Crossfire Info

[trinibwoy]

Another shot of 2 cards connected with cable:

http://www.guru3d.com/newsitem.php?id=2710

Those cables just don't cut it! :?

Pharma

That's the same pic from the Inq. And honestly, complaining about the cables and connector etc is just petty - might as well start complaining that you have to plug the cards into the motherboard for it to work.

 

[CJ]

I agree. There are plenty of other cables at the backside of the computer. One more connectorcable won't really matter.

Btw, The Inq is wrong when they say that the Radeon CrossFire editions just have 2 DVI outputs. The top output is a special CrossFire output.

Just love the Unite & Dominate slogan. 8)

 

[trinibwoy]

Just love the Unite & Dominate slogan. 8)

Oh lord I can imagine the flamefests if AMR turns out to be faster/better than SLI. The boards will be crazy with "We have United and Dominated!!!" BTW - where did you see the slogan?

 

[CK]

So was Fudo in London the other day...? :?

 

[DSC]

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1799/

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.

 

[_xxx_]

All Crossfire Edition cards have High Density DMS+DVI dongle which supports DVI+DVI with cable and supports CRT with adaptor.

It's a DMS-59 connector, which I gather is quad channel DVI.

Extreme DVI!

 

[trinibwoy]

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1799/

Not sure how they can come to that conclusion without more info. And according to Fudo there will be a $250 XL Master card for use with X800XT and lower parts.

I wonder if Master cards can be slaves as well. It would have to be to allow people to use their existing Master cards as slaves when they trade up.

 

[CJ]

Just love the Unite & Dominate slogan. 8)

Oh lord I can imagine the flamefests if AMR turns out to be faster/better than SLI. The boards will be crazy with "We have United and Dominated!!!" BTW - where did you see the slogan?

Where did I see it? I have my sources... You'll see more of those slogans like the one I posted before Multiply & Conquer and Divide & Conquer (Supertiling), Render & Rule etc....

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1799/

*** cut ***

Where does it say you need a new motherboard sporting an ATi chipset? CrossFire will work with motherboards which are "CrossFire Ready", for instance the Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire chipset, but I don't see why other motherboards can not be made "CrossFire Ready".

And like trinibwoy says it's not really more expensive. You can get a Radeon X800XL 128MB CrossFire at $249 and hook up your regular X800XL to it and it will end up faster and cheaper than a GF6800GT in SLi in various cases.

Oh well. NDA expires tomorrow, so you will know all about CrossFire and it's special renderingmodes and performance.

 

[DSC]

Most motherboards don't have a second PCIe 16x slot, or did most of you not notice?

Where are you gonna plug the card, into a PCIe 1x slot?

A new motherboard is still required, like it or not.

 

[PatrickL]

Like it is for SLI so what is the point ?

 

[CJ]

Most motherboards don't have a second PCIe 16x slot, or did most of you not notice?

Where are you gonna plug the card, into a PCIe 1x slot?

A new motherboard is still required, like it or not.

Who says you need two PCIe 16x slots? According to The Inq CrossFire will work as a dual 8x PCIe... and the rest of the 'rumors' they posted about CrossFire earlier on today are pretty spot on... So who knows if this is also true... And if it is... wouldn't it be nice if you could run CrossFire on nVidia's nForce4 SLi motherboards?

 

[_xxx_]

... wouldn't it be nice if you could run CrossFire on nVidia's nForce4 SLi motherboards?

Wouldn't surprise me at all...

 

[DSC]

You need a PHYSICAL PCIe 16x slot. Thats what I mean. It can run as 8x or whatever, but still need a second physical slot.

 

[trinibwoy]

And if it is... wouldn't it be nice if you could run CrossFire on nVidia's nForce4 SLi motherboards?

It would certainly make it more attractive for me and will probably piss off Nvidia too . As much as ATi's new chipset is getting good reviews, until there is considerable community feedback I won't be leaving the Nforce line.

 

[CJ]

CrossFire motherboard sighting:

http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2431&p=7

DFI Lanparty CrossFire

 

[trinibwoy]

We should get some info tonight right (US EST) - since Taiwan is 12 hours ahead......

 

[CJ]

Anyone who's in the know care to elaborate what the third rendering mode "multiple load-sharing scissor-mode" is? :?

Some more CrossFire stuff here: http://www.firingsquad.com/features/computex_2005_graphics_preview/page2.asp

 

[karlotta]

You need a PHYSICAL PCIe 16x slot. Thats what I mean. It can run as 8x or whatever, but still need a second physical slot.

I would like to find that spec. do you have a link?

 

[gordon]

So does this mean that there will be a mode that allows the full use of two cards even though they have a different number of pipelines?

 

[Charmaka]

IMO there's a fairly sizeable difference between needing an nVidia SLI motherboard and just needing two 16x slots running at 8x. The former requires that you buy an SLI chipset from nVidia, while the latter just requires you to add a second slot to your board and split the channels up differently.