Talk:AMD CrossFire

Notice

Please move the comparison of SLI/CrossFire to Comparison of CrossFire and Scalable Link Interface LaVieEntiere (talk) 21:17, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Unfiled Discussion

Honestly, I think this article's bias gets in the way with saying anything helpfull. A max res at FOOxBAR is worthless if the frequency is something ungodly low like 52hz. Who wants to see thier screen freaking flicker? I'm sure plenty monitors can't even display that low!! Something _usefull_ on the other hand, like say 70hz, or if you're talking about the kind of people who buy ati cards, something more indulgant like 90hrz would be _informative_. Lastly, the article mentions being able to dual screen as an advantage over SLI, but it fails to elaborate on that. Currently, I'm dual screening at a modest 2048x768@@70hrz... If the current physical limitations of crossfire apply to the total resolution, then there is no point in using two screens.

(now, if it feels like I'm biased, it so happens I'm using niether technology. My **##00 chipset ****** gpu with two heads will last me untill vga is obsolete, thankyou :D

-Lunpa

(ps, this is constructive criticism: I am not going to fallow up on any responces anyone has to this.)

I agree. They have failed to mention that for many people, 60Hz can be physically painful to use on CRTs. It also states that crossfire has wider compatibility, which I personally feel is an extremely bad lie - even now, users cannot customise crossfire profiles for the best performance, with driver updates (and faith) being required. How the writer managed to say that having your expensive master card slow itself down and disable pipes is cheaper than SLI is truly beyond me... This level of favouritism is offensive. I myself am not pro-nVidia; I believe that with the two companies in such a gridlock any amount of 'fanboyism' is a bad idea. I simply want the truth to be shown. AthlonBoy 13:41, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I find it odd that you seem to believe <70Hz is old technology. Screen flicker is completely relative to the beholder. I can look at a 60Hz happily for 30+ hours because I don't spend long in front of a 70Hz all day. The idea that there is correlation between people buying expensive GPUs and buying expensive monitors is ill supported. Most of the technical people I know have simple monitors because they know buying the next biggest shiniest monitor being touted is not important if you don't have the system to render it in the first place. The people who buy oversized monster-refresh rate 1080i monitors they can barely fit on their desk tend to be the ones gullible enough to feel they require them, ie. those who don't understand what the purpose of one is. Give me a small functional monitor over an expensive but near equally functioning monitor anyday. Rushyo

Sources

Added source citing template. Not only does this article read like an ad, but it makes a handful of questionable claims that are meaningless without references. Major cleanup required. --Ultimus 12:58, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I've taken action and edited the article as best I can. Unverifiable information has been removed, as has the hyperbole. I'd like for someone else to go over my work. AthlonBoy 18:04, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Master Cards

The explanation of Master Cards on the X1900 platform is incorrect. Most of these series of cards are bundled as Crossfire Ready. --alvinc

Crossfire Ready cards arent Master cards. A 'Ready' sticker simply means that you can add a Master card of the same series and have it certified to work - they're simply regular cards. Master cards are labeled as "Crossfire Edition", with the name varying depending on the manufacturer.

That said, I dont know what part of the article you have a problem with, and why you think the 'Disadvantages' section is NPOV. Everything in there is fact, and if a fact is disputed, you ask for citation. I'll remove the NPOV tag, but I encourage you to put a 'citation needed' tag on the sentence or paragraph you have a problem with. --AthlonBoy 11:07, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Move to "ATI CrossFire"?

The name of this page seems particularily poor. Of all the things one could put in brackets, (GPU) seems to be a rather poor choice. It also appears the Camel Casing is incorrect, which, if corrected, would eliminate the need for anything else in the name. Still, I suspect that "ATI CrossFire" might be the best solution. Any comments? Maury 12:12, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

It seems ATI agree with you - "Cross over to the ultimate visual experience – ensure your gaming PC runs with ATI CrossFire Certified components."[1]. They even label it as ATI CrossFire in the official logo. Seems good enough for me. -AthlonBoy 14:05, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Well it doesn't look like there's any negatives, so here we go... Maury 11:54, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Why do you need a special mobo?

Both CrossFire and SLI appear to need a special motherboard. I can't find any explaination of why this is. It could be because you need to have two 16x PCIe lanes, but I don't think that's the case because I've heard of systems using two 8x instead. Even more confusing, why do you need a special mobo for the nVIDIA 7950, which only uses one slot?

Can someone explain this for me? Or better yet, put a good explaination in the article?

