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Sneak Peek at ATi's CrossFire Graphics System
Kez writes "While at Computex in Taipei HEXUS.net grabbed some benchmarks of an ATi CrossFire powered system. They have since had the chance to reconstruct a similar system and perform the same benchmarks with other cards and configurations to give us an idea of how CrossFire will perform. Obviously, CrossFire's performance will almost certainly change before release time, but in the very least the article provides an idea of what to expect. Interestingly, from these tests it looks like Nvidia's SLI may remain top-dog for graphics performance."
I though crossfire was a trademark of chrysler. Or... Don't they have a patent on Crossfire.. If not I should get one.
What does your Credit Report look like?
Will it cost more than the computer alone?
Hosting 20G hd, 1Tb bw! ssh $7.95
It would be interesting to compare diagrams of the architectures that SLI/Crossfire use to see why one would be better than the other.
Honesty may be the best policy, but by process of elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
That motherboard they used for testing looks like a monster! 8 sata connectors... I don't want to think about the noise produced by 8 HDs spinning.
Anyway, as with any ATI products... it's better to wait for the final before declaring it a winner or a loser. I tested many beta revisions of their TV wonder USB2 and I saw the performances change with every release, sometimes good, sometimes bad.
-Radicode
Are these cards compatible with SGI Prism systems? The current SGI Prism systems appear to include a ATI FireGL card.
http://www.sgi.com/products/visualization/prism/
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
In the last test (3DMark05 - 1280x1024 4xAA 16xAF), they are running the Nvidia cards at 4x Anti-Aliasing, while the ATI cards are running at 6x.
Unfortunately, ATI can't seem to actually deliver on time or in any reasonable quantity.
Further, NVIDIA drivers are (still) quite unstable (on linux at least) with just one video card, and i was told that ATI drivers are even worse. I can't even imagine how often they will crash on a SLI/Crossfire system...
Wondering why i am doing so strange posts? I am trying to get a "+5,Flamebait" or "-1,Insightful" rating.
They tested it on 3Dmark... that's totally irrelevant to anyone looking to buy the card; Nvidia are notorious for optimising their drivers for synthetic benchmarks, meaning Nvidia cards almost always perform much better in tests like 3D mark, but when you get the cards into a game anything can happen.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
Dont worry by the time it hits the market the name will be changed to Foxfire... er... um... no Crossfox thats it and the logo will be a cross dressing fox. I can't wait can you?
If the predictions are accurate, these tests will be meaningless when the R520 based card from ATI is released. The comparison that matters in the uber-high end will be the 7800GTX in SLI vs. R520 in Crossfire.
When will cards be able to show as many polygons as in a current CG movie scene ?
When ATI first announced their CrossFire solution, hyping about the fact you could use older cards with newer generations for improved performance, I thought this was a great idea. Spending $500+ for a video card today, only to have it replaced a year or two later is kind of a waste, but if it still could be used to contribute to improved gaming performance, then I could see spending the money.
Then details about CrossFire came out. It requires using only CURRENT generation ATI cards, the X850 and X800, a very expensive CrossFire generation video card AND the fact you need a CrossFire compatible motherboard, of which, currently only ATI makes a chipset for. All this adds up to an expensive system, and not very practical.
If the benchmarks and real-time performance of a CrossFire platform shows significant gains in performance, then it may be worth it to get a system that meets ALL these conditions, but as of yet, nothing suggests that this kind of system offers anything better then what is available today.
With nVidia's SLI, sure you need 2 expensive and matching cards to work, but that is it, you don't need any specialized motherboards. I think this will be CrossFire's major downfall, the requirement for specialized hardware, especially if VIA decides not to make their own CrossFire compatible chipset.
Time will tell if CrossFire lives up to the hype, but I think that ANY dual card configuration is only a gimmick that won't last, like 3DFX original SLI hardware. It seems like next-generation video cards are already boasting the capability to out perform current generation dual card systems, with only ONE GPU. Wasting $1000+ to get a dual system today to find out a $500 video card 6 months from now outperforms it would be quite dissapointing.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
And for any serious Linux user, it gets VERY hard to justify using an ATI card due to their drivers. I've had my share of ATIs: Rage Pros (wooo!), 9700 Pro, 9800XT etc. My best years were with my Geforce 256 DDR and now my 6600 GT. Long live nvidia!
