ATi's Multi-GPU CrossFire Graphics Card Unveiled

MojoDog writes "ATi has unveiled their new Multi-GPU technology dubbed "CrossFire" today out at the Computex show in Taiwan. HotHardware has a full preview of the technology, which requires both a Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire based motherboard and a CrossFire graphics card, in addition to another Radeon X800 series PCI Express card, for dual 3D Graphics processing with three available types of load balancing. CrossFire supports Split-Screen, Alternate Frame Rendering and SuperTiling mode load balancing between the GPUs."

Comments

Awesome

[Keystroker]

This is just in time. I'm sure many nex-gen games coming out will be transferred over to PC. This sort of begs the question. Slowly, the computer is becoming an all in one console. Next gen consoles may soon become useles.

PS- ATI, we need Linux drivers!

Re:Awesome

[fr0dicus]

Meanwhile, on planet Earth, the PC gaming market shrinks every year, as even Microsoft shift focus to games consoles.

Re:Awesome

[Espectr0]

Meanwhile, on planet Earth, the PC gaming market shrinks every year, as even Microsoft shift focus to games consoles.


And then PC users get only console ports, which are badly done, therefore no one wants to buy PC games, making the problem worse every year.

Re:Awesome

[AviLazar]

Another few reasons why there will be both:

Consoles are more user friendly - virtually no crashing...requiring no loading or advanced configuartion

PCs are more customizable, can do other things (i.e. you can type your homework on it), and are not so locked up.


Some people, also, cannot afford both. Maybe someone can afford to spend 1200 on a bangin gaming machine...but they may not be able to afford that 1200 piece of hardware and an additional 400-600 console.

There will be a market for both in the near future, and even mid future (5-10 years)... Maybe past 10 years these devices will merge...but oh wait they will just be PC's marketed as consoles...maybe you can do less upgrades to them.

Re:Awesome

[0111 1110]

You forgot to mention that most console games are still targeted at child gamers. I realize that thirty-somethings like myself are a minority in the gaming market, but for us hardware comparisons are largely irrelavent. Even if/when consoles add qwerty keyboards and monitor connections, there really is (almost) nothing for us to play.

I already went through that arcade game phase with Atari 2600 and Atari 400/800 (or Apple II) games in the early 80s and again with IBM PC first person shooter games (i.e. Wolf3D) in the early 90s. I played Pac-man, Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Frogger, and Pole Position and enjoyed them when I was ten. Although even as a preteen I found them kind of boring. I prefered Archon, Castle Wolfenstein, Choplifter, and Crush, Crumble and Chomp. I could play those for hours. Graphics have improved by orders of magnitude but gameplay has mostly stayed the same. That sort of gameplay is great when you are 12. It is much easier to entertain children. Games aimed at a younger crowd don't need to be as sophisticated overall and are much cheaper to make.

There are (still) hardware differences of course. Even the best computer monitors are much cheaper (and smaller/lighter) than 1080p HDTVs and keyboards are useful for complex games. Display-wise game machines should really have moved on to autostereoscopic LCD monitors, HMDs with head trackers, shutter glasses, and other immersive gaming options that are relatively easy to do on a dedicated gaming machine. NTSC televisions are display technology from the 1960s (PAL is only slightly more advanced). Great for hooking up an Atari 2600 to play Pong or Breakout but completely ridiculous as a display for the kind of graphics technology in an Xbox 360 or PS3. Juvenile clickfest, hand-eye coordination exercises, displayed on a grainy, flickering, TV just don't hold much interest for me anymore.

How funny.

[Spy der Mann]

Slowly, the computer is becoming an all in one console. Next gen consoles may soon become useles.

The same was said of the PC 10 years ago.

Re:So?

[rpozz]

There's going to be a few problems with that:

Firstly, heat dissipation - a single GPU spews out enough heat as it is. Given that for some stupid reason GPUs point DOWN and thus the heat rises through the PCB itself, you're looking at a toasty machine.

Unless you want the card to be absolutely enormous like the dual nVidia GPU cards shown previously, the GPUs are going to have to share memory, which brings up all sorts of problems and bottlenecks also found in SMP solutions.

PCIe bandwidth is going to need to increase (ie more lanes) - you need to have all those things talking to the CPU!

Just my 2 cents anyway.

Re:When will a GPU Be Good enough.

[FauxPasIII]

> We don't need to get beyond what human eyes can
see.

Tell it to the people who insist on a sustained 200fps whilst running their monitors are
retracing at 85hz.

Re:When will a GPU Be Good enough.

[blahplusplus]

>>>> We don't need to get beyond what human eyes can
see.

>> Tell it to the people who insist on a sustained 200fps whilst running their monitors are
retracing at 85hz.

Me: It's not about the retrace or pure benchmark "framerate", it's about the framerate spikes that are constantly fluctuating depending on what is happening in the game that occur during playing the game fully loaded with big battles, and beutiful models, textures and environments. In my opinion this is because games, gaming hardware have no "Quality of Service" standards.

Imagine, its similar to when on a network you your ping is low while you're not doing anything besides playing the game, but try to play a game and download a movie off bit-torrent and the data rate and trip time for the games packets suddenly spike skyhigh making your experience from frustrating to bad to unusable. Games have a similar problem where they cannot predict the throughput and amount of data to and from wherever that data is going, and the bottle necks and texture thrashing cause framerate hitches in the game.

Sure you have 100 or 200 fps in a room with no enemies or explosions going on, but then bam, down to 30-50 fps once you get a room full of people and enemies and their projectiles nad special effects animating all at once, all on the same screen in real time. So when you see high FPS scores just remember, It's about a cards ability to handle the immense load of random models and spells, effects, etc of animated (and non-animateD) models, geoemetry and textures during a actions scenes that have a lot going on in them.

Just benchmark some of the most punishing amounts of players on the same screen at once in modern MMO's or the bigger multiplayers games and you start to realize it's about what kind of load the video card can handle and keep things playable for when things get hectic (and the most fun).