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Sneak Peek at ATi's CrossFire Graphics System

Posted by timothy on from the more-money-than-sense dept.

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."

12 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Wait and see by Radicode · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  2. Available in SGI Prism systems? by CyricZ · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.
  3. Bias? by LTC_Kilgore · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Bias? by MightyPez · · Score: 2, Informative

      At first glance that is always the conclusuon people draw. But Nvidia and ATI do different methods of anti-aliasing depending on the the level that is chosen. In Nvidia's case they use super-sampling, multi-sampling, and sometimes both. ATI uses multi-sampling only. The result is the same level of AA on each card will produce different visual results.

      This article goes into depth about the FSAA issue between ATI and Nvidia. Look at page 12 and beyond for the full poop.

    2. Re:Bias? by DeathByDuke · · Score: 2, Informative

      Why not? Cos ATi cards are more efficient at FSAA than nvidias cards. If you see all the benchmarks, ATi gets less of a hit in 4x AA compared to nvidia. In fact in some cases, you get same hit with 6x on ATi as with 4x on nvidia... they're just balancing it out.

  4. Re:CrossFire by DreadCthulhu · · Score: 4, Informative

    Trademarks only generally only valid for one sort of product, and exist to prevent consumer confusion between the makers of similar products. If two companies/people make different products, that are not likely to be confused. they can have the same name for their trademarks - for example, Apple Records and Apple Computers. But if you tried to start a computer company called "Appletastic Computers" Apple Computer could sue you and probably win. Or for a real life example, think of the Lindows case, and how that could get confused the MS Windows OS.

  5. Re:What about the price? by rpozz · · Score: 4, Informative

    Given that a single Radeon X850 XT as used in the article retails at around $450, I'd say so. $900 would go quite a long way for the rest of the computer.

  6. Re:3Dmark by softends · · Score: 2, Informative

    Both sides are notorious for cheating, but 3DMark05 benchmark is generally a good indicator of gaming performance.

  7. Re:The R520 might make this comparison meaningless by Thomas+DM · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yes, but it may still take two or more months before the R520 will be available.

    And I guess that NVIDIA will start shipping a new faster G70 chip by the time that ATI will launch its R520.

  8. Re:3Dmark by Guy+LeDouche · · Score: 2, Informative

    Why was this modded funny? It is completely true. 3DMark scores have almost no bearing on real-world game performance.

  9. Do my eyes deceive me? by Travoltus · · Score: 2, Informative

    It looks like those video cards overlap not just one, but TWO empty expansion slots that I could use for other cards!

    http://img.hexus.net/v2/features/dfi_crossfire_com putex/images/crossfire_big.jpg

    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!
  10. Re:The important thing to remember is that... by william_w_bush · · Score: 2, Informative

    not true, nvidia's solution has them creating profiles for popular games for them to function, though i believe you can sli awareness to a game to increase it's support.

    my current release has at least a hundred games, and there aren't that many popular games that need this kind of graphics firepower out there.

    --
    The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.