ATi's Multi-GPU CrossFire Graphics Card Unveiled 207
MojoDog writes "ATi has unveiled their new Multi-GPU technology dubbed "CrossFire" today out at the
Computex show in Taiwan.
HotHardware has a full preview of the technology, which requires both a
Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire based motherboard and a CrossFire graphics card, in
addition to another Radeon X800 series PCI Express card, for dual 3D Graphics
processing with three available types of load balancing.
CrossFire supports Split-Screen, Alternate Frame Rendering and SuperTiling
mode load balancing between the GPUs."
Anandtech also has a review (Score:5, Informative)
Just thought would be good to add variety.
Re:Anandtech also has a review (Score:2)
CrossFire contains a rather neat implementation of multi-GPU antialiasing that provides double the samples compared to single-card anti-aliasing. This works on all games, even those that don't work with normal multi-GPU acceleration, or those that don't see any benefit.
The new CrossFire AA features not only normal AA (8x or 12x) but the first implementation of super-s
Awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
PS- ATI, we need Linux drivers!
How funny. (Score:3, Insightful)
The same was said of the PC 10 years ago.
Re:How funny. (Score:2)
"Well, the PC is a more scalable platform, so it'll run on $500 PCs and it'll scale down to the Xbox 360 ".
Re:Awesome (Score:3, Funny)
So all the new consoles are announced and everyone thinks PC gaming is doomed.
New video cards are announced and people thing console gaming is doomed.
Which is it?! TELL ME WHAT TO THINK!!!
Inf act there will always be consoles/dedicated gaming machines AND a market for games played on PCs. Wow, that was hard.
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
All you have to do is look at the numbers. Console game sales (software-wise) are skyrocketing while PC-based games are creeping along. Look to IDG [idg.com] for the hard numbers.
Also, all the next-gen consoles are PPC based and use ATi graphics. You're looking in the wrong direction if you think PCs are going to benefit from this, wrong architecture.
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
Re:Awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
Consoles are more user friendly - virtually no crashing...requiring no loading or advanced configuartion
PCs are more customizable, can do other things (i.e. you can type your homework on it), and are not so locked up.
Some people, also, cannot afford both. Maybe someone can afford to spend 1200 on a bangin gaming machine...but they may not be able to afford that 1200 piece of hardware and an additional 400-600 console.
There will be a market for both
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
Meanwhile, on planet Earth, the PC gaming market shrinks every year, as even Microsoft shift focus to games consoles.
While that's true, graphic-intensive simulation (military certainly) is not moving to gaming consoles.
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
Re:Awesome (Score:3, Informative)
GameSpot's quarterly report said PC sales were down, and that they only account for 4% of sales. You could argue that PC sales remained the same and console related sales skyrocketed, but this is the tail end of a console generation when people are usually saving up money for the next console.
Since GameSpot doesn't sell PCs that I know of and console hardware sales are around 20% from that same report, you can venture that roughly 70% of sales a
Re:Awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
And then PC users get only console ports, which are badly done, therefore no one wants to buy PC games, making the problem worse every year.
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
Right...gaming is the primary reason why people 90-95% of people/business choose Windows over Linux. Sorry, but it will take a lot more than the transition of gaming to consoles in order for Linux to capture more than 25% of the market for desktops. Many of these reasons are business-related (yes, big bad Microsoft has a nice monopoly), but many are technical as well. Even putting aside things li
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
PC Game Market On Decline (Score:2)
In the July issue (with Civ IV on the cover) they do an Eyewitness report on a game developer's conference. One very vocal developer talks about how most game developers simply view the PC as the "4th console" and as a result most of the games are designed around dedicated consoles first before being ported to the PC.
While the PC still has some dedicated games (Far Cry, Half Life 2, EverQuest, WoW etc) most games are now just being ported over. IE
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
The opposite could just as easily be said. Next gen systems are rivaling PC's. Slowly, PC games will move over to consoles.
Frankly, either prediction is silly. The sole difference between PC's and consoles isn't the graphic power. There are a set of trade-offs for either platform. The PC, for example, requires up to date hardware, doesn't have a standard controller, and often requires a lot of configuration to get going. The game console, however has, standard hardware, no installation BS, games designed to play on the lowes common denominator, and a multi-purpose controller. One you'll happily play Quake on, the other you'll happily play Zelda on.
