Caught napping, ATI bites back in multi-card battle

A YEAR AGO, when Nvidia decided to re-introduce the well-known Voodoo marchitecture branded as SLI, rival ATI was really sceptical about it. As it happens, Nvidia really caught ATI off guard, as the red team didn't have a marchitecture to match Nvidia's double-barrelled SLI at that time. ATI had to act fast and to come up with an answer as soon as possible. That's how Crossfire was born.

SLI certainly had its bad moments but, in time Nvidia managed to make it quite stable and reliable. From the day it was announced, ATI has been playing catch-up and doing its best to make the most of Crossfire.

It is rather bizarre, that as soon as ATI reaches an acceptable performance and quality level with two cards in Crossfire, Nvidia launches Quad SLI. We know it is a gimmick, but with four cards in a reviewer's PC it will certainly win all the high-end benchmarks.

But now, with two chips branded as a single Geforce 7950 GX2 graphic card at $/€599 price, Nvidia does actually have a decent chance of getting wider adoption.

Nvidia is delaying its Quad SLI capable 7950 GX 2 cards for a week or two but the cards are real, the big green firm just wants to make it better. Eventually it will be out and pegged at a very aggressive price which will again leave ATI's Crossfire in the dust.

ATI is still not ready for four cards in Crossfire and by the time it manages to catch up Nvidia will launch something new.

ATI did come up with decent driver support and its Crossfire on X1300 and X1600 cards, where you don't need the master card, is a step forward. The firm is really catching up and still has a chance in this scrap.

X1800 and X1900 Crossfire where you do need master card is slowly gaining ground. We have to admit it works well, gives you performance and is a decent competitor to SLI.

Unfortunately for ATI, Nvidia is now talks about four cards working together in quad SLI and it actually shipped a few hundred of those systems to consumers already.

We know it's crazy, unnecessary and expensive but it is still good enough to claim the performance crown. That is the way Nvidia will play on this one. The firm taught us all that there is simply no price limit for the ultra high-end. There's a stratum that will pay whatever you ask, around two to three percent of the total market - or less. µ