ATI Radeon X1800 Crossfire

[Steve]

If you've held off buying anything up to just to wait and see how it pans out just before Christmas, or you've already splashed out on an ATI Radeon X1800 XT or XL (I'll come back to that later), or you simply have that car crash curiosity about high-end 3D graphics right now, today's article will have your interest.

The reason is the release of ATI Radeon X1800 XT Crossfire master boards to market. Radeon X1800 XT Crossfire was always on the cards, bringing the SuperAA and performance acceleration enhancements to that product, but the big question is have the downsides of the first generation of Crossfire been eliminated? Doth It Suck™ as much as it did with X850?

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=4112

[TehGoldenBee]

x1800xl crossfire cards would be nice....

[Syn]

One thing i dont get is why they make those cables so long, the cards are always next to each other so why not make them work for that position.

But its nice to see the performace increase, it looks awsome. Cat's 6.0 should be here next year and hopefully they will fix all the nacks.

[Rack]

I didn't quite get all the niggles with the setup. What are the actual problems? Some photos of the cabling, etc would have been nice, as the reviewer does make them a pretty big concern.

And what about this:
with NVIDIA's top-end SLI setups just as quick and forthcoming with better IQ as ATI's are (although not to the same absolute levels).

I don't get it, where is the comparison of the 2 top end system IQ's? Why make a comment like this without actually showing 7800GTX's in SLI vs 1800XT's in X-fire, so you can compare the supersampling properly? The comment in brackets is just taking my confidence away about most of the summary.

Liked the rest of the review though, good to see there is competition out there again.

[Rys]

I didn't quite get all the niggles with the setup. What are the actual problems? Some photos of the cabling, etc would have been nice, as the reviewer does make them a pretty big concern.

They've got the cabling for four DVI channels going in to one connector, so it's hard to bend the cable since it's thick with wires. It's very unweildy and there's only so much leeway in how you can move it.

And what about this:
with NVIDIA's top-end SLI setups just as quick and forthcoming with better IQ as ATI's are (although not to the same absolute levels).

I don't get it, where is the comparison of the 2 top end system IQ's? Why make a comment like this without actually showing 7800GTX's in SLI vs 1800XT's in X-fire, so you can compare the supersampling properly? The comment in brackets is just taking my confidence away about most of the summary.

Ideally I'd have put in pictures to back that up, but there simply wasn't the time or resources to do so. It's all about EER with antialiasing, and the ATI hardware, in SuperAA mode, is capable of a better multisample EER than the NVIDIA hardware at the very top levels. NVIDIA can't do a 12x12 sample space with two boards, sadly.

Liked the rest of the review though, good to see there is competition out there again.

Cheers!