Me personally, I'm not thrilled with PC gaming anymore. Too much hassle with too little payoff. Maybe I'm just busier than I used to be, but I like the idea of a $200 box I can just hook up to the TV, pop a disc in, and play.
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
There are other issues, like consoles have substantially less memory, which makes it harder for game designers to put large maps in (I'm really puzzled the next gen consoles aren't going for more memory; 512mb is okay now, but in 5 years time?).
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
I'm just waiting for some typically PC only games to come to consoles such as Age Of Mythology etc...
They require a mouse (done with AOE for PS2) AND a hig hres display.
I hope the new high res capabilities of the next gen consoles will be used for some computer like experience.
Re:Awesome (Score:3, Interesting)
(And keep in mind, I'm a very staunch PC gamer that's had and subsequently traded in all 3 current consoles because I find their games to be so shallow and short-lived).
The PC really has two advantages over consoles, and neither is specific to the PC itself: the control scheme (I love gamepads and all, but they simply can't compete with the level of precision and complexity a keyboard and mouse offer
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
I don't know why PC games require an installation in the first place.
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
That's what caching's for. You don't need an installation, only a temp folder. Even then, console games aren't that bad about it.
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
Swapping DVDs in the middle of a game isn't my idea of fun.
Besides which, I prefer not having to have the disc in the drive just to play a game (which is my main objection to copy prevention schemes that require the disc). I have a young kid, and so know just how fragile those little plastic discs really are...
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
What? Sorry, you can play Quake on your multi-purpose controller, if you want to have one hand figuratively tied behind your back. I'll take my keyboard and mouse combination any day of the week.
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
Re:Awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
I already went through that arcade game phase with Atari 2600 and Atari 400/800 (or Apple II) games in the early 80s and again with IBM PC first person shooter games (i.e. Wol
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
a.) The Cell processor, nor the graphic capabilities of the PS3 have been proven. (You were impressed by a pre-rendered demo made by really good artists. The latter is far more important than the technical specs of the machine.)
b.) Those systems are sold at a loss. PC components are not. You might be buying $700 worth of hardware for $400.
c.) No, next gen systems are not knocking PC back into the st
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
Not so slowly, the console is becoming an all-in-one computer. Think: media player, internet browser, etc.
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
not as long as an entire multimedia and internet capable games console costs half the price of just the graphics card in a high-end PC.
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
However, I wouldn't be all that surprised if graphics cards started getting console subsystems entirely on the card.
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
Not if ATI are involved with it. Seriously. The result will be truly awesome hardware with truly appauling drivers. That, a gaming console, does not make! Great hardware is useless if the drivers are flakey. I have owned two Radeons, and have had a few years now of driver hell and will never buy another ATI product again - no matter how tempting. The Windows XP (and 98/ME for that matter) Catalyst drivers and MMC software suite is an embarrass
The problem with console games... (Score:2)
Who needs a card that... (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously not you.
Now stfu and be happy.
Fine but does it run under... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Fine but does it run under... (Score:2)
Re:Fine but does it run under... (Score:2)
Erm. So, ATI finally has their drivers working well for Windows?
Honestly, how many of you actually believe ATI is capable of making multiple GPUs work reliably? And on Linux?
Go ahead ATI fanbois, I can spare the karma.
Re:Fine but does it run under... (Score:2)
Re:Fine but does it run under... (Score:4, Interesting)
ATI about 2-3 year ago has earned a reputation that they have really bad drivers. I believe that even Carmack has mentioned that he will only do development on nvidia, as the ATI's were too unpredictable. I believe the situation has changed but not for linux drivers.
Ati linux drivers are the same nightmare they used to be. Some cards are supported, others are not. In general it is a mess.
As far as your "F*CKING WORKS" comment...all I have to say is that it is not the case in my experience. One of the latest computers that I have configured for windows (Dad's Windows XP machine, hard drive with XP installed from the previous box) appears to not like AGP video. I booted Windows, and it freezes upon entering graphics mode. I started knoppix -- no problems. Windows -- freezes at entering graphics mode. Plugged in a different card - same result. Windows freezes at entering graphics mode. Fine, I immediately think that the windows is wrongly using the old configuration that is on the hard drive to start graphics, and is freezing. Here is the kicker...I decided to reinstall Windows only to have the installer freeze completely when entering graphics mode. Same result with the SP2 disc that I have bootlegged (The version I was installing was legit in fact).
