Zardon

Read the review here
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My colleague Stuart "Veridian3" Davidson has been singing the praises of Crossfire for the last year and he seems very happy with the overall package. Fortunately for ATI I didn't handle the launch review as I still think their claims have not rang true on many levels. When I was at the original Crossfire press launch I was told that the ATI solution would be superior to SLI as they don't rely on a driver profile to support dual card rendering for your favourite game. One year on, I think most of us know that was perhaps a slight exaggeration on ATI's behalf.

niceguyrichy

nice little sunday afternoon read there Allan
very well written.

given how much that high end stuff costs, I still can't believe a company as important as ati are still jerking you around with the drivers
it seems preposterous to say the least.

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Erroneus

Must compete with SLI, need good PR, find quick solution!

Thats how crossfire feels like to me.

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Asmoday

A Great review Allan the CF solution seems to work rather well....but it doesn't make me wanna run out and exchange my current choice of graphic card..

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Chaos

Nice read Z, I think they have come a long way but it's still not all that!!! For the sort of cash needed for a top of the line CF or SLI rig I would hope to get that warm fuzzy feeling as soon as it powered on

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Sandok

great article Zardon! I completely agree with you on every point. ATI is a great choice for hardware but their CF is just not up to par with SLI yet. One can hope!

ronnn

Great review! Still leaves me not interested in dual card solutions. Either take Ati's lack of mature drivers or Nvidia's lack of top quality IQ. Putting that type of investment into 2 poor choices is not for me, but than I am unlikely to ever spring top cash for the ultra high end.

SFOSOK

good review

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*Warning* - Explicit Content Preceeding



METAL!!

germanjulian

yet again it shows that a medium system will run any game at high (1280x1024) resolution with nearly all eye candy on without problems and that this is overkill..... for current games...

where are the new game engines... stupid delays

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WaltC

Agreed. Neither "SLI" or X-Fire has ever inspired me to any degree. Both nVidia and ATi have what seem like "immature" drivers, of course, because both kinds of rigs are custom and are not supported directly by the D3d API (and OpenGl API support is just as customized and non-standard, too.) This is a point that I feel should be made and underscored every time SLI or X-Fire rigs are reviewed--because it is easy enough to forget after awhile: dual-gpu rigs are not supported by the APIs, so they must be supported by the IHVs. Both companies work around the APIs to provide that support, and that's why there are so many variances, and why things seem so clumsy at times, and also why things which work great with one gpu sometimes don't work at all with two.

I mean, I know Z "feels better" when the nVidia drivers graphically tell him they are set to AFR operation, but the truth as we've all observed it over the years is that sometimes what a driver GUI leads you to believe is happening--well, isn't happening in some cases... Personally, I am no more assured of AFR by nVidia's driver GUI than I am assured of AFR by ATi's comments about using the advanced optimization Catalyst selection. The proof is in the pudding and unfortunately I didn't see any evidence presented here to cause me to think that nVidia's AFR setting either always worked or sometimes didn't, or that setting the Catalyst optimization to advanced either always worked to provide AFR or sometimes didn't.

I also feel, too, that the usual round of "frame-rate bar charts" do very little to justify such a purchase. Comments inside of reviews (like in this one) about the times when frame-rates drop too low to remain smooth are, otoh, a lot more informative. IMO, so long as you're consistently above 25-30 fps in a game things are going to play smoothly, so I just don't think there's a whole lot of meaning conveyed when a chart says 80 fps and another says 60 fps. The end user won't notice the difference in playing the game, imo.

My other pet peeve about "the usual" in dual-gpu reviews is that most often the True Cost of Ownership of the reviewed rig is hidden and only the cost of the two cards is mentioned, as though you don't need a dual-gpu motherboard, a more robust power supply, a case to house all of it, and of course a giant and splendid monitor to support all of these very high resolutions tested. IE, going dual gpu costs a lot more in reality than merely just the cost of the two gpus.

The other related peeve of mine is that in reading the specs here of the review system I think that relatively inexperienced people would be tempted to think that the dual-core Core2 cpus used in the test system might've played a big part in the frame-rate results reported, but the fact is that at the resolutions and AF/AA settings tested here, frame rates are almost exclusively limited by the gpus--with, for instance, the dual-core Core2's fairing little better (if at all) than maybe a single-core Athlon 3800-4000..... [Most games, as is true of the ones benched here, are primarily if not exclusively single-threaded and derive very little, if anything, in terms of performance from two or more cores--regardless of the cpu--and this is quite aside from the resolution-limiting aspect mentioned above.] This isn't to say that the Core2 tested isn't faster than an Athlon 3800-4000 at some things and under some conditions--because of course it is. But using a dual-core Core2 in terms of this review likely doesn't provide much, if anything, in terms of the frame-rate performance we'd have seen in this review if done with an Athlon 3800-4000, imo.

Indeed, for someone who is going the dual-gpu route a solid recommendation would be to save money on the cpu in order to throw it at all of the other things a person wanting to go the dual-gpu route is going to have to buy if high frame-rate/high-res 3d gaming is what he's after.