Maury 12:10, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Its less about hardware requirements and more about pushing their own brands. SLI requires an nForce SLI motherboard because the drivers only allow SLI to work on this motherboard. There have been other motherboards with a pair of 16x slots (mainly with one being the full 16x, the other being 4x) that have worked with two cards in SLI with driver hacks, including a dual Xeon motherboard on which SLI was first shown. Performance doesnt seem to be as great on these boards though, implying some special logic inside an nForce SLI board, and you'd be locking yourself in to a very old driver set.

ATi have opened up CrossFire to be used on Intel motherboards officialy, namely the 975X. It should be noted that neither the 975X or ATi's own Xpress 200 chipset have nothing special to enable CrossFire, which would theoretically mean that this CrossFire implementation doesnt need a special motherboard. The new Xpress 3200, however, has been advertised as having accelerated GPU-to-GPU logic inside its Northbridge, which the 975X and Xpress 200 dont have. (Cant remember where I read that, so I cant citate it.) This logic, along with full dual x16 lanes per slot, makes the 3200 a bit faster in 'masterless' CrossFire than other boards, and may be needed for the new R600 GPU to work in CrossFire (as there wont be any Master cards). Thats just speculation though.

As for the 7950, that uses two GPUs with SLI implemented internally. (The SLI article has a more in-depth explanation of this.) In theorey that means you dont need anything special on a motherboard to enable it, but some boards need a BIOS update to use one, as they werent designed with anything like this in mind. It has been certified and proven to work on a wide range of chipsets, be they nVidia, Intel, or even ATI. There havent been any reports of the GX2 not working on a specific chipset yet, so its assumed that with a BIOS update, any board will support it.

Hope that helped clear stuff up. I suppose some of that should go into the articles, but its hard for me to write that without it becoming NPOV. -AthlonBoy 12:47, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I guess I have a follow-up question though...

As for the 7950, that uses two GPUs with SLI implemented internally. (The SLI article has a more in-depth explanation of this.) In theorey that means you dont need anything special on a motherboard to enable it, but some boards need a BIOS update to use one, as they werent designed with anything like this in mind.

Am I reading this correctly, that some mobos work fine with the 7950 with no upgrades at all? I believe that is what you are saying. Maury 20:43, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

What i'm trying to say is, there hasnt been a case I know of where a GX2 doesn't work. The page on the NVIDIA website shows you what nVidia have tried it with, and what BIOS revision. It doesnt mean that a board not on that list wont work, or an older BIOS version is problematic. Mainly its NVIDIA covering themselves. For example, the list has the A8N-SLI Deluxe, but not the normal A8N-SLI, and a GX2 works just fine on one of those. There is no technical reason why a 7950 wouldn't work in any standard motherboard, and NVIDIA aren't stopping you from using any motherboard.

Its similar in a way to the Athlon64 X2. This has widespread compatibility with every socket 939 chipset out there, including ones that came out in the year before it. But not the VIA K8T890; this one chipset won't accept an X2, despite being made months after it. NVIDIA are mainly shifting the blame away from themselves should another chipset have such a hitch. -AthlonBoy 21:48, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Well this is good news. The new Mac Pros don't support SLI or CrossFire, but it sounds like the GX2 is at least a possibility. Maury 15:27, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

What I think, is that list shows what motherboards can fit a GX2 without any components getting in the way, as the card is quite long. I've read something about this on a forum months ago which name I can't remember, and I'm not even sure if it is correct. -Anon 17:28, 9 January 2007

7900GX2 is extremely long (think full tower), but 7950GX2 is "only" as large as an 8800 series, so that might not be it. -RK 216.9.142.92 17:29, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

X1900GT masterless crossfire not significantly slower?

I know I have looked like a bit of a nazi for removing any entry saying Catalyst 6.7 allows X1900GT masterless crossfire, but now there's a source, it's all good. (The driver notes diddn't mention it, strangely, but whatever.) My beef is, I don't think that you can go masterless without losing a chunk of performance. Like here, it's half as fast on that first graph, even with two x16 lanes! And instead of starting a revert war, I thought it best to bring it to the talk page.

Also, thanks to that anonymous IP for summarising that section better. Please make a proper account, eh? -AthlonBoy 22:15, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

AthlonBoy, that anon IP was me, and you are very welcome, yes now there is proof, I knew I saw it somewhere the first time I modified this article, just couldn't find the proof at the time. But, about that link, the graph and actual FarCry data (bar graph) don't align in terms of scale. See the plotted graph starts with an initial FPS of 50, so going up by 10s, it seems that the speed is about 50% by looking purely at the difference between the plots, but looking at the bar graph directly under it, you'll see that the performance hit is more like 18% compared to Cabled CrossFire, but this is at high resolutions with a bunch of IQ settings on. So, its not THAT much of a performance loss, and will only noticeable in games that run below 60fps, due to the fact that the human eye can only see 60fps maximum anyways. Can't wait for R600 "interal" CrossFire details. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by WuZheng (talk • contribs) 4:13, 19 Sept 2006 (UTC)

