Crossfire Info

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Charmaka said:
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.
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can you point me to spec thats says u need two 16x?
 
CJ said:
Oh well. NDA expires tomorrow, so you will know all about CrossFire and it's special renderingmodes and performance.
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Exact time and Time Zone, please. :)

:LOL: ;)
 
karlotta said:
Charmaka said:
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.
Click to expand...
can you point me to spec thats says u need two 16x?
Click to expand...

Point me to an 8x graphics card :p
 
karlotta said:
well Duh. :oops: the point was why is this different than NVDAs?
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My understanding of nVidia SLI is that you need special hardware on the motherboard to make it work at all, ie the southbridge or what have you must be SLI-capable. By the sounds of it, the ATI MVP solution may just require that there is sufficient space to plug them in and bandwidth to run them, ie any motherboard with two physical 16x slots which can both run at 8x will work with Crossfire cards regardless of who makes them. That would be a significant increase in flexibility IMO.
 
CJ said:
Anyone who's in the know care to elaborate what the third rendering mode "multiple load-sharing scissor-mode" is? :?
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That sounds like SFR to me.

mashie said:
Shogun said:
It's a DMS-59 connector, which I gather is quad channel DVI.
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No the DMS-59 is dual channel only (DVI+DVI / VGA+VGA / DVI+VGA).
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DVI is "dual link" capable.
Anyway, this connector is obviously used for DVI in + DVI/VGA out
 
Charmaka said:
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.
Click to expand...
Ok, call me thick-headed, but both SLi and Crossfire seem to require you to buy a speficially qualified motherboard, where's the difference?

Sure, ATI might be more at ease with allowing other companies chipsets to run two of their cards together (though launching it along side their own certainly shows they want you to buy both from them), but that's something nVidia can easily match, if they choose to.

PS: I like that, according to Anand, nVidia will soon lower their SLi chipset's prices due to ATi's increased competition.
 
If Crossfire does require special "qualification", certainly if it goes beyond "yup, it's got two 8-lane 16x slots", then my point doesn't stand.
 
incurable said:
Ok, call me thick-headed, but both SLi and Crossfire seem to require you to buy a speficially qualified motherboard, where's the difference?
Click to expand...

According to some sources CrossFire's only main requirement is that a motherboard has to have multiple 16x PCIe slots. And those same sources say that ATi will of course emphasize the Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire first for best use, but that they will later on also support VIA and Intel chipsets... and maybe later on even the nForce4 SLi chipset.
 
CJ said:
incurable said:
Ok, call me thick-headed, but both SLi and Crossfire seem to require you to buy a speficially qualified motherboard, where's the difference?
Click to expand...

According to some sources CrossFire's only main requirement is that a motherboard has to have multiple 16x PCIe slots. And those same sources say that ATi will of course emphasize the Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire first for best use, but that they will later on also support VIA and Intel chipsets... and maybe later on even the nForce4 SLi chipset.
Click to expand...
But that's a marketing-driven decision, just as well as the current nForce4-focus of SLi. (besides the odd Tumwater Xeon board, that is)

Hopefully, this will force nVidia to reconsider their stand so we might see interoperability of different platforms and cards restored in the not to distant future. I'm not holding my breath, though.
 
incurable said:
CJ said:
incurable said:
Ok, call me thick-headed, but both SLi and Crossfire seem to require you to buy a speficially qualified motherboard, where's the difference?
Click to expand...

According to some sources CrossFire's only main requirement is that a motherboard has to have multiple 16x PCIe slots. And those same sources say that ATi will of course emphasize the Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire first for best use, but that they will later on also support VIA and Intel chipsets... and maybe later on even the nForce4 SLi chipset.
Click to expand...
But that's a marketing-driven decision, just as well as the current nForce4-focus of SLi. (besides the odd Tumwater Xeon board, that is)

Hopefully, this will force nVidia to reconsider their stand so we might see interoperability of different platforms and cards restored in the not to distant future. I'm not holding my breath, though.
Click to expand...

You're sure that SLI would work on any multi-16x mobo with a driver tweak or similar?
 
OK, why does Crossfire compatability run like this:

- R430 master works with R423 or R430 slaves

- R480 master only works with R480 slaves

In other words, what technical detail makes R480 incompatible with R423 and R430?

Jawed
 
:LOL:

FULL SPEED BLENDING!

BOOM!


hm... Super AA picture. Looks like their temporal AA. But then again, the shots below that are completely different.

14x AA looks like a pixel sample orgy. ;)

:oops:
 
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