Jesus H. Christ you are a humongous fucking retard. Have you even considered that perhaps there's a setting you have adjusted which could cause the problem? What about your shitty motherboard? Don't forget about driver updates, OS patches, motherboard firmware updates, and about 15 GAZILLION OTHER FUCKING REASONS WHY IT MIGHT CRASH YOU COMPLETE FUCKING MORON!
This is the ATi card you got off eBay from a shifty-looking guy to stick in your homebrew system you made from parts rescued from beneath the cat, put together while eating a PB&J for lunch?
:P
After the fan on my nVidia GeForce 4400 started balking (not that big a deal), I removed all the nVidia drivers and slapped in an ATi 9800 Pro w/128MB. The most trouble I've ever had is the occasional bad texture on the newest games, something that has always been promptly remedied by a new Catalyst release. Yes, ATi's Achille's Heel has always been their drivers, but they are now quite good, at least for Windows.
nVidia was trying to pull an Intel on us back before ATi knocked nVidia's socks off with the 9700. ATi's hardware has been generally superior to nVidia's, but until the 9700, had always been crippled by crappy drivers.
As for me, with my GeForce4, I always had to keep an array of driver versions around so that I could reinstall specific versions to work with specific games. A hassle, yes, but I'm an "enthusiast". Now, I'm currently keeping known-good ATi drivers around, but have never yet had to install an old release to be able to play an older game without corrupted graphics, etc.
Each company makes good cards. Let's keep them both in business so the trend continues.
I have a nvidia 6600GT AGP that's already been replaced once but still suffers from dramatic heat problems and crashing at stock speeds - ATI doesn't hava a monopoly on problems
.... Like two months ago?
2
Here's benchmarks from a real journal here: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=243
HJ
In the future, the general purpose CPU may be in a card, and the graphics component may be the motherboard consisting of multiple GPUs.
.. the motherboard, cpu, and RAM came in TOTAL under 400 .. but the graphics card was around $450. If you draw a conceptual diagram showing the size/area of the components as representative of cost .. the graphics card is much larger than the motherboard.
.. imagine a noisy refrigerator on top of the thing. Strangely enough the refrigerator / cooling unit may cost more than the wafer.
From a financial logic standpoint, it is already that way today for the computer gamer teens want.
Example, a recently built computer for my cousin
In the future, an entire silicon wafer may be a mutiple core (polycore?) CPU or GPU with hundreds or thousands of processors or functionality cores working in parallel. In fact the "cores" may not all be identical. Some may specialize in certain functionality such as physics, stream decompression.
The cooling requirements may end up being immense though
One thing that always amazes me is that they always go by the fastest, not the one that gives the most persistant frame-rates.
lets say that,
nVidia renders: 59FPS, 48FPS, 60FPS, 63FPS
ATi renders: 59FPS, 57FPS, 60FPS, 61FPS
for a scene, rendering each as the creator inteneded - I'd rather pick the ATi.
nVidia's solution requires changes to your game's codebase and build in order to function. AFAIK, ATI's solution will work on ANY game old or new with zero changes. That's a huge advantage.
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They reviewed the technology behind CrossFire a month or so ago.
From what I saw, I think CrossFire is going to be better - it might have a little less performance then the nVidia SLI but it seems like it will be a LOT more compatible with existing and new games.
AND, you don't have to match boards. So, you can have an X850 from Company A, use it for a year, then get the Crossfire from Company B - slap it in and you're good to go. No compatibility issues.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
MOD PARENT UP.
Chirst, how much alchohol did you mother need to consume during a pregnancy to make you come up with the logic that "I've had problems with it once so everything they make sucks" (the xbox comment makes this one so much worse). I mean, talk about fuckin logic and perspective up the ass.
For those women who don't like to swallow, a bead of crazy glue around your dick will solve that problem. Ofcourse when you go into work the next day you'll have this chick swinging from your dick.
