Crossfire

[Merlin4458]

Lo lads, basically i just got a Asus A8N Sli Board with a x850 xt pe. What i want to know, is that when crossfire comes out, will i have to buy a new board in order to run 2 x850 xt pe's ? Or will there be some sort of bios update that will allow me to use my board at the moment

Thanks lads, this is probably a yes or no question

[Dougal]

Crossfire requires a special card with a specific chipset (like a base board if you will) so you can get this at anytime as long as your system has the required number of PCI-E slots.

[darrensen]

Crossfire requires a special card with a specific chipset (like a base board if you will) so you can get this at anytime as long as your system has the required number of PCI-E slots.

Hi,

Are you sure this is correct? I was under the impression that a new mobo was required as the ATI Crossfire chipset is on the board??

[Dougal]

Sorry my bad, I was referring to the graphics card alone as you will not need to buy a second card which is exactly the same.

Darrensen is correct you need an Ati Crossfire based board (such as those on the Xpress 200 Crossfire

http://www.ati.com/technology/crossfire/index.html

[autopilot]

I read in Custom PC that running two ATI on an SLi board is technically possible, but would require a modified BIOS etc. But it could only happens if nVidia allowed ATI to in the future, which may be unlikely. I think it's likey someone will build a motherboard that could support both in the future too. Anyone agree?

[Trippledence]

I would of thaught the bord manufactres would put Nvida under enough pressure to alow Cross Fire on NF4 bords. As theres not really a strong competotior to NF4 i cant see them having muvh to lose. Also for preople intereted in modding and the like for "extreem" systems, wouldnt you rather have two cards internaly liked instead of some crappy looking DVI cable conector.

[autopilot]

But as I understand it, Crossfire works with all games but SLi only work's with games that are specifically coded for it. So the DVI loopthough cable is a small price to pay, no?

[Dougal]

I would of thaught the bord manufactres would put Nvida under enough pressure to alow Cross Fire on NF4 bords. As theres not really a strong competotior to NF4 i cant see them having muvh to lose. Also for preople intereted in modding and the like for "extreem" systems, wouldnt you rather have two cards internaly liked instead of some crappy looking DVI cable conector.

That would be economically stupid.

Would you do something that costs you money to help your competitor succeed in the market?

[Rave]

There's no technical reason why it wouldn't work AFAIK, since all SLI and Crossfire need from a motherboard perspective is a PCI-E connection from the graphics cards to the chipset. SLI has been shown to be very robust in how it can be implemented, with hacked drivers you can run it on a 16x + 4x lane configuration, or run it on 6600s without the SLI connector etc. There's no good reason why you couldn't run SLI on a Via, SIS or ATi chipset, and I see no reason why Crossfire won't be the same.

As usual, it'll come down to whether the various parties involved can come to an agreement on cross-compatibility....or whether somebody manages to hack up the drivers to force it to work.

[Trippledence]

Yeah but think of the cool factor.. Surly the SLI cards must give an performace increase in all games, even if its not as much as games that are specificaly compatable.

[Rys]

You'll need a Crossfire Master board and a compatible slave, and a Crossfire Edition mainboard. ATI won't unlock Crossfire and allow it to be used on other core logic for quite some time.

[Dougal]

The technical reason is that the Northbridge has to link the two cards in some way.

SLi Has the card bridge on the onboard card flipping thing.

REMOVED

Its all down to the fact that you do not want to help your competitors.

if it does happen, i'll happily eat a bike.

[Rys]

Crossfire has its own encoded Northbridge.

That's quite a false statement to make, really.

Crossfire works by some data passing to the Master board via the PCI Express root port (on the core logic, be that northbridge or single chip). Other frame data is passed via the connector that links Master and slave.

There's no 'encoded Northbridge', at least as far as I understand your statement.

SLI also works without the inter-GPU connector, all data needed to be shared passed via the root port.

[Merlin4458]

So the chances of getting another x850 and putting it on my asus a8n sli are slim as nvidia prob wont allow it

[SilentDeath]

Afaik nvidia have no say in the matter, its compleqatly upto ATI to allow it to work on other chipsets.

You can be sure someone WILL hack it soon after release. Im not buying a new mobo AGAIN just to run dual gfx. Considering what hardware has been hacked in the past, i think theres a good chance for someone to work out how.

[darrensen]

well the 3 options you have are.

1. Buy 2 Nvidia Cards
2. Wait until you can afford 2 Ati cards and a crossfire mobo.
3. Stick with the card you have, its a damm good card and will run most games at max settings anyway.