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ATI X1800 CrossFire Cards Reviewed
AnInkle writes "ATI finally joins the Christmas party. If money is (virtually) no object and high-end 3D animation is part of your game, you'll want to check out The Tech Report's review of the ATI X1800 CrossFire card before spending your green on the green team. From the review: 'This new CrossFire card also sweeps away some of the limitations of the first-generation CrossFire hardware introduced just a couple of months ago, allowing mega-high-res gaming.' Further, if the latest rumors about the 7800GTX 512MB are true, it would mean that this CrossFire graphics subsystem would arguably stand alone at the top of the graphics benchmarking mountain."
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=3668
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Conclusions
A Radeon X1800 XT CrossFire rig is mighty fast. Also, it's six degrees Fahrenheit outside right now at my place, and I've enjoyed the room-warming benefits of CrossFire and SLI systems throughout the preparation of this review. My mind boggles, though, when I try to consider the value proposition of plunking down $1200 for a pair of graphics cards and roughly $200 more for the motherboard. Could a pair of Radeon X1800 XT cards in CrossFire be a better deal than two GeForce 7800 GTX 512s in SLI?
Yeah, I suppose so, especially with GTX 512 prices currently in low-altitude orbit. I do have my reservations about CrossFire, including the hassle of dealing with external dongles and the iffy I/O performance of CrossFire motherboards that use ATI's SB450 south bridge. Still, CrossFire performance generally scales well enough from one card to two, and I said in my initial CrossFire review that the long-term success of this solution would hinge on the quality of ATI's new GPUs. Turns out that the Radeon X1800 XT is a very desirable graphics card that matches the GeForce 7800 GTX feature for feature and adds a few new wrinkles of its own, including finer threading granularity for Shader Model 3.0 and the ability to do antialiasing with high-dynamic-range rendering. The Radeon X1800 XT trails the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 in overall performance, but Radeon X1800 CrossFire may hit the streets at prices as much as $150 lower per card than the 7800 GTX 512. (Radeon X1800 XTs are already widely available at $599 or less.) In the rarefied air of big-money graphics subsystems, that potential $300 price difference--if indeed it develops--could make a Radeon X1800 XT CrossFire system a, uh, er, uhm, solid value.
Yeah, I said it.
It's bitchin' fast, at any rate.
Don't go buying a Radeon X1800 XL card, however, expecting to add a Radeon X1800 CrossFire card later if you care at all about value. Dropping a $599 CrossFire card into your system and lopping off half of its RAM and much of its performance potential isn't the brightest of moves. That solution sacrificies too much, in my view. You can get a dual-graphics solution involving a Radeon X1800 XL, but it's far from optimal. Perhaps in the future, if prices drop dramatically on the Radeon X1800 CrossFire Edition cards, teaming one up with an XL could make some sense. That seems like a shaky prospect to me, though.
How would an improved Nvidia 7800 leave ATI at the top??? Unless I'm mistaken (and I'm not) more RAM is better for a GPU, making the 7800 with 512MB insane. The only way this works out is if the GTX is the lower end 7800, but even then it's impressive to have 512.
I am Spartacus
you can already get high end GPUs, since ATI and Nvidia supply GPUs for Macs. Now that the high end Macs have PCI-e, they can use the same 7800s or Quadros a PC can. Their the graphics platform, so not releasing a high end card for OS X is unwise.
I am Spartacus
No, it doesn't work great.
;(
ATI's drivers are painfully unstable, there are lots of ways to hardlock a linux system with ATI's buggy shit drivers. An easy one is to use xinerama and kdm, at least from my experience. A whole lot of features of standard X11 drivers are missing (Composite, for example) and the performance is still a good 30% slower then it is on windows. The regular unaccelerated drivers from Xorg are way faster for regular 2d rendering and support all the usual features.
You call that great? Its fuckin not. ATI's linux support is -improving slowly-, but it is improving. But there is no way its great, or even good. Or even mediocre. It sucks. Binary drivers *SUCK ASS*, and I hate having to put up with them for 3D acceleration
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
My friend that works at ATI was able to view this card in action at the labs and the demos were amazing but he told me ATI continues to lack in the driver department. He informed me that there is about 1 floor working on drivers which is about 60 people and they have not been up to par with the hardware that they seem to be producing. Hes gotten his hands on a couple of their video cards for testing and many of them have crashed his computer forcing him to format/reinstall his operating system. IMHO, I think that ATI should really look into improving their driver support.
GL HF!
I suppose that's the reason that ATI has been actively involved in contributing developer time and source code the DRI X extension project since it started? And NVidia has done *what* exactly with DRI now? Seriously, if you want your platform to simply be a free version of windows with the same limitations and lack of support given by closed source proprietary drivers, be my guest. I for one will be sticking with ATI, and enjoying the fact that my acceleration architecture isn't just a clumsy libGL hack.
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
If you skip down to the section on motherboards, they show that SLI isn't even remotely worth it.
Please help metamoderate.
Holy crap, batman, any of these SLI/Crossfire modes will need quite a robust power supply. Even at idle in those configurations they'll pull about 150W, but when in max use can draw over 400W of power! I guess playing high-end games these days also comes with a big hit to your electric bill. Cripes! People might need to get a second job just to play games.
today is spelling optional day.