Tuesday, October 16th 2007

AMD Prepares 'CrossFire X' Technology

by
zekrahminator
 Discuss (42 Comments)
While ATI CrossFire technology was introduced in early 2005, delays and the wide adoption of NVIDIA SLI platforms prevented CrossFire from really catching on. AMD hopes to change that by introducing a little ace-in-the-hole that's currently nicknamed 'CrossFire X'. The CrossFire X initiative aims to increase scalability, performance, reliability, and flexibility of CrossFire platforms with the help of the AMD 790 chipsets, PCI Express 2, and new graphics cards. The most noticeable things CrossFire X will do are listed below.
  • 3/4 way CrossFire
  • Allow for two or more completely different cards to be combined under the same CrossFire Platform
  • CrossFire Overdrive, which allows for the dramatic increase of graphics clocks across a CrossFire platform, regardless of how many cards said platform may consist of.
  • CrossFire Hybrid, which allows for the combination of integrated/onboard graphics and graphics card rendering, disabling the latter when it is not needed to reduce power consumption.
Source: X-Bit Labs

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42 Comments on AMD Prepares 'CrossFire X' Technology

#26
mandelore
HelveticaThis is awesome! I own a 2900XT! Hopefully i can get a 2900 pro for cheap and have crossfire!! AMD FTW
orrr... flash the pro to an xt and crossfire 2 XT's??
Posted on Reply
#27
panchoman
Sold my stars!
mandeloreorrr... flash the pro to an xt and crossfire 2 XT's??
was just gonna say that lol. ditto..
Posted on Reply
#28
JrRacinFan
Served 5k and counting ...
Sounds pretty nifty but ......
Solaris17thats what i was thinking if the onboard did physics that would be great now though i dont buy boards with onboard graphics because the oc options usually arent that grwat but if they bring us an amazing board ment for enthusiasts with onboard making it do physics would be awsome.
Wouldn't that be the same as the cpu doing all the physics work?
Posted on Reply
#29
imperialreign
hopefully once they finally get these chipsets and drivers running, they can develop drivers for this technology on some other ATI Crossfire supported chipsets . . . like . . . i975X
Posted on Reply
#30
KennyT772
JrRacinFanSounds pretty nifty but ......



Wouldn't that be the same as the cpu doing all the physics work?
Have you been keeping up on integrated video chips? Some of the newest ati based chips use a 4 pixel pipeline design, with I think 4 shaders total. Basically a x1300 design.
Posted on Reply
#31
tvdang7
few questions i have are
is this amd cpu's only? probably.
can we overclock seperately?
ill switching between intergrated and hardware affect anything?

hmmmm
Posted on Reply
#32
DaMulta
My stars went supernova
So what do you guys think?

4 HD2900XT possable?
Posted on Reply
#33
erocker
*
I think that the fans in the things would suck one into another creating a multi-crossfire implosion!!! I think it would have to be one big motherboard. Might as well turn that spare bedroom into a small power plant to power the rig.
Posted on Reply
#34
imperialreign
ATI's architecture could possibly do 4 GPUs. 2 for rendering, 1 for physics - not sure what the third would be doing . . . maybe running backup for the first card that fails :laugh:

I don't know where you'll find a mobo with 4 x16 slots, with a chipset that can negotiate that much traffic on the PCIE BUS - unless they were all slowed down to x4.

Good luck in your quest for the holy grail, man! :toast:
Posted on Reply
#35
DaMulta
My stars went supernova
imperialreignATI's architecture could possibly do 4 GPUs. 2 for rendering, 1 for physics - not sure what the third would be doing . . . maybe running backup for the first card that fails :laugh:

I don't know where you'll find a mobo with 4 x16 slots, with a chipset that can negotiate that much traffic on the PCIE BUS - unless they were all slowed down to x4.

Good luck in your quest for the holy grail, man! :toast:
Ummm the new 790 chipset has 4 PCI-E slots for this.
Posted on Reply
#36
Wile E
Power User
DaMultaUmmm the new 790 chipset has 4 PCI-E slots for this.
And the bandwidth aspect is taken care of by using PCIe 2.0
Posted on Reply
#37
DaMulta
My stars went supernova
All I know is I have heard of support for the HD2600, and RV670. I just havent heard anything about the HD2900XTs.
Posted on Reply
#38
Wile E
Power User
DaMultaAll I know is I have heard of support for the HD2600, and RV670. I just havent heard anything about the HD2900XTs.
But the interface itself supports more throughput, meaning it won't be as easily choked with 4 cards as a PCIe 1.0 board would.
Posted on Reply
#39
DaMulta
My stars went supernova
The way u do so I have seen is swap lanes with the internal hook ups. You use one cable between each card instead of two.

The DD waterblock is a singal slot cooler right?
Wile EBut the interface itself supports more throughput, meaning it won't be as easily choked with 4 cards as a PCIe 1.0 board would.
I wonder how much a quad CPU will help this as well.
Posted on Reply
#40
JrRacinFan
Served 5k and counting ...
KennyT772Have you been keeping up on integrated video chips? Some of the newest ati based chips use a 4 pixel pipeline design, with I think 4 shaders total. Basically a x1300 design.
Just wanted to say thank you for that tidbit of information. No, I really don't keep up with integrated. Although, this peice of technology does sound very interesting. ;)
Posted on Reply
#41
imperialreign
Ummm the new 790 chipset has 4 PCI-E slots for this.
I honestly haven't been keeping up with the newer chipsets, although I knew PCIE 2.0 was soon. That should prove interesting, as I haven't heard ATI mention any type of 4 card setup, yet.
Posted on Reply
#42
Ravenas
This doesn't really impress me at all...It makes me ask the question, why wasn't this done a long time ago?
Posted on Reply
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