I expected there would probably be bios flash for something like this, but no such new bios was available...and no one was reporting the same problem. The eventual workaround involved this: tell the bios to boot a pci graphics card first, and have any cheap pci card sitting there. Then tell windows that the agp card is the main desktop one and ignore the other card. That worked perfectly.
Total time spent to research, tinker, and workaround the problem: 4 days, with few breaks. I am persistent like that. Unfortunately that is more time than I have spent on configuring linux boxes in the last year or two.
And although the Plug and Pray experience of installing ISA modems did go away (mostly due to modems going away, I am sure the OS is still full of bugs in that respect), there is still plenty of fun to go around. Like the new vendor drivers versus generic drivers fighting each other. The SCSI card that the scanner uses disabling the CD drives, as in they are visible, but no longer send any media status info. Microphone on the card stopped working about a year and a half ago due to a generic driver update, and creative just says use generic driver.
Plenty of fun to go around when using windows boxes.
Crossfire may be able to support up to ... (Score:4, Informative)
From TomsHardware http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050526_155
I will live on bread and water from now on to afford a system with this... in the far future!
Re:Crossfire may be able to support up to ... (Score:2)
When will a GPU Be Good enough. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:When will a GPU Be Good enough. (Score:2)
Re:When will a GPU Be Good enough. (Score:2)
Re:When will a GPU Be Good enough. (Score:2)
Re:When will a GPU Be Good enough. (Score:2)
Sort of low FPS though. . .
Re:When will a GPU Be Good enough. (Score:2)
We don't need to get beyond what human eyes can see.
Re:When will a GPU Be Good enough. (Score:4, Insightful)
see.
Tell it to the people who insist on a sustained 200fps whilst running their monitors are
retracing at 85hz.
Re:When will a GPU Be Good enough. (Score:3, Insightful)
see.
>> Tell it to the people who insist on a sustained 200fps whilst running their monitors are
retracing at 85hz.
Me: It's not about the retrace or pure benchmark "framerate", it's about the framerate spikes that are constantly fluctuating depending on what is happening in the game that occur during playing the game fully loaded with big battles, and beutiful models, textures and environments. In my opinion this is because games, gamin
Re: (Score:2)
Re:When will a GPU Be Good enough. (Score:2)
And yeah I know you didn't want a real answer.
You're getting it anyways.
Simple fact of computation; in order to simulate anything in real time, you need to have more complexity than the elements you are simulating. This complexity directly correlates to component count.
Build a GPU the size of the solar system and it might be doable...
But then again a GPU the size of the solar system would have so many lightspeed delays that you couldn't get a dece
Re:When will a GPU Be Good enough. (Score:2)
I'm not sure that would cut it or not; each partition would have to communicate with the others; meaning that the boundaries still have some sort of lightspeed propagation problem.
I guess you could have a central controller sending updates in all directions sim
Re:When will a GPU Be Good enough. (Score:2)
Heh I was thinking too 2D... viewing device and simulator at the same location.
I like this setup better. But still for particle-accurate rendering of the earth you're looking at a HUGE lagtime.
Not that anyone would do particle accurate full earth renders. But when we move to a system mind setup we'll need to figure out how t
Re:When will a GPU Be Good enough. (Score:2)
Only then will we find out the question to which the answer is 42.
Phillip.
Re:When will a GPU Be Good enough. (Score:2)
Re:When will a GPU Be Good enough. (Score:4, Funny)
I've got a simulator running which renders the entire Earth at string theory level at 10^34 FPS.
Unfortunately it's in use at the moment.
Re:When will a GPU Be Good enough. (Score:2)
Sometime next Thursday, if you believe the marketing departments of Sony, nVidia, Microsoft or ATi.
-Charles
HardOCP and brief overview (Score:5, Informative)
I skimmed both the Anandtech and HardOCP articles, and the basic gist about ATI's "SLI" is:
- needs an ATI chipset (the 200 -- for both Intel and AMD right now)
- "SLI" connector is external via some sort of weird DVI dongle
- uses one (1) existing X800 or X850 flavor card + a special CrossFire edition of same card models = no real need to get TWO CrossFire cards at one time if you already have the above models
Looks like I'm gonna need a monster case to ever be able to do this setup (ATI's demos at CompuTex take up 4 friggin' slots on the back of a case).