It looks like those video cards overlap not just one, but TWO empty expansion slots that I could use for other cards!
m putex/images/crossfire_big.jpg
http://img.hexus.net/v2/features/dfi_crossfire_co
This is why I have avoided upgrading to these new generation of cards... I have the lowly 6600 now and that's going to be it, perhaps. I don't like onboard sound (I prefer my Audigy 2, especially for Linux), thank God for the on board USB, FireWire and NIC though; I have a video capture card and a SCSI card for legacy stuff, and there'd be no room for these two cards in any PCI-E system I'd upgrade to... they all come with fewer slots now.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
my luck with ATI has been pretty bad, i have installed 3 cards, all of them different models, always having driver problems, and crashes, with nvidia i had 4 with no problems on any of them, but maybe thats just me..
i've had a number of Nvidia cards (TNT, GF2, GF3ti200) then I decided to try ATI got a Saphire 9500 had some driver difficulties and video corruption on boot up sometimes. I got a 9600AIW PRO, and it was pretty good except the guide plus software ati supplies with it SUCKS and MMC likes to look up the whole computer by crashing now and again. after about 11mos the AIW 's TV tuner apparently decided to die on me, so I had to RMA it... ATI got me a replacement pretty quickly. but it was a pain). I got a 6800GT awhile ago... and MAN what a great card I really like it. the fan on my gf3ti200 (which is in my DC died a little while ago.. but it was like 3? years old. I got a little Vantec replacement GPU cooler and was good to go. but since both of the two ATI cards I have bought have caused difficulties to some extent I'm reluctant to buy ATI again.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
ATI had really, really bad hardware until the 8500 (RAGE anyone?) and crappy, crappy drivers until the 9700. When ATI bought ArtX the team that designed the gamecube they went on to use that architecture in the 9700 which was the first time ATI had anything on nVidia. Even now ATI's driver's are their biggest weakpoint. Why does their control panel load up the .net CLI and have it consume hundred's of megabytes of virtual memory and system memory on my system? Their old control panel was fine.
I've seen this problem before and it turned out a bad stick of ram was causing the random videocard lockups. Took me forever and a couple different cards to figure this out. Try running a memory test or pulling out and swapping DIMs to see if this improves the problem.
Bad RAM seems to cause lots of computer problems in various other components.
The openGL drivers in the Direct Rendering Infrastructure for ATI hardware is quite mature for R250 (Radeon 8500, 9000, 9100) graphics accelerators. Of'course, the driver development was by Tungsten Graphics (makers of PDAs) for a huge graphics rendering system used by The Weather Channel. The drivers are GPL, and they are the best support next to Matrox graphics accelerators. If you want a stable graphics solution, then that is a better choice. If you want all the unnecessary framerate beyond 30 in Doom3, then that is what bleeding-edge hardware is built to accomplish with closed-source drivers. I only try to support all hardware companies that opensource their technical specifications, drivers, protocols, hardware, and intellectual property. XGI is beginning to opensource its information to be a better contender in this arena I described, and their hardware is affordable. There is more than just ATI and nVidia though. My next hardware may be from XGI, and they build closed-source DRI drivers (IIRC).
without prejudice
You can still download the latest drivers with the old control panel.
I'm currently using an ATI 9500 (and have been for the past two years)... I haven't had any problems with it at all.
I have a nvidia 6600GT AGP that's already been replaced once but still suffers from dramatic heat problems and crashing at stock speeds - ATI doesn't hava a monopoly on problems
Believe it or not, before a graphics card is released, it's tested to make sure it won't overheat. It sounds like that in the process of making your 'uber-quiet rig' you have neglected to cool it properly. Graphics cards only overheat when either their fans fail, or the computer has been built by a retard.
No, I run all up to date drivers and firmware. I've used the card in multiple motherboards, 1 with a via chipset, the other with an nvidia chipset, both with the same result. They make shit drivers.
Your post shows your incredible debate skills, arguments based on assumptions. You make an assumption then you call me a moron?
Not that it's any of your business, but I am a certified PC technician by trade, I know enough about what I'm doing to know that the card is the problem.
I appreciate your comment, and that you used a civilised tone when posting, believe me, before i use any system I build I run CPU stress tests (to ensure adequate cooling) and memory tests. The system was tip top until i put the ati card in it.
