ATI Crossfire

[quiksilver]

ATI Crossfire = nVidia SLI Killer??? either way i'll stick with ATI

Overview:
http://www.ati.com/products/crossfire/index.html

Features:

CrossFire’s unique parallel processing technology has development roots going back to ATI’s multi-GPU Rage Fury MAXX™. Based on the same technology used with ATI-based commercial flight simulators, CrossFire soars into a new dimension of graphics capability with multiple Radeon® graphics processing units (GPUs) working together in your PC.

Divide and Conquer
ATI’s CrossFire speeds your gaming momentum with “supertiling,” high-performance GPU sharing that evenly divides the processing and graphics rendering workload.

How Supertiling Works:

* Think of your screen image divided into subsections like a checkerboard, with alternating black and white “tiles.”
* CrossFire’s Supertiling intelligently alternates rendering duties of these tiles to each Radeon GPU for consistent, efficient load balancing with hassle-free compatibility.

CrossFire’s options include a multiple load-sharing “scissor” mode and an alternate frame-rate mode, combining optimal performance with game-conquering compatibility.

More info:
http://www.ati.com/products/crossfire/features.html

Its about time. This looks promising. Only thing i don't like is that only ATI will be making them...not even SAPPHIRE(according to info found on: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23570).

What does everyone else think?

[Magma]

hmmm....this is new news to me, i guess thats wat i get for not being online for over 2 months, ati's reply, i guess i'll look into it, however for now my heart lies with nvidia, i have two past experiences with ati and they weren't the best one ones, and nvidia has always held true for me

[quiksilver]

seems the info found on http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23570 is not entirely correct. Sapphire is listed amoung ATI's partners for their new cards.

[Greatis]

I Think I am going to buy myself an ATI Graphix card for once. Probably a X600 or something like that and put it in my second machine. See how it works. They seem to be pretty good but I have never really tried them just sticked with Nvidia all the way. Oh well.

[Cultus]

I Think I am going to buy myself an ATI Graphix card for once. Probably a X600 or something like that and put it in my second machine. See how it works. They seem to be pretty good but I have never really tried them just sticked with Nvidia all the way. Oh well.

Believe me I know exactly how you feel....but I trusted my heart...I took the plunge and went straight out ATi....and today I am living to enjoy every moment of it. Nvidia cannot come nowhere to the power and glory of ATi....take it from an old Nvidia loyalist..

[quiksilver]

From reading numerous reviews it always appeared to me that doom 3 prefers nVidia cards and hence better scores without SLI.
Anyway,i found some benchmarks you might find interesting.

http://www.tweaktown.com/document.ph...rticle&dId=773

Since these results on their own are meaningless, we also ran the same tests on an nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra SLI system. The only difference between this and the Crossfire system were the motherboard, which was a Gigabyte nForce 4 motherboard and obviously the video cards.

Finally, please note that all tests were run with Doom 3 set to Ultra Quality.


X850XT Crossfire

Normal
1024x768 – 85.4
1280x1024 – 83.1

4xAA 8xAF
1024x768 – 69.6
1280x1024 – 52.2

GeForce 6800 Ultra SLI

Normal
1024x768 – 83.8
1280x1024 – 82.5

4xAA 8xAF
1024x768 – 67.8
1280x1024 – 53.4


As you can see, we found that there’s little difference as far as performance is concerned between a high-end SLI and a high-end Crossfire setup. However, please keep in mind that the Crossfire system used early beta drivers (and probably early BIOS revisions), so there should be much more room for improvement.

The numbers speak for themselves. ATI has managed to pull this off and it will only get better.*plaese note that the benchmarks were run using the highest quality setting in doom3.*

Don't forget that the R520 is on the horizon.

Additionally, new boards based on the ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipsets and Crossfire chipsets should be out by the end of this month or there about.

At the end of the day i'll go with ATI regardless.

[quiksilver]

Out of curiosity:
Is it me or is it that the majority of people here prefer nVidia?

[AGENTDRE]

Nope ATI for Me all The way

[quiksilver]

i knew there were some here who have seen the light. what you think about the benchmark scores?

[samurailos]

Nvidia for me, thought i have nothin against ati, infact have neva owned a ati b4, so far i have 2 nvidia cards, though not close to the high end one, they do their job enough for a poor folk.

What i'm saying though is that even though the crossfire according to those bench scores, runs a bit faster, u gotta look at price comparison, a few fps might not be worth so much extra dough.