IronChefMorimoto
Re:HardOCP and brief overview (Score:2)
Here is a list of some more sites:
beyond3d [beyond3d.com]
techreport [techreport.com]
tweakers.net [tweakers.net] (dutch, but the content is identical to other sites
the faq from ati [ati.com]
Next in line: these same sites (i left anand tech and tomshardware out) will bring the benchmarks all the same day the nda on the benchmarks expires
HyperComputer (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:HyperComputer (Score:2)
Re:HyperComputer (Score:2)
I had a play with BrookGPU a while back, running parallel test jobs an AGP GF4 GPU, and PCI GFFX GPU. Worked well enough, but that was on PCI and AGP bus, and it killed the CPU trying to keep up with the GPUs. Probably needed bigger datasets to keep the GPUs busy or something...
Anyway, if there's an easy way to load-share accross these things using a single graphics context, I reckon
Re:HyperComputer (Score:2)
Those languages have been around a while, but GPGPU projects don't seem to u
How do you feel? (Score:2)
ATI and Nvidia are selling out the PC Gamer's in hopes of pleasing the console makers so they can make even more money off our backs.
Re:How do you feel? (Score:2)
Re:How do you feel? (Score:3, Interesting)
ATi did actually have a demo of their next-gen R520 [anandtech.com] at E3, which should be launched later this year (a time frame that at worst puts it in line with X-Box 360). No news from Nvidia on the GF70, from what I can tell, but I'd imagine they'll try to launch around the same time as ATi.
Anyway, if you've been following the graphics card market (which you really should if you're thinking of buying a mu
Are you sure? (Score:2)
Say no to goofy external dongles.... (Score:2)
Re:Say no to goofy external dongles.... (Score:2)
Ever heard of what 'DVI' stands for
Hint; the 'D' stands for 'Digital'. Want to explain to me how a digital signal 'degrades' in the cable?
Re:Say no to goofy external dongles.... (Score:2)
Of course digital signals can degrade. This is precisely why the guy at Best Buy told me to get the more expensive shielded optical cable for my DVD player.
Re:Say no to goofy external dongles.... (Score:2)
With all the advancements we've seen in graphics boards, I'm disappointed screen resolutions haven't gone up very much - the upper end of mainstream has hovered around 16
Even for DVI? (Score:2)
Re:Say no to goofy external dongles.... (Score:2)
version 1 of this dual gpu stuff just isn't there (Score:3, Interesting)
I refuse to get locked into either an ATI implementation or a Nvidia implementation. I want a MB with a chipset that I select to work with either one. Then in the future I can upgrade the 2 video cards to a different brand without having to change out everything else.
Re:version 1 of this dual gpu stuff just isn't the (Score:2)
Nowhere is it stated that ATI chipset motherboard is *Required*. Instead, the the term 'optimal' is used.
Translation from marketing bullshit: ATI Xpress 200 Crossfire = clone of NForce 4 SLI. Unless they want to shoot their leg by restricting it at drivers, their implementation on the motherboard side of things seems identical. I do hear that nVidia isn't allowing SLI on their drivers with anything except nVidia NForce 4 chipset (tho 'support for Intel chipsets'
Re:version 1 of this dual gpu stuff just isn't the (Score:2)
Re:version 1 of this dual gpu stuff just isn't the (Score:2)
Aren't you not surprised (Score:2)
The game itself might not have been as exciting at it first seemed but the engine surely is. Quake 4, EnemyTerritory: QuakeWars and I'm sure some other games also are based on Doom3.
Re: (Score:2)
And don't forget... (Score:2)
Imagine a Mac mini or laptop with that chipset...it will enable HD playback on a lot of hardware that wouldn't otherwise support it.
No ATI board *required* (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. Instead they stated that the 'optimum' platform is the Xpress 200 CrossFire.
However, between the marketing bullshit, you can clearly see that the motherboard is just a dupe of NForce4 SLI (and of similar Intel chipset coming up). Exact same PCIE setup. So it's almost certain that CrossFire will run just fine on nVidia chipset SLI motherboards.
I doubt they'd do a commercial suicide to prevent it on driver side. Today ATI has 0 SLI boards out. Nvidia has a gazillion - many of which are currently running X800/X850 cards. Nforce4 was first working PCIE AMD chipset, so many bought it - even the more expensive A8N-SLI or similar from other manufacturers, because nothing else was available at the time. Then they noticed how sucky the 6800GT/Ultra drivers currently are (stuutttteeerr bug in EQ2 comes to mind) and decided to fill the board with top of the line ATI card.
