ATI Radeon X1800XT Crossfire resurfaces

ATI PROMISED its Crossfire enabled X1800 XT master cards for beginning of December and now it is finally ready to start talking about them. The cooler on the card looks the same but the card features a new master card connector. Asus A8R-MVP makes your life simple as it's very easy to make the crossfire running on it. You just need to plug two cards and by default bios sets the graphic settings to auto, it will detect two cards and run then in Crossfire. Once you turn those two cards they will be as noisy as hell, until you install the drivers for them, after that they are quiet. Every single time you boot the machines the cards will run very noisy but that's just till you get in windows, then like in some miracle it starts running very quiet. The noise is really bad but once you get the windows you are fine.

Catalyst 5.11 and later drives have support for X1800XT master card. You just need to turn it on in drivers and it will work without restart. We can finally confirm that the 1600x1200 limitation from X850 XT Crossfire edition card is gone. You can run 2048x1536 and as a matter a fact we were running these resolutions with the card.

Asus motherboard is a surprise of its own. It costs just around $100 or €100 but it works rocking stabile. It's the board that returned the confidence in a crossfire platform as we initially had too many problems to like DFI Crossfire solution. The board is based on RD480 Northbridge and ULI M1575 South Bridge and it has LAN, a lot of USB's and pretty much all that you might need.

We were told to look for this Asus motherboard as this ATI - Uli combination will solve some of the problems we had with DFI and Crossfire and it did. Sources close to ATI recommended Asus board for testing and said that we want to avoid DFI board. Asus board was bread and butter for us.

All you have to do is to plug two cards in two PCIe slots, plug your display in the card that's populating PCIe master slot and the thing works.

The master card is equipped with a new Crossfire connector but the other stuff looks like a Norman Radeon X1800 XT card. It's clocked to rather strange 594 MHz core and 1386 MHz memory and even the second card from the crossfire kit was clocked at the same speed. ATI is actually slowing down its master cards while in SLI faster card will overclock the slower one. Interesting indeed. The cards are rather noisy till you get into windows but once you are there they are quiet. We noticed that they operated at averagely 56 degrees Celsius temperature, not that clod for 90 nanometre but the cards were stabile at all times.

Benchmarketing:

We used :
ATI Radeon X1800 XT Crossfire edition
ATI Radeon X1800 XT
Club 3D X850 X850 XT master card
Power Color X850 XT PE
Asus Crossfire A8R-MPV motherboard
Dual core Athlon 64 4800+ clocked at 2400 MHz
2x1024 MB OCZ gold edition PC 4000 memory
Western Digital 8MB 160GB SATA drive
Stock Athlon 64 cooler
OCZ Power Stream 600W PSU

Catalyst 5.11 WHQL drivers

We have to say that we where delighted with the Asus motherboard. It worked well and was stabgile at all times. We tested this system versus X850 Crossfire system but this time we used Asus motherboard. You can check how that worked here. we didn't had time to include Geforce 7800 GTX 256 MB SLI scores as we focused on Geforce 7800 GTX 512 SLI system that is crushing in our vianna labs for more than two weeks now. We just can not make it work and we changed every single piece of hardware. We are working on it so there will be an update on Crossfire versus SLI shortly.

