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

Anandtech also has a review

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2432

Just thought would be good to add variety.

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

[NanoGator]

" 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.

Who needs a card that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Before you waste your time on the same old tired "who needs it" posts, here's the answer:

Obviously not you.

Now stfu and be happy.

HardOCP and brief overview

[IronChefMorimoto]

HardOCP (http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Nzc4) also has a decent preview. If you look down the list of the various news items for today, the [H] has included links to other previews. Also, they have some photographs from CompuTex (???) in Taipei from this week.

I skimmed both the Anandtech and HardOCP articles, and the basic gist about ATI's "SLI" is:

- needs an ATI chipset (the 200 -- for both Intel and AMD right now)
- "SLI" connector is external via some sort of weird DVI dongle
- uses one (1) existing X800 or X850 flavor card + a special CrossFire edition of same card models = no real need to get TWO CrossFire cards at one time if you already have the above models

Looks like I'm gonna need a monster case to ever be able to do this setup (ATI's demos at CompuTex take up 4 friggin' slots on the back of a case).

IronChefMorimoto

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.

No ATI board *required*

[Jarnis]

"which requires both a Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire based motherboard and a CrossFire graphics card"

Wrong. Instead they stated that the 'optimum' platform is the Xpress 200 CrossFire.

However, between the marketing bullshit, you can clearly see that the motherboard is just a dupe of NForce4 SLI (and of similar Intel chipset coming up). Exact same PCIE setup. So it's almost certain that CrossFire will run just fine on nVidia chipset SLI motherboards.

I doubt they'd do a commercial suicide to prevent it on driver side. Today ATI has 0 SLI boards out. Nvidia has a gazillion - many of which are currently running X800/X850 cards. Nforce4 was first working PCIE AMD chipset, so many bought it - even the more expensive A8N-SLI or similar from other manufacturers, because nothing else was available at the time. Then they noticed how sucky the 6800GT/Ultra drivers currently are (stuutttteeerr bug in EQ2 comes to mind) and decided to fill the board with top of the line ATI card.

Such people are the PRIME candidates for forking out extra 500$+ for a CrossFire card, and I'm quite sure that they'll want the money from these people WITHOUT forcing upon them a crappy unproven ATI chipset based motherboard.

Now I do admit that ATI has been very elusive about this in their marketing material (ahem, I mean 'exclusive previews'), but if you go over them all, nowhere it says the thing *requires* ATI chipset, and I'm quite sure that detail is missing for a very good reason - they are late to the party on the motherboard side, and their system is exactly same (two x16 slots, running at x8 mode), that doing it any other way would be just silly.