Such people are the PRIME candidates for forking out extra 500$+ for a CrossFire card, and I'm quite sure that they'll want the money from these people WITHOUT forcing upon them a crappy unproven ATI chipset based motherboard.
Now I do admit that ATI has been very elusive about this in their marketing material (ahem, I mean 'exclusive previews'), but if you go over them all, nowhere it says the thing *requires* ATI chipset, and I'm quite sure that detail is missing for a very good reason - they are late to the party on the motherboard side, and their system is exactly same (two x16 slots, running at x8 mode), that doing it any other way would be just silly.
Now.... (Score:2)
Lets not talk about load balancing between cards, ATi can't even get scaling one desktop over 2 momnitors right. And thats if you can get monitor #2 to detect, which is still a hit or miss affair with the official drivers.
Wasted space (Score:2, Interesting)
All I have to say is (Score:2)
CROSSFIRYAAAAAHHHHHH
(reference to an old commercial for those who don't know)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Dual GPU's ehh? (Score:2)
What is the ATi Rage Fury MAXX card?
I've been an ATi user for a long time but they sometimes do the dumbest things. I remember in '94 when their slogan was "Perfecting the PC"; they were shipping cards with a sticker that had obviously been typoed at the printers. It said:
ATi: Partecting the PC.
I had that stuck on my monitor at work for the longest time.
Poor OpenGL (Score:2)
"It has come to our attention that the "small number of applications" for which Supertiling does not work includes all OpenGL based titles."
I wonder how much ATi's cosy relationship with MSFT has to do with this?
Re:So? (Score:2, Interesting)
Crossfire is apparently scalable to 32 GPU's. So it probably won't be unheard of for graphics cards using Crossfire to have 2 or 3 GPU's and if you use dual graphics cards that means you could have a total of 4 or 6 GPU's balancing the load of a future game of Doom 4 or Half-Life 3!
Re:So? (Score:2)
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Firstly, heat dissipation - a single GPU spews out enough heat as it is. Given that for some stupid reason GPUs point DOWN and thus the heat rises through the PCB itself, you're looking at a toasty machine.
Unless you want the card to be absolutely enormous like the dual nVidia GPU cards shown previously, the GPUs are going to have to share memory, which brings up all sorts of problems and bottlenecks also found in SMP solutions.
PCIe bandwidth is going to need to increase (ie more lanes) - you need to have all those things talking to the CPU!
Just my 2 cents anyway.
Re:So? (Score:2)
Behold the BTX Form Factor [formfactors.org]
Re:I'm a bit cynical... (Score:3, Informative)
BTW, PCI devices all share the same bus.
Same with ISA and VLB.
I guess that's why it's called a bus.
PCIe at least has the advantage of offering switching, meaning if you have multiple communications going on simultaneously, they're not necessarily all waiting on each other (though I don't think that's going to be very useful in a real world environment)
The only graphics interface format that ever dedicated ba
Re:I'm a bit cynical... (Score:2)
Re:Multi-GPU out of necessity? or something else (Score:4, Informative)
Not really. Making GPUs faster is relatively trivial - just add more pipelines. There is very little in the rendering process that can't be excessively parallelised. Vertex shaders will only get into diminishing returns once there is one vertex shader pipeline per vertex (well, per primitive). Pixel shader pipelines will only get into diminishing returns once there is one per pixel. Other components can easily be parallelised more (e.g. compositing) by splitting up the screen into smaller fragments (not quite a linear speed-up, because of overlaps, but a significant one).
The problem is fitting all of these pipelines into an IC that doesn't spontaneously ignite when you remove it from the liquid nitrogen tank. Multi-GPU solutions step around this problem by putting some of the pipelines in a different package, so the cooling required is spread between two physical packages.
CPUs are different. They are designed for performing inherently serial calculations (while GPUs are inherently parallel). This means that doubling the speed of a CPU becomes increasingly difficult every time it is done, until eventually it will be impossible[1]. Dual Cores are a way to side step this, by making CPUs more parallel.
[1] This has been Real Soon Now(tm) for about 20 year, but isn't here quite yet, although we are seeing the first serious hurdles.
Re:Multi-GPU out of necessity? or something else (Score:2)
Re:Dual Core Gpus????? (Score:3, Informative)
The benefit is that they can produce a graphics card in half the time [hint: the last significant AMD change in terms of logic was from the K6 to the K7...] as a typical CPU like an x86 but the downside is they're less efficient.
Processors are written with high level too