Doom 3	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI Crossfire 2x X1800XT 594/693 MHz	93.8	91.3	90.4	79.0
ATI X1800XT 594/693 MHz	94.5	89.0	76.2	50.2
ATI Crossfire 2x X850XT	91.8	87.3	80.5	N/A
Far Cry	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI Crossfire 2x X1800XT 594/693 MHz	74.78	75.71	78.10	78.22
ATI X1800XT 594/693 MHz	74.57	75.89	76.41	71.89
ATI Crossfire 2x X850XT	74.69	74.87	76.80	N/A
Half Life 2	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI Crossfire 2x X1800XT 594/693 MHz	63.71	64.53	63.53	63.00
ATI X1800XT 594/693MHz	63.26	62.56	60.62	56.43
ATI Crossfire 2 x X850XT	62.61	63.02	60.06	N/A
Quake 4	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI Crossfire 2x X1800XT 594/693 MHz	123.4	118.5	116.8	107.5
ATI X1800XT 594/693MHz	120.7	115.7	106.4	77.4
ATI Crossfire 2 x X850XT	121.3	114.7	103.0	N/A
FEAR	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI Crossfire 2x X1800XT 594/693 MHz	85	62	42	27
ATI X1800XT 594/693MHz	91	69	51	32
ATI Crossfire 2 x X850XT	68	47	32	N/A
Doom 3 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI Crossfire 2x X1800XT 594/693 MHz	92.1	88.9	82.6	64.1
ATI X1800XT 594/693MHz	87.8	74.0	56.3	36.4
ATI Crossfire 2 x X850XT	84.6	71.1	56.2	N/A
Far Cry High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI Crossfire 2x X1800XT 594/693 MHz	75.74	76.71	76.84	72.93
ATI X1800XT 594/693MHz	76.09	75.44	72.03	48.92
ATI Crossfire 2 x X850XT	75.68	75.35	73.92	N/A
Half Life 2 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI Crossfire 2x X1800XT 594/693 MHz	63.80	64.57	63.46	62.66
ATI X1800XT 594/693MHz	63.16	62.35	60.05	54.87
ATI Crossfire 2 x X850XT	62.69	62.97	61.09	N/A
Quake 4 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI Crossfire 2x X1800XT 594/693 MHz	112.3	115.7	111.3	97.1
ATI X1800XT 594/693MHz	116.3	107.4	92.0	63.7
ATI Crossfire 2 x X850XT	112.8	104.5	93.2	N/A
FEAR High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI Crossfire 2x X1800XT 594/693 MHz	66	46	31	20
ATI X1800XT 594/693MHz	70	54	39	23
ATI Crossfire 2 x X850XT	43	30	18	N/A
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	3DMark 03	Game2	Game3	Nature
ATI Crossfire 2x X1800XT 594/693 MHz	27117	237.0	177.7	184.4
ATI X1800XT 594/693MHz	16115	135.6	97.6	102.5
ATI Crossfire 2x X850XT	20503	170.0	131.9	138.5
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Vertex Shader	Pixel Shader 2.0
ATI Crossfire 2x X1800XT 594/693 MHz	8152.2	18364.2	97.8	321.4
ATI X1800XT 594/693MHz	4245.0	9290.3	58.5	184.0
ATI Crossfire X850XT	5932.3	13897.4	71.0	256.1
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	3DMark 05	Game1	Game2	Game3
ATI Crossfire 2x X1800XT 594/693 MHz	11167	40.0	30.4	73.3
ATI X1800XT 594/693MHz	8700	36.7	26.1	44.0
ATI Crossfire X850XT	10031	40.4	30.5	52.5
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Pixel Shader	VS /VS complex
ATI Crossfire 2x X1800XT 594/693 MHz	9462.3	19558.9	461.3	140.4/113.2
ATI X1800XT 594/693MHz	5006.5	9811.9	232.6	86.8/57.1
ATI Crossfire X850XT	7003.4	16515.5	296.1	127.8/97.8

As we said new X1800XT now works at 2048x1536 and we tested this resolution for your confinience. We chose to test single X1800XT card at this Crossfire speed, two X1800 XT in crossrire and two X850 XT Crossfire cards. This is what we got.

You need to get to 1600x1200 to see any difference in Doom 3. single X1800 XT card will score a four frames less than two X850 XT PE while two X1800 XT in crossfire runs 14 frames faster than a single card. Once you get to 2048x1536 you can see that Crossfire is 64 percent faster than a single card. Not bad for a newcomer.

Far Cry 1.33 is obviously CPU bounded as you can see the small difference in 2048x1536. That's about it so you are safe playing this game with a single high end card as well.