Ach, I diddn't see the different scales. My bad. Though the eye can see changes far faster than 60Hz, monitors rarely breach 85Hz. That said, it's a moot point what the eye can see, this is about performance, and switching to masterless crossfire loses you 20% in this case. Seems good enough for me then, i'll just put the number in. -Skorpus McGee 17:42, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Radeon X1950 PRO and X1650 XT goes two ways

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34509

On Mentioning the X850 CrossFire in the Disadvantage Section

Honestly, I don't see the point in mentioning this as a disadvantage anymore as the older-generation technology is obsolete, those cards are extremely hard to find nowadays, and I have a hunch that ATI has discontinued the CrossFire editions. Its good information to know, but maybe we should put it in seperate "History" section and out of the Disadvantage, I feel that these sections (advantages/disadvantages) should be up to date with what is currently used/available as opposed to what is not being used/available, thoughts?--WuZheng 13:23, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

do it as ati is moveing to an sli type link Joe The Dragon 00:42, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Done and done... this new CrossFire bridge looks pretty good, X850 CrossFire in my opinion should be looked upon as a v1 type of thing and should rightfully take its place in the main part of the article as a piece of CrossFire's history.--WuZheng 14:50, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Mid-range cards don't need a Y-dongle - but there exists bridgeless SLI!

It just struck me, in the advantages section masterless crossfire in the mid-range and below segment is listed. But SLI can do that too. While you lose performance from taking the SLI bridge out on a mid range card, masterless crossfire suffers in the same way, and you can't bridge them together there. There's also no good reason to not use an SLI bridge - the pins are there, SLI motherboards come with a bridge, so it only makes sense to take it off for testing purposes. In that regard, bridged SLI is more efficient than bridgeless SLI and masterless CrossFire of similar cards.

What does everyone else think? -Skorpus McGee 13:27, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the argument is slightly out of context, ATI CrossFire solutions at the low-mid range can ONLY operate on PCI-express communication, whereas nVidia cards have an option, you can dig up some benchmarks, but you'll see that SLI'd 7600s vs. CF'd X1600s represents somewhat of a performance gap, but really this is due to architectural differences more than CF vs. SLI. In its own right, I'm sure that bridged SLI has more bandwidth available for Multi-GPU configurations, but at the same time no one has done an outright comparison (at least I think no one) between low-mid range CF and bridgeless SLI. Dig that up if you will, and if its significant in one way or the other, change this article accordingly. --WuZheng 16:16, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, even the most exhaustive google search turns up nothing but forum posts about bridgeless SLI announcements. I'd be willing to say that it makes no difference if we're talking about 7600s and X1600s, which was really the point of me bringing it up - if SLI can do it, why is it listed as an advantage for CrossFire? -Skorpus McGee 19:29, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I believe it is an advantage in favour of ATI's technology because of the fact that CF'd low-mid range cards operate solely on it, in such a way that there is no alternative for these lines of graphics adapters and that they are advertised to be solely reliant on PCI-express communication. SLI is somewhat different in this sense, nVidia doesn't advertise that it's cards can do this and would probably rather have you use/buy a bridge than run it without. Therein lies some sort of advantage for PCI-express CrossFire. And, again if any of us happens to find significant information regarding performance comparisons between bridgeless SLI and low-midrange CF we will have to change the article accordingly, but we haven't so the advantage, for now, stays.--WuZheng 22:16, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Upon reading the existing Hexus review in the article, I see that at its best, dongleless CrossFire (Splinter Cell: CT test) yields almost negligible differences, and in ATI's traditional rendering weakpoint (OpenGL tests) we see that the CrossFire deficit is larger, which leads me to think that clearly ATI could have something here for them as what they are doing with PCI-e CrossFire is exemplifying what true multi-GPU setups should look like, plug it in and it works, no dongles, bridges, etc. The next step would most likely be multi-GPU with different brands of video cards, like Alienware's now defunct VideoArray project. I stand by my belief that dongleless CrossFire remain an advantage.--WuZheng 22:30, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Dongle

Is dongle the correct term? The dongle article suggests that this is some type of security device. Giles Bathgate 18:59, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, dongle is indeed the correct term. ATi themselves have stated this fact, though I can't remember where. -Skorpus McGee 10:25, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok i updated Dongle (disambiguation) page --Giles Bathgate 14:51, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Crossfire Physics

