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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."
first post?
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
For gay men and straight women.
:)
Document history:
Jul. 10, 2005 Updated description of the taste of semen
Mar. 10, 2005 More cleanup of the section on technique
Mar. 6, 2005 Updated intro and section on technique
Apr. 23, 2004 Added information about the hormonal content of semen
Nov. 30, 2003 First version
Aug. 6, 2003 Initial rough draft
I love blow jobs. Not just receiving them but giving them. I am not typical since I am a gay man. Straight men and women generally have an aversion from dick sucking. Guys are generally afraid of their own equipment (which explains why they particularly like watching lesbian pornos among other things) and don't know how to give blowjobs since they've never given any. Females generally don't know how to suck dick and give up after one or two tries. They don't own the equipment, they don't understand the male drive, they don't know how a blow job feels, they're afraid of semen, and they don't know how penises work. In fact, while many women have experimented with dick sucking, 90% of them don't like or don't want to try sucking dick. That's unfortunate because they are missing out on a rewarding experience. Likewise, their men are missing out on a very exciting experience. Let's face it, if you want to receive not just a blowjob, but a blowjob, you probably want a guy for a partner. Unless, of course, this guide helps transfer the carnal knowledge of pleasuring a man from a gay man to the straight women out there. If not, I hope to at least transfer this knowledge to another gay man out there.
The penis is one of the most wonderful parts of the body to suck. Nothing can compare to its size, shape, texture, warmth, taste, and its response to touch. Female breasts are rather inanimate in comparison. Their only redeeming qualities are the nipples that respond to touch, but guys have nipples too, so it's not an exclusively feminine part of the body.
It is important to give yourself a weekend of privacy the first time you try to suck off a guy. You may not be able to the first time and will need extra time the next day or two to try again. If you don't give yourself a weekend, you can end up failing and then next time you will make the same mistakes again because you will not remember what you did wrong the previous time.
You probably have noticed it's much harder to masturbate while standing up. It is much more difficult to get a guy off if he's standing up, especially if you've never sucked off a guy before. Although blowjobs are stereotypically associated with a kneeling giver, in practice, that is an uncomfortable position for the receiver as he must either sit or stand. Instead, have your partner lie down on his back on a bed (or somewhere soft and flat). Get on your hands and knees in a position that allows you to get his dick in your mouth. You can have him spread his legs a little and straddle one of his legs or you can kneel between both of his legs. You could also kneel beside him. Whatever way works the best for the both of you.
Notice how the dick is not completely cylindrical, but is slightly flattened? That shape is designed to fit perfectly in the mouth. There's no way evolution could have better designed a part for sucking. Note that the most sensitive portion of the penis is the length underneath the shaft. This should clue you in on how to position yourself to suck him.
The underneath of his shaft should rest on your tongue and his penis should lie flat in your mouth. Once you take him into your mouth, try turning your head 90 degrees around his cock and you will notice that you will have to open wider to accomodate him. The wider you have open your mouth, the quicker you will tire, so make sure you align yourself for the most comfort. Likewise, your partner will enjoy it more if your tongue is in the right place.
Lick along the length of the shaft and give the tip a few licks around the ridge of the tip. Have fun.
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.
If you have to ask about the price? Then you can't afford it.
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.
I for one would never buy another ATI graphics card. I won't even consider getting an XBOX 360 because it has ATI graphics.
My friend both have different ATI cards and we both have stability problems (no overclocking, AC room). I will be in the middle of playing a game and *WHAM* GPU crash (I know it's not the game because the ATI GPU recovery agent comes up, and it happens all the time for all 3D games). Never had any problems with Nvidia.
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!
.... 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. -
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.
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
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.
Are there proper ATI drivers available for Linux yet? I will stay with nVidia until such time.
Meh.
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...
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.
I didn't know the GF7800GTX-SLI can get 11301 frames per second on 3d Mark. That's really quite impressive!