- Saturday, 14 November 2009
- INQ Mobile
- RSS
Loyal employee that [Paul] Engel was... - Tim Jackson, Inside Intel page 130
X marks the spot for Crossfire
AS NVIDIA prepares its three-way, ATI is gearing up to go head to head with its own new Crossfire iteration.
Crossfire X, for thus has it been dubbed, allows for up to four cards to be used in tandem, although that's really theoretical rather than practical. Like Nvidia, Crossfire X will come designed for three cards, which ATI says will give a 2.6x performance boost (assuming fair sailing conditions, a following wind, etc).
The logo has been leaked, and it is here. It's pretty boring really.
Crossfire X is due to roll out along with R670 next month and will be a spoiler for SLIII. Or is that the other way around?
Now call me a cynical old INQ haq, but two-way multi-GPU support in games these days is flakey at best, especially under Vista. Shouldn't these boys be focusing on making their two-way tech work properly before stretching themselves further? ยต
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
As commented in your article: "Shouldn't these boys be focusing on making their two-way tech work properly before stretching themselves further?"

I think that although it will take a small initial extra work to get the tri solutions to work, assuming they design the drivers for work in a multi configuration (ie. 3, 4...) the drivers should also take into consideration the dual case as well.

This is my theory anyway...
Very few modern games (MOH Airborne for example) exhibit performance gains from Sli, the days of the 80% performance boast is gone. The best use of my SLi'd graphics i have is to run two monitors and my TV in extended desktop mode and unless you want to run 6 or 8 monitors from one computer and/or boast that you computer is so good it has a spare graphics card or two i can't see any point in triple or quad SLi/X-fire
"Shouldn't these boys be focusing on making their two-way tech work properly before stretching themselves further?"

That would be a big, YES. Why has no one stated what SLI and xfire really are, which is nothing short of a big joke?
"Shouldn't these boys be focusing on making their two-way tech work properly before stretching themselves further?" 

Yes they should, they should also make Crossfire/SLI motherboard independant. If they can do it for the HP Blackbird 002 why not the rest of us?
Where on Earth did you see an 80% performance with SLI ?
You're lucky if you get 40%, the average looks more like 20% - if you're not into -5%.
I have never seen a benchmark that gives an 80% boost to SLI - unless you're looking at a black wall, that is.
Each Version of crossfire adds pecularities. Mine is 690X X is Micro with only one 16x, Yet CROSSFIRE was added by mfg. to enable 
dx10 in any recent Game Card i.e.9.0c.

I used all sorts & each mix is Unique, with v3100 being better than some others, I watch as others score soar, yet for $$, this is ULTIMATE Value & Plays everything it can, gb or more size games & simulations.So crossfire is more than Add em up, It enhances entire media system.Remember theres about 200 million tranistors in CROSSFIRE, its not just smoke & Mirrors.

On 590 mainboards I found CROSSFIRE did add to even non standard mixes, even ati & nvidia side by side, thru route of adding software support interleaved, with several attempts. SO ITS NO JOSH, ITS JUST NEW & COMPLEX.

Signed:thomasxstewart
The new Crossfire X driver are suppose to work for 2 dual GPU graphic cards (each card with 2 GPU on board), we will see more dual GPU products in future.