ATI has been particularly quiet regarding CrossFire since their launch at Computex back in June. I assumed that we wouldn't see CrossFire boards and cards until August or September at the earliest, and it's really starting to look like that's going to be the case. But I'm not here to talk about CrossFire availability, I'm here to talk about performance.
There have been a number of CrossFire previews published all over the net, including our benchmarks from Computex. But what truly caught my attention was the tests over at HKEPC that showed two X700 cards working in CrossFire mode with nothing more than a simple BIOS update, no master card needed.
Something about that just didn't make much sense; ATI went through all the trouble to stick a compositing chip on these CrossFire master cards, and all you really need is the BIOS from a master card? So we did some digging and Wesley actually discovered the truth behind current CrossFire performance.
ATI distributed a special driver to their partners prior to the Computex launch that was designed to simulate CrossFire performance, by only rendering odd frames (effectively doubling the frame rate and simulating AFR performance). Although we can't confirm that we also ran with this driver back at Computex, chances are we probably did. But more importantly, the reviews you've seen where a pair of slave cards are used aren't actually testing CrossFire, they are simply simulating the performance of CrossFire by rendering half the frames.
We have learned however that the performance of this special driver is actually virtually identical to AFR performance with CrossFire actually working, but it is important to understand that when CrossFire is eventually released - you won't be able to just flash the BIOS on a slave card and have it work as a master card. And obviously, you won't be able to use just any cards in CrossFire mode, you'll have to stick with a X850 or X800 master card.
Although I have yet to see final benchmarks, my guess right now is that ATI needs to actually release CrossFire when they've shipped R520 boards. Had NVIDIA not launched G70 it wouldn't have been as big of an issue, but with a single G70 basically equal in performance to a pair of 6800 Ultras, ATI isn't winning any brownie points by competing with yesterday's GPUs. I think a launch/shipping announcement of R520 and CrossFire either sequentially or simultaneously would put ATI's best foot forward, as CrossFire has lost a bit of its steam by this point.
There have been a number of CrossFire previews published all over the net, including our benchmarks from Computex. But what truly caught my attention was the tests over at HKEPC that showed two X700 cards working in CrossFire mode with nothing more than a simple BIOS update, no master card needed.
Something about that just didn't make much sense; ATI went through all the trouble to stick a compositing chip on these CrossFire master cards, and all you really need is the BIOS from a master card? So we did some digging and Wesley actually discovered the truth behind current CrossFire performance.
ATI distributed a special driver to their partners prior to the Computex launch that was designed to simulate CrossFire performance, by only rendering odd frames (effectively doubling the frame rate and simulating AFR performance). Although we can't confirm that we also ran with this driver back at Computex, chances are we probably did. But more importantly, the reviews you've seen where a pair of slave cards are used aren't actually testing CrossFire, they are simply simulating the performance of CrossFire by rendering half the frames.
We have learned however that the performance of this special driver is actually virtually identical to AFR performance with CrossFire actually working, but it is important to understand that when CrossFire is eventually released - you won't be able to just flash the BIOS on a slave card and have it work as a master card. And obviously, you won't be able to use just any cards in CrossFire mode, you'll have to stick with a X850 or X800 master card.
Although I have yet to see final benchmarks, my guess right now is that ATI needs to actually release CrossFire when they've shipped R520 boards. Had NVIDIA not launched G70 it wouldn't have been as big of an issue, but with a single G70 basically equal in performance to a pair of 6800 Ultras, ATI isn't winning any brownie points by competing with yesterday's GPUs. I think a launch/shipping announcement of R520 and CrossFire either sequentially or simultaneously would put ATI's best foot forward, as CrossFire has lost a bit of its steam by this point.
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Creathir - Friday, July 15, 2005 - link
This is rather interesting...The once mighty ATI has really managed to put themselves at quite a disadvantage. I would say NVidia really socked 'em in the gut with the G70. If the release of ONE care is causing them to hold of on the release of an entire chipset/technology, and given their current yield issues they have having, ATI really is in for a hurt. I would not be surprised to see someone like Creative/Intel/AMD pick up ATI in the near future. It would not surprise me at all...
- Creathir
Tim - Friday, July 15, 2005 - link
#3 -- I got a little button happy. Forgot to fill in the form fields.Anonymous - Friday, July 15, 2005 - link
It's all shannanigans. If you buy one of the new R520 "master" boards and pair it with anything other than an exact copy, you are wasting your money. Since their system defaults to the smallest RAM size and each card is rendering at its native speed, then the faster card will wait forever on anything even remotely slower than itself. And if you are doing AFR, you will need your dramamine to play anything short of freecell.Moral of the story, unless you just bought a new x800XT or x800XT Platinum- you are going to have to buy at the very least a "master" card and an equivalent "slave".
(yes, yes, I know that in order to use SLI you must buy two brand new SLI cards. But ATI seems to want to make people think that they will be able to create blazing framerates with their current 9800 and a new "master" card. But that just isn't realistic.)
Daniel - Friday, July 15, 2005 - link
#1, what do you want those drivers for? theyre lies! rendering every odd frame? its a trick, aparently not one below ati, to hype crossfire - I'll believe it when i see it.Clearly R520 wasnt so well designed, they tried to do too much and theyve had to tape it out 3 times. still talking about a launch in september? seeing ATI's recent behavior, doubt stuff will be available immediately for cheap, tho anythings better then the x800/850 xt pe debacle. Theyve been beaten to market by nvidia, now lets see wht they can come up with... a year late. When i see doom3/half life 2 numbers, then i'll decide...
kleinwl - Friday, July 15, 2005 - link
ATI should release the drivers rather than making us all wait for their "master" cards. The only thing that they are doing by waiting is letting Nvidia make more inroads into their market share. At this point, it's not about the fact that they can boost their profit by $50 a card for the "master" Crossfire card... but rather keeping their market share from eroding further against Nvidia. A freebe like these drivers would go a long way to keeping their loyal customers.