Is it so much to ask that a $200 (at time of purchase) graphics card not crash on a regular basis? At first i thought it was likely a driver issue and would be corrected with updates. After a few driver versions it became clear that either it was a software issure but ATI couldn't be bothered to fix it or it was a hardware issue.
For anyone who cares its a 9600 XT.
and for anyone who says thats not a good reason to hate ATI products ask yourself this, if you bought a car that stalled out randomly as soon as it got up to speed on the highway would you buy another car from that company?
The NVidia 7800 comes from their next generation G70 line of chips...X850 is not ATI's new generation of GPU's (the codenamed r520 line) so the comparisons are not exactly fair either.
It never ceases to amaze me that nvidia driver bugs get forgotten or ignored so quickly. I still remember a couple years back having to disable the nview extensions on a GF4 - it would hard freeze this Win98 system when enabled with the then-latest drivers. Reinstalled winders? Same thing again. I remember the bugs and problems that showed up with this or that Detonator release back when. Yet all I ever hear from anyone is "I use nvidia, and nobody has ever had a driver problem with them EVAR!" but the second someone posts about a problem and there's an ATI card anywhere near the system, everyone's all "OMG TEH ATI BUGS!"
/. story to post about how ATI is the devil, their drivers are "useless," how I'm never buying another ATI card again, or any other King of Pain crap. I dealt with it, same as with the nvidia bugs that have hit me.
I've got a 9800 right now in this box (the other one's running a GF4 - MOSTLY bugfree, but rarely used intensively) and apart from a linux UT2004 performance bug (i.e. skipping) on very large maps that was resolved some time ago, the only bug I had was on this latest driver. I saw "New in this release: Added support for 2.6.11 kernel". I decided to try the new 2.6.11 kernel. I set it all up, booted icewm, checked UT2004 and was happy to see some framerate improvements for the third straight release, and after about 30 minutes of testing this-and-that I logged out. Upon logging in to my full Gnome desktop, one of the funky gkrellm extensions I like to run began to load, and this combined with 2.6.11 and the 8.14.13 drivers caused X to freeze. OH NOES! So I switched back to the 2.6.10 kernel, and have had no problems since. I figure, hey, the 2.6.11 support was newly added, and there's a small corner-case bug with it, it will be ironed out later. At no point did I feel compelled to rush off to some usenet group, forum, or
I'm sure someone will pop up with their ATI horror story now. Feel free to insert wailing and gnashing of teeth if it makes you feel better.
I for one would never buy another ATI graphics card. I won't even consider getting an XBOX 360 because it has ATI graphics.
And everyone in the world should just assume all other aspects of your system were perfect and you are the best hardware technician in the world, so therefore it HAS to be the fault of the ATI boards.
Come on... Nobody is that silly.
We have tons of both ATI and NVidia cards in our desktops and laptops here. The infrequent problems we have are not all ATI or all NVidia.
Both companies produce some really great products and it is good that they both exist to keep the other one on the cutting edge.
Even at home I have a 9800 Pro in my Theater system, never a hiccup or a problem, from SWG, Matrix Online, Doom3, Halo, FarCry, or any weird video codec I have thrown at it.
And again on my laptop, GeforceFX 6800 Ultra, not a single glitch, and it obviously is faster than the ATI card by 2 to 3 fold, but at the time the 9800 was a better bang for the buck.
I get so tired of people with their proverbially lemon stories, and how that is how EVERY thing from a single company is bad.
ATI and NVidia BOTH have had great and donkey Cards. ATI Donkeys range from the 7000-8000 Radeon series, and NVidia Donkeys range from their 5200-5600 series for example.
I'm sorry you had problem with your ATI card, but it could be other things than just the video card, and even if it was, what brand did you buy, as both company farm out the chipsets to Manufactures that over clock and do some weird crap to the boards. Even the same ATI or NVidia chipset from manufacturer to manufacture can be a major difference.
Also with regard the XBox 360, it is going to havepretty tight hardware integration, random component problems would not be a problem.
Take Care,
The Net Avenger
Are there proper ATI drivers available for Linux yet? I will stay with nVidia until such time.
Meh.
