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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."
Yes I'm coming across as a troll here but I'm still pissed about having bought a 9200 and the need to fight it to get it working reasonably under linux. TV out should not have taken a days worth of work. Until ATI gets it together and starts releasing good drivers for something other then windows my cards will be nvidia.
Crossfire != SLI
Crossfire is apparently scalable to 32 GPU's. So it probably won't be unheard of for graphics cards using Crossfire to have 2 or 3 GPU's and if you use dual graphics cards that means you could have a total of 4 or 6 GPU's balancing the load of a future game of Doom 4 or Half-Life 3!
... and in the DRM, bind them.
Now we've got loadbalancing GPUs. Which means cheap supercomputers, on a PCI LAN, in cheap P4 clients running the OS of our choice. Everyone overclocking your Pentium for more power: GPGPU is the cheapest way to get the fastest PC. First demo of a pool of parallel LAME process running on a stacked beast, let me know.
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make install -not war
" 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."
The opposite could just as easily be said. Next gen systems are rivaling PC's. Slowly, PC games will move over to consoles.
Frankly, either prediction is silly. The sole difference between PC's and consoles isn't the graphic power. There are a set of trade-offs for either platform. The PC, for example, requires up to date hardware, doesn't have a standard controller, and often requires a lot of configuration to get going. The game console, however has, standard hardware, no installation BS, games designed to play on the lowes common denominator, and a multi-purpose controller. One you'll happily play Quake on, the other you'll happily play Zelda on.
Me personally, I'm not thrilled with PC gaming anymore. Too much hassle with too little payoff. Maybe I'm just busier than I used to be, but I like the idea of a $200 box I can just hook up to the TV, pop a disc in, and play.
"Derp de derp."
I'm holding out for version 2. I just don't see why you need an ati or nvidia chipset for this stuff. If you have a motherboard with 2 16x pci slots next to each other then just sell the connector bracket that includes the necessary logic. Also this current generation drops the 16x slots down to 2 8x slots. Next gen should give you 2 full speed 16x slots if nvidia follows through.
I refuse to get locked into either an ATI implementation or a Nvidia implementation. I want a MB with a chipset that I select to work with either one. Then in the future I can upgrade the 2 video cards to a different brand without having to change out everything else.
Certainly, the X-Box 360 demos were all all run on PowerMacs with X800 cards, not any kind of next gen hardware.
ATi did actually have a demo of their next-gen R520 at E3, which should be launched later this year (a time frame that at worst puts it in line with X-Box 360). No news from Nvidia on the GF70, from what I can tell, but I'd imagine they'll try to launch around the same time as ATi.
Anyway, if you've been following the graphics card market (which you really should if you're thinking of buying a multi-GPU rig), you'd know that new cards are released regularly, and that their power doubles every 18 months or so. This stuff should suprise no-one these days.
I don't think that the assumption that consoles will soon kill off PC gaming is all that far fetched. Why?
(And keep in mind, I'm a very staunch PC gamer that's had and subsequently traded in all 3 current consoles because I find their games to be so shallow and short-lived).
The PC really has two advantages over consoles, and neither is specific to the PC itself: the control scheme (I love gamepads and all, but they simply can't compete with the level of precision and complexity a keyboard and mouse offer in many situations), and display technology.
Well, HDTV is rapidly becoming more commonplace. 1080p displays put more pixels on the screen than all but the highest-end PC monitors. And really, how difficult would it be to make a mouse, trackball, keyboard, or some sort of high-precision gamepad controller?
To compete with console gaming, PCs need to eliminate the hassle (and especially the "release it broken and patch it later" mindset so many distributors have), eliminate the bugs and compatibility issues, and simplify installation. Quite a lofty goal, to be honest.
What do consoles need to match the PC? A hard drive? Already happening. Better displays? Already happening. Better conrol mechanisms? Trivial. Throw in a Knoppix-like disk-bootable set of utilities with an office suite, web browser, etc, and what's the PC got left?
I think in terms of gaming nirvana, the console's beginning to step on the PC's toes. The next generation of them (the one after the PS3/360/Revolution) may very well have me, a long-time PC gamer that can't stand consoles, scratching my head, asking myself "...why do I want to spend $500 on this GeForce 8900 again?"
They sell a motherboard that is to be used with a new technology. They also include PCI slots for good measure. The damn video cards completely cover the 2 PCI slots, why are they there in the first place?
Sigs are for Terrorists.
Linux + Nvidia driver (with RenderAccel disabled) is damn stable.
ATI about 2-3 year ago has earned a reputation that they have really bad drivers. I believe that even Carmack has mentioned that he will only do development on nvidia, as the ATI's were too unpredictable. I believe the situation has changed but not for linux drivers.
Ati linux drivers are the same nightmare they used to be. Some cards are supported, others are not. In general it is a mess.
As far as your "F*CKING WORKS" comment...all I have to say is that it is not the case in my experience. One of the latest computers that I have configured for windows (Dad's Windows XP machine, hard drive with XP installed from the previous box) appears to not like AGP video. I booted Windows, and it freezes upon entering graphics mode. I started knoppix -- no problems. Windows -- freezes at entering graphics mode. Plugged in a different card - same result. Windows freezes at entering graphics mode. Fine, I immediately think that the windows is wrongly using the old configuration that is on the hard drive to start graphics, and is freezing. Here is the kicker...I decided to reinstall Windows only to have the installer freeze completely when entering graphics mode. Same result with the SP2 disc that I have bootlegged (The version I was installing was legit in fact).
I expected there would probably be bios flash for something like this, but no such new bios was available...and no one was reporting the same problem. The eventual workaround involved this: tell the bios to boot a pci graphics card first, and have any cheap pci card sitting there. Then tell windows that the agp card is the main desktop one and ignore the other card. That worked perfectly.
Total time spent to research, tinker, and workaround the problem: 4 days, with few breaks. I am persistent like that. Unfortunately that is more time than I have spent on configuring linux boxes in the last year or two.
And although the Plug and Pray experience of installing ISA modems did go away (mostly due to modems going away, I am sure the OS is still full of bugs in that respect), there is still plenty of fun to go around. Like the new vendor drivers versus generic drivers fighting each other. The SCSI card that the scanner uses disabling the CD drives, as in they are visible, but no longer send any media status info. Microphone on the card stopped working about a year and a half ago due to a generic driver update, and creative just says use generic driver.
Plenty of fun to go around when using windows boxes.
badness 10000