R600 is ATI's first cable-less Crossfire

WE HEAR that the upcoming DirectX 10 compatible R600 won't need a master card to work in Crossfire.

ATI will implement this bridge in its upcoming RV570 and RV560 chips and will enable more than one chip on a PCB configuration. But it won't be until R600 that this cable-less Crossfire comes into action.

R580+ will be the slight redesign of the existing R580, so don't expect miracles here. You will still need a master card and a cable to plug them together.

ATI can already put two X1800 GTO cards in Crossfire and it doesn't need a master card, but the bandwidth between those two cards is not that big. Therefore two slave cards will work and will do the job, we tried it here in the lab and it works.

The master card is the last problem that ATI has to solve to be competitive with Nvidia's SLI. ATI's entry-level Crossfire works without a master, and its mainstream card works without a master. The firm just needs a high-end offering and it's sorted. Getting there slowly but surely. µ