire.
Crossfire is officially announced now :
http://www.ati.com/products/crossfire/index.html
more previews :
http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/mvp/
http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD0xMjE2
http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?articleid=689&cid=2
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=146
AthlonXP1800
05-31-05, 12:17 AM
ATI Crossfire require a minimum of 500W power supply, that too high than Nvidia SLi. :eek:
ChrisRay
05-31-05, 02:19 AM
ATI Crossfire require a minimum of 500W power supply, that too high than Nvidia SLi. :eek:
Nvidia specifications are reccomended for the lowest common denominator. If you look closely at the Asus manual with the Asus A8N SLI Deluxe. Its power requirements are based upon the card its using. For example 400Watt with 24A is a minimum for Dual geforce 6800 GTs. a 500+ Is for 6800 Ultras.
AthlonXP1800
05-31-05, 05:10 AM
Nvidia specifications are reccomended for the lowest common denominator. If you look closely at the Asus manual with the Asus A8N SLI Deluxe. Its power requirements are based upon the card its using. For example 400Watt with 24A is a minimum for Dual geforce 6800 GTs. a 500+ Is for 6800 Ultras.
Yes that correct, also 500W minimum for Dual Geforce 7800 GTX, that great power spec. 500W minimum for X800 Crossfire edition and 600W for X850 Crossfire edition and I wonder what about X900 (R520) Crossfire edition, it could be as much as 600W to 700W minimum.
Anyone notice that in the flash on their site that they are using an ASUS P4 NF4 SLi board to connect their cards? Even has the SLi connector.
Found this at ATi site
5. What motherboard is required for a CrossFire system?
A. A Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire edition motherboard is the optimal platform for CrossFire. CrossFire is also compatible with Intel chipsets that offer multiple x16 physical slots. Chipset support is affected by the level of technical collaboration between the various vendors, and limited quality assurance resources require that we prioritize bringing a particular platform to market.
7. Will CrossFire Edition cards work in an NForce 4 motherboard?
A. ATI is focused first on qualifying our chipsets with our GPUs. We’ll evaluate Nvidia solutions in the future.
Anyone notice that in the flash on their site that they are using an ASUS P4 NF4 SLi board to connect their cards? Even has the SLi connector.
Found this at ATi site
5. What motherboard is required for a CrossFire system?
[/b]
[/b]
Hopefully CF will accept nF4-SLI mobos in the future .. it will be an advantage for the manufacturer & the consumer alike.
skoprowski
05-31-05, 11:40 AM
http://www.tweaktown.com/document.php?dType=article&dId=771
Early drivers and benches, but not exactly mind blowing compared to Nvidia's SLI. I think the 2 will be comparable, but I can't see ATI getting out Crossfire without any of the trials and tribulations Nvidia has had with SLI- especially since it seems that ATI has not spent as much time developing Crossfire as much as Nvidia has with SLI.
Yes not impressive at all. Seems a tad faster than 6800 Ultras.. meh.
Yes not impressive at all. Seems a tad faster than 6800 Ultras.. meh.
A tad faster, works in all games, various cards mixing, Super AA modes (increases AF too, so gaming with 14xAA and 32xAF is possible). Imho it's impressive.
ATI claims it works in all games.
I have a hard time believing that.
probably the claim is valid if you take into account super AA modes.
Riptide
05-31-05, 02:52 PM
I agree that w/Beng that it's impressive. Kinda late to market though. IMO you'd be insane to bother with it since the new cores are only a quarter away I believe.
A tad faster, works in all games, various cards mixing, Super AA modes (increases AF too, so gaming with 14xAA and 32xAF is possible). Imho it's impressive.
Well easy there. Tad faster? Possibly, however the only benchmarks currently available are tests done by ATI and therefore they should IMO been taken with a grain of salt. I would rather wait for "independent" benches instead solely relying on tests done by ATI using special for benchmarking purposes tweaked systems.
Works in all games? Seems so, however Firing Squad (http://www.firingsquad.com/features/computex_2005_ati_crossfire_technology/) got word of something interesting and that is that ATI can claim "works in all games" because there SuperAA feature works in all games and not because you actually see a performance increase in all games! (Look for the second paragraph on the last page of that review).
The rumor that you can mix any ATI cards turned also out to be only a half-truth. As we know now, only X800 cards work with X800 cards and X850 with other X850s. So forget about adding a X850 Crossfire card to your existing X800 setup.
Worth mentioning is also that you have to buy a new motherboard supporting Crossfire and that you are currently limited to ATI boards which offer less features and less performance than other competiting motherboards. Adding to that, you also have to use an clumbersome external DVI link to get crossfire to work which could result in image quality degradations due to lengthening of video signals outside the card (see Voodoo2 dongle IQ problems).
So, if you really take all the different dis- and advantages into account, the idea of crossfire being "impressive" really vanishes eventhough ATI had a few neat ideas. Considering the performance, as I said before, it's really too early to say anything concrete about it. Time will tell for sure...
Let's not forget that ATI released crossfire now to make up for the delayed R520 launch. The small R520 presentation at Computex passed by completely unnoticed but of course this was all planed. I would rather have seen an "impressive" R520 launch now than this late multi-card solution by ATI.
GlowStick
05-31-05, 02:56 PM
Anyone notice that in the flash on their site that they are using an ASUS P4 NF4 SLi board to connect their cards? Even has the SLi connector.
