Crossfire Info

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Well unfortunately we ain't all blessed with inside information.

Even then .. it's mostly speculation on our part .. and we try to enjoy it .. even if it is crap.

Note taken though .. the R520 won't work with the R4xx.

US

p.s. now to end the speculation that the R520 will be dumped for the R580
 
I seem to recall Wavey having a mini-tantrum (well, y'know, by Wavey standards --Miss Manners wouldn't have batted an eyelash over it) around here on this point recently, along the lines of "how many times do I have to say this?", so I think you got him in a sorespot US, rather than picking on you personally. :)
 
On another note Macci broke the 3dm05 record with crossfire (2 OC x850xtpe). It stands now at 15498 to previous 14623 with OC gf6ultra sli.
 
Driverheaven:

You arent gaming right now with two 6800s in SLi are you? How important do you personally feel dual card is going to be this or next year?

Jimmy:

I am not a big fan of SLI, since the upgrade investment doesn't give way to many benefits, i.e. only about 2.5% of games get a performance increase, you have to buy both cards from the same manufacturer, many games actually experience a performance decrease, some 6800 and 6600s don’t have SLi connectors, etc. With CrossFire, you get a performance gain on any 3D game you play, it works with any X800 or X850 card, and you can take advantage of Super AA mode, which provides up to 14X AA.
Click to expand...

I think "works with any card" is a bit disingenuous at this point. Once you have the master card, they you are indeed free to buy any card. However, right now no one has master cards. For millions of people, the starting point of X-fire setup will be an X800 or X850 card they already own. And in their cases, they can't just by "any card" - they need the appropriate master card. With SLI, you are free to choose you starting card, which will lock you in into your second card. With Xfire, you are free to chose your slave card, but get no choice of master card. Maybe I am looking at it from a wrong perspective, but it seems that with either setup you can chose one card and the other will be chosen for you by the system restriction.

BTW, I was not aware of 6800/6600 PCI-E cards shipping without SLI connectors. What OEMs sell such cards?
 
I wonder how long it'll be before one of these tweaker guys "soft-mods" CrossFire Edition cards to work with any card at all. X850XT + X300SE would be interesting ;)
 
Ratchet said:
I wonder how long it'll be before one of these tweaker guys "soft-mods" CrossFire Edition cards to work with any card at all. X850XT + X300SE would be interesting ;)
Click to expand...

Which implies you think it would take a mod to do it all. Is this thot based on anything other than ATI's stated rec/req? (inquiring minds would like to know)
 
Ratchet said:
I wonder how long it'll be before one of these tweaker guys "soft-mods" CrossFire Edition cards to work with any card at all. X850XT + X300SE would be interesting ;)
Click to expand...


:oops:

given only AFR is usable, you'd have : (let's call A the x850xt and B the X300SE)

t=0
A starts to renders a frame
B starts another frame
t=10ms
A output its frame
A is waiting and getting extremely bored.
t=120ms
B outputs its frame.

and so on

or whatever the timings are
(didn't think around vsync, buffer swap, whatever; I may be wrong somewhere, let's say refresh is nicely set at 100Hz)

in this nice example you would go from 100fps with single CPU to 8fps with firecross? :) (given you can see only A or B's frame; seeing the 16fps in all their jerkiness would be even more cruel and unusual)
 
Does anyone know the exact differences between a CrossFire master X850XT and a regular X850XT?

Are the differences on the board? (I assume yes) ..or are they on the chip itself?

Will the R520 need to be this way too or will they build those features right into the R520 chip? Then it will not need to have a master and slave card.

Maybe they would basically all be "master cards" (can I say that without being sued by MasterCard? :LOL:) but the card in the first slot would "act" as the master. And if you switch the cards then the other card would "act" as the master. This way you wouldn't need to buy a "special" master and then a normal slave card.
 
R300King! said:
Does anyone know the exact differences between a CrossFire master X850XT and a regular X850XT?

Are the differences on the board? (I assume yes) ..or are they on the chip itself?

Will the R520 need to be this way too or will they build those features right into the R520 chip? Then it will not need to have a master and slave card.

Maybe they would basically all be "master cards" (can I say that without being sued by MasterCard? :LOL:) but the card in the first slot would "act" as the master. And if you switch the cards then the other card would "act" as the master. This way you wouldn't need to buy a "special" master and then a normal slave card.
Click to expand...

i think the difference are the dual dvi connector and the compositing chip(engine)
 
tEd said:
R300King! said:
Does anyone know the exact differences between a CrossFire master X850XT and a regular X850XT?

Are the differences on the board? (I assume yes) ..or are they on the chip itself?
Click to expand...

i think the difference are the dual dvi connector and the compositing chip(engine)
Click to expand...

There is a picture here with the components added for CrossFire :
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/573/page2.html

DVI receiver, FPGA and its ROM, RAMDAC.
 
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