Before you write off ATI for good, check your hardware configuration and consult hardware forums, particularly forums for your mobo and/or chipset. You will probably find other people with similar problems who can help or at least diagnose the hardware incompatibility problems.
In my case, since the ATI card runs perfectly with the nForce2 chipset, I think the problem is with VIA, not ATI.
Anyway, ATI is not as bad as you may think (unless you run linux, which is a completely different issue...).
I used to love ATI cards.. the only problems I had were some minor settling in issues with my motherboard, 9700 Pro and XP being incompatible, but that was fixed with a simple BIOS settings change.
l
I was satisfied.
Until I installed linux. Now I have a choice
* Use old versions of X.org and the kernel that are actually reasonably stable with fglrx and put up with 6x slower (benchmarked) 2d performance, coupled with lots of features not working properly.
* Use the opensource drivers and get no 3d accel.
I opted for opensource. They're not the most stable drivers, but they are far more stable than the fglrx ones. If I need 3d, I start another X server with a different config. Thank god I'm not one of the people affected by the fglrx crash when running multiple X servers.
I'd switch to nvidia if it wasn't a laptop.
nVidia's drivers aren't the shit, but they're better than ATI's.
This is coming from a previous die-hard ATI fan, but I'm not the only one who feels this way...
http://www.petitiononline.com/atipet/petition.htm
Very nice when running under XP though (except for when my ATI control panel fails to load and i have to reinstall the drivers, but that has stopped happening recently).
something doesnt seem right with the benches, anyone notice how they test the Nvidias with 4xAA and they test the ATI with 6x in one of the bench graphs? im wondering if ATI would have surpassed Nvidia if it were a level playing ground.
Also i think its odd that they put on single nvidia cards, but not the single ATI cards...
idk the way they organize the info is more or less confusing and seems uncomplete or uneven, maybe its just me...
Mike
I heart the RIAA & MPAA, im sure its mutual...
The 6600GT needs both a certain level of power and really needs a base level of cooling in the AGP design or it crashes.
When I first got my 6600GT, it would lock up on starting a game. What I had to do was 1) move one of my PCI cards down so the fan on the card was not pressed up against that card, and 2) put in a stronger case fan. I also put in a system blower right under the card, but I don't really know if it's making any difference.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
I find these claims to have no base in reality. You guys are on crack or something.
...) without any major issues either.
I've had well over a dozen ATI cards, and yet have to have any kind of problem with them. I've owned lots of other brands too (trident, matrox,
I've bought a high end GeForce 4 Ti with VIVO a while back, paid a lot of $ for it (at least twice as much as I've ever paid for a video card), and let's put it that way: it's my last nvidia based video card. Lots of issues with it: yelllow ghosting while playing videos, videos playing on the 2nd monitor won't show anything past about half of the screen, lots of drivers forced you to reboot to change primary display (TV monitor; yes, 2 monitors and a TV on it), the TV output is pretty much unusable even with TVTool (looks close to old "scrambled" cable paytv), crashes, all kind of stuff, it's crazy the amount of issues I've had with it.
After seeing all these kids whining about how ATI drivers suck, I figured they'd want to get rid of their cards too, so I offered them a switch from their AIW's to my GeForce (which cost more back then), and none of them would switch... Tells a lot.
Also, my work laptop has nvidia video in it (couldn't sell me one with that inside it), and funnily enough the ONLY drivers that work on it are the outdated ones off Toshiba's website. NONE of the others (beta, WHQL, certified for laptops, 3rd party - you name it) work with it, I get this large black band on the right hand side of the screen (video is squished). It's got a composite video output too, but it flickers so much it's laughable (TVTool can't make it watcheable either). One of my few criterias for buying my home laptop was that: no nvidia video inside - I'd take ANYTHING else, and it works great...
nvidia may have made some decent AMD motherboard chipsets lately, but video card wise, it's complete garbage.
For anyone who cares its a 9600 XT.
I'm using a 9600XT card in one of my boxes as well. Mine's been fine so far, and it was a cheapie (OEM Sapphire) so I'm pretty happy with it. Maybe you got a dud card.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I didn't know the GF7800GTX-SLI can get 11301 frames per second on 3d Mark. That's really quite impressive!