Found this at ATi site
5. What motherboard is required for a CrossFire system?
[/b]
[/b]
Honestly it sounds like to me that on the hardware level there is nothing stoping it from working, so far it 'seems' crossfire requires only 2x 16x pci slots on a mobo to function. However, with out heavy testing they cant verafy and say you will be 100% bug free by useing something they havent tested on. There could be a werid bug that will pop up, so untill they test they cant say :o
Honestly it sounds like to me that on the hardware level there is nothing stoping it from working, so far it 'seems' crossfire requires only 2x 16x pci slots on a mobo to function. However, with out heavy testing they cant verafy and say you will be 100% bug free by useing something they havent tested on. There could be a werid bug that will pop up, so untill they test they cant say :o
Tell me about it. My brother has as X800XL in a DFI nForce Ultra D MB. Since Crossfire doesn't seem to be related to the southbridge at all, I don't see why it wouldn't work if he got a second X800XL Crossfire.
Of course, if it does work, then ATi would be making money for nVidia, just because of the larger installed NF4 base. :p
EDIT: I just realized that SLI has only been available for ~6 months now. That doesn't seem like too much of a lead for nVidia. If ATi follows up on the their timeframe, then SLI will be 8 months old when Crossfire hits retail.
Well easy there. Tad faster? Possibly, however the only benchmarks currently available are tests done by ATI and therefore they should IMO been taken with a grain of salt. I would rather wait for "independent" benches instead solely relying on tests done by ATI using special for benchmarking purposes tweaked systems.
Works in all games? Seems so, however Firing Squad (http://www.firingsquad.com/features/computex_2005_ati_crossfire_technology/) got word of something interesting and that is that ATI can claim "works in all games" because there SuperAA feature works in all games and not because you actually see a performance increase in all games! (Look for the second paragraph on the last page of that review).
The rumor that you can mix any ATI cards turned also out to be only a half-truth. As we know now, only X800 cards work with X800 cards and X850 with other X850s. So forget about adding a X850 Crossfire card to your existing X800 setup.
Worth mentioning is also that you have to buy a new motherboard supporting Crossfire and that you are currently limited to ATI boards which offer less features and less performance than other competiting motherboards. Adding to that, you also have to use an clumbersome external DVI link to get crossfire to work which could result in image quality degradations due to lengthening of video signals outside the card (see Voodoo2 dongle IQ problems).
So, if you really take all the different dis- and advantages into account, the idea of crossfire being "impressive" really vanishes eventhough ATI had a few neat ideas. Considering the performance, as I said before, it's really too early to say anything concrete about it. Time will tell for sure...
Let's not forget that ATI released crossfire now to make up for the delayed R520 launch. The small R520 presentation at Computex passed by completely unnoticed but of course this was all planed. I would rather have seen an "impressive" R520 launch now than this late multi-card solution by ATI.
agree with most of what you say except that DVI link is digital so it's not likely to have signal degradation.
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Nzc4LDE=
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Joe DeFuria
05-31-05, 05:07 PM
Well easy there. Tad faster? Possibly, however the only benchmarks currently available are tests done by ATI and therefore they should IMO been taken with a grain of salt.
Agreed. While initial tests look good (even some limited hands on ones that were NOT given out byATI), until we get actual system in reviewers hands, performance claims should be taken with a grain of salt.
...something interesting and that is that ATI can claim "works in all games" because there SuperAA feature works in all games and not because you actually see a performance increase in all games! (Look for the second paragraph on the last page of that review).
ATI will have a default rendering mode enabled for ALL games. A profile is not needed to "activate" Crossfire.
Anyway...even IF the defualt "performance rendering mode" does not work in a game, and Crossfire support is "limited" to getting "double (or more) the AA quality with zero or little performance impact", that is a huge plus.
SLI might "work" (no image quality prob) with games that are CPU limited...giving you zero benefit, whereas you will get a significant IQ increase with Crossfire.
The rumor that you can mix any ATI cards turned also out to be only a half-truth.
Yup, which is a half-truth better than what nVidia offers. You don't need the same exact make and manufacturer card, and you can take advantage of your existing x800./x850 card if you already have one.
Worth mentioning is also that you have to buy a new motherboard supporting Crossfire and that you are currently limited to ATI boards which offer less features and less performance than other competiting motherboards.
I'd wait until we see the shipping SLI motherboards so that performance, features and price can be compared.
Adding to that, you also have to use an clumbersome external DVI link to get crossfire to work...
compared to a "cumbersome" internal bridge? This is a wash.
which could result in image quality degradations due to lengthening of video signals outside the card (see Voodoo2 dongle IQ problems).
1) Voodoo2 Dongle was not for SLI. It was for the passthrough of the main graphics adapter.
2) ATI Crossfire dongle works digitally. No loss.
So, if you really take all the different dis- and advantages into account, the idea of crossfire being "impressive" really vanishes eventhough ATI had a few neat ideas. Considering the performance, as I said before, it's really too early to say anything concrete about it. Time will tell for sure...
Yes, it will take time to tell. The biggest "issue" is that its not shipping yet and testable.
But if the performance is at least on par with SLI, the feature set is a clear edge in ATI's favor.
Riptide
05-31-05, 05:10 PM
How is dual monitor support going to work with that dongle adapter?
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