Half Life 2 is also showing CPU limitation as we could notice the difference at 2048x1536 only. It's not that drastic but will run 6.5 FPS frames with two cards.

Single X1800 XT is faster than two X850 XT cards in Crossfire in Quake 4. its very tight but its faster but you can see that single X1800XT is running 38 percent faster in Crossfire.

We noticed that Crossfire had some performance issues with 5.11 driver and 5.12 was not available in press time. Two cards are actually slower than a single X1800 XT and that doesn't make much sense. I hope that 5.12 is fixing it but we will let you know. X1800 XT is dramatically faster than two X850 XT cards at 1600x1200 its 63 percent faster.

This system is actually meant for FSAA and Anisotropic use and that's what we did in follow up testing. X1800 XT performance in doom 3 is little bit faster than two X850 Crossfire cards, but once you put two X1800 XT in Crossfire you get some sky high scores. At 2048x1536 Crossfire is 76 percent faster. Even at lower resolution Crossfire is blowing a single card performance.

Far Cry 1.33 and Half Life 2 with 4X FSAA and 8 X Aniso sure makes the difference but just at highest 2048x1536 resolution. Far Cry is 49 percent faster with these settings on while Half life 2 is 14 percent faster.

Quake 4 likes FSAA and Ainso on and single X1800 XT card and two X850 XT are matched at first three resolutions. The Crossfire X1800 XT is the sure winner as its running faster then a single X1800 XT and two X850 XT cards and at 16x12 its 20 percent faster while at 2048x1536 its 52 percent faster.

Fear with FSAA and Aniso on is showing some weird scores where two X1800 XT cards in crossfire are slower than a single X1800XT. It has to be the driver issue.

As expected Radeon X1800 XT Crossfire edition in crossfire is the king of 3Dmark tests. 3Dmark03 will reach 27117 marks and will beat two X850 XT cards by 6500 makes. Nature test shows that two cards are 79 percent faster than a single one. Two X1800XT cards are just blowing this test away.

With an X1800 XT Crossfire 3Dmark05 will reach 11167 marks some 1100 marks more than two X850 cards. Again game 3 is significantly faster on Crossfire than on a single card buy you can see that you need a faster CPU to spot the difference.

In vertex Shader test X1800 XT Crossfire is astonishing 98 percent faster than a single card. This is the most that you can get from it.

Conclusion
Crossfire came a long way X1800 XT Crossfire edition solved some limitations of X850 Crossfire systems and can run at even 2048x1536. It's the way it should be able to run. Its easy to use, it gets you some nice features such as 14 X FSAA if you care that much and it runs stabile and reliable. It had some problems with FEAR but I guess that ATI either fixed it or is working on it. We will compare those numbers with 7800 GTX 256 on Nforce 4 SLI platform shortly and if we make two 7800 GTX 512 running we will show you those numbers as well.

Overall if you like ATI, want two cards in your system and don't want SLI, this should be a great opportunity for you. It works well but you definitely want to turn FSAA and Anisotropic filtering on to get some decent performance difference.

X1800 XT Crossfire cards should be on sale on the 19th of December but some OEM systems are already being shipped with this card inside. Charlie told you all about it here. The Suggested retail price for X1800 XT Crossfire edition is $599.

Thanks to the kind lady in AMD we finally manage to get a FX 57 CPU and we run some numbers and manage to score around 12900 in 3Dmark05 so those cards can run even faster when you get the fastest gaming CPU available. It's a perfect combination but dual core Athlon X2 4800+ will do its job well.

We can recommend Crossfire to all the people that want ATI and two cards but we have to say that the performance and features are very close to Nvidia's Geforce 7800 GTX 256 cards at default speeds while the faster clock cards should be beating Crossfire. 7800 GTX 512 could be even faster but we don't know it as it won't run with us. You should also be aware that R580 Crossfire rigs are not far away and we are now talking about weeks rather than months. µ