Much as I say these things, I can't blame Z for being somewhat bored with the whole thing--I know I am... An interesting nugget of info I gleaned from this review is that apparently nVidia is still having problems with texture shimmering--after all of these years. I'm kind of surprised--but I wouldn't have directly known this because I haven't bought a nVidia-based gpu since 2002. Much as I've read in the reviews of the products nVidia has produced since I let go of my GF4, that their IQ has improved to "about" the quality of ATi's, I can still recall how amazed I was to see what 3d could look like without shimmering... I got my first taste of that with my V5, and after the R300 later on, I never looked back. I cannot help but think that if nVidia was a company less concerned with frame-rates and more concerned with IQ, that nVidia's IQ would be just as good as anyone else's today. Apparently, though, that is not the case. I just don't see much excuse for something like that these days. Given the choice between shimmer-free 3d at 80fps, and shimmering 3d at 100fps, I'll do without the shimmer, every time. I'll bet there are some people who have gotten so used to the shimmering through the years that they think it's "normal." To them I'd only suggest that they don't know what they are missing...

cadaveca

Hmmmm...

Zardon

Some good points Walt (some of which I think are maybe quite obvious, especially the cost of ownership paragraph - however I get were you are coming from), however I must stress that my concerns are not with the ATI hardware, as I have clearly stated it is perhaps the superior solution overall, I know it certainly is in regards to image quality...... no, my concerns are more with ati's total reluctance to involve the end user (enthusiast) in any aspect of dual rendering via the CCC.

I have had numerous debates on this subject with ATI and in the end both Stuart and myself gave up. Perhaps if they were daring enough to unlock the options for all dual card rendering modes in an advanced panel......

IvanV

I'm rather impressed by the performance margin between the two setups! The difference of about 40% in Serious Sam 2 and Oblivion in 1920*1200 and when 8 or 14x AA is applied is much bigger than what I expected. This stuff isn't for everyone, but it sure is impressive.

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Kombatant

Could have easily written the conclusions myself, exactly how I feel about Crossfire (but then again, you knew that already ) Excellent review man

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Falstaff

Good work Allan.....
Crossfire lives on...
like the Chrysler Turbine powered car..it had its merits..but then...well

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SirPauly

Appreciate the honesty and candor of the review actually! Would like to see more profile flexibility for the enthusiasts with CrossFire as well.

The key for me with CrossFire is the image quality flexibility the platform offers over single card solutions and the added performance in titles that truly need performance.

To move to Sli would be far too many image quality sacrifices for me. Gain in one area but lose in others.

Nice review over-all and a nice comparison article.

Sonata

[COLOR=black]Good review....[/COLOR]
[COLOR=black] [/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]WaltC has valid points. I also wasn't aware of the nVidia shimmering problem, they should fix this issue pronto if they haven't already.[/COLOR]
[COLOR=black] [/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]While X1950 Crossfire or a single X1950 sounds good, I'm already waiting in anticipation for the new DirectX10 cards to arrive.[/COLOR]

Judas

The real big picture hits hard @ 2560x1600 though. That's where the 1950 and 1900 really spread out in performance differences.

However the hardware itself imo, seems true aside from the dongle and the extreme weak and imo terribly made tighteners on the mastercard.

I HOPE to hell that ati resolve that issues in the next set of cards, as i'd say 50% of the visual crossfire problems are related to the dongle and not getting a solid clean connection between the cards and the monitor itself.

The x1900 series cards fans with the CCC are quite great imo, the noise isn't really noticeable out of game, and in game, they ARE more noticeable, but no where near annoying at all.

As for Crossfire though, What really hits hard is the fact that if CCC crashes, crossfire goes down, IF an application forces a change in the driver, Crossfire goes down (for example, some games with AA being disabled if set in the CCC by being forced on, result in not only FSAA being fully disabled, but crossfire being taken out as well, not to mention other things. )

I'm more curious about the "Catalyst AI" setting to advanced, as it's saposed to FORCE AFR on at all times if it is set this way. However i'm not finding this true in nurmerious occasions.

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cadaveca

When data from one rendered frame is used to render the next, AFR cannot be used...and it has nothing to do with crossfire, as SLi is prone to the same problems in the exact same titles.

Judas

Yes but in games using engines that work with crossfire mode..

Theres alot of games the somehow completely DISABLE all CCC settings and even the ATI Hot Key Poller (which runs the automatic 2D clocks adjustments to 3D clocks on the vid cards)..

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cadaveca

Well, once again Judas, I call you out. Post up some screens of such behavior, and I'll show you on how my system it's not an issue. nV best be paying you. First it was Crossfire just sucks , then, when proven wrong, it's the logitech devices ...now it's the driver. LoL. You even just admit that the games are at fault... And i bet most of them have an nV logo when you start them...


There are NO ISSUE with crossfire related to the cards, or how they operate. ATI(and nv too) do thier best to release drivers that are broken from gmes becasue the prgrammers are either too lazy, too overworked, or paid off by the competition to do things "thier way"