I think that Crossfire Physics should probably be mentioned somewhere in this article. -RK 216.9.142.155 18:17, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

We've seen neither head nor tail of Crossfire physics since it's original 'announcement'. There were plans for X1900-based physics, but they've evidently been canned. The same goes for the 8800, and nVidia even have three-GPU-supporting motherboards these days. Despite that, there is no official word that any kind of GPU physics exists. Don't get angry at me, I'm just as miffed as you are, but ATi made the original announcement, nVidia made a counter-announcement, and... nothing happened. Nowadays all either companies bother talking about are GPGPU functions. ATi brag about folding@home, nVidia about compiling C++. Not only that, but GPU physics on the whole seems to be veering away from the dedicated-GPU realm, and towards the shared-GPU realm, where the thread controller on the GPU manages physics and 3D rendering on the one GPU. It's quite certain that nVidia are going this way, and where one leads, the other seems to follow - that being the case it will end up having no ties to Crossfire at all.

'Course, none of this debate seems factual enough to go in the article. :( Skorpus McGee 21:06, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Nvidia's plans for SLI physics were to be implemented at the driver level and only used 2 cards in SLI configuration, one for graphics and one for physics. The 8800 does include a physics solution called quantum physics that uses part of the GPU's stream processors for physics and does not require SLI. I think that is what you were talking about with the shared GPU, but this is only made practical by the flexibility of the stream processors. I think that CF physics should at least be mentioned, even if it is to state that the plans for x1900 based cards using it have been canceled. -RK 216.9.142.201 18:27, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

GPU Accelerated Physics is dependant on Havok FX. Intel owns Havok now, and the FX version is cancelled as confirmed by an AMD exec. NeOak (talk) 10:18, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Multi-GPU article

Should a multi-GPU article be made with a history of the idea and links to the individual technologies (perhaps even Alienware's canceled solution?). Discussion call. -RK 216.9.142.185 18:20, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

CrossFireX

Is the only reason that the name was changed to CrossFireX because Spider was launched (As in was it just a marketing change), or is CrossFireX a new/seperate version? If the last one, what's different about them? I'm a little confused about all of this. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 15:41, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Mixing and matching cards ?

It would be useful if the article stated what cards can be paired for CF. Exact match only ? Same chip ? Same manufacturer ? Same chip family ? --Xerces8 (talk) 14:27, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Disadvantages.

The listed disadvantage based on the first generation of Crossifre Cards, namely the 1800 and 1900 series cards no longer applies, as this disadvantage has been addressed or eliminated in all new crossfire cards, hence it shouldn't be listed in the disadvantages, as it NO LONGER comprises a major disadvantage to SLI. Perhaps the introduction or a history section is more appropriate. As the disadvantage section already states the 'first generation of' hence no longer a disadvantage of the technology.

"CrossFire doesn't always give a performance benefit – in some extreme cases, it can lower the framerate due to the particulars of an application's coding. This is also true for Nvidia's SLI, as the problem is inherent in multi-GPU systems."

I am removing this because as is stated, it is also a problem with SLI... which means it's not a disadvantage when compated to SLI. Feel free to add it back into another section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.103.248.6 (talk) 04:20, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Point well met. -Skorpus McGee (talk) 00:59, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

It should be readded in my opinion. Presuming you are correct it is not a relative to sli disadvantage it is still useful information. I question why the section is limited to the sli comparison anyways, but why not work it into the article or add it and clarify whether or not it is known if it is an issue with one interface more than the other.--24.29.234.89 (talk) 07:47, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I have moved two of the points in the "Disadvantages" section to a general "Caveats" section, similair to the setup of Nvidia SLI. If anyone considers this to be a sub-obtimal solution, feel free to change it, but I agree with above editor that the current article is missleading in this respect.--Lowercasedefaultusername (talk) 11:04, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

crossfire pro

there is no discussion about crossfire pro, acceptable cards, limitations, uses. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.169.112.20 (talk) 11:38, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

ATI Hybrid CrossFire

Shouldn't Hybrid CrossFire be mentioned in the article? I think it's very relevant information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Veikk0.ma (talk • contribs) 16:49, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

The statement of first generation software crossfire have no reference

Quote "Low-end Radeon x1300 and x1600 cards have no 'CrossFire Edition' but are enabled via software, with communication forwarded via the standard PCI Express slots on the motherboard."

I googled a lot and there is no proof of this information on the Internet. In fact I have such dual card right in my computer case (with first generation Crossfire motherboard XPress 1600), and it seems obvious to me they don't do crossfire neither software nor hardware. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.108.108.30 (talk) 06:53, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

A better technical explanation of AMD Crossfire is needed

This article is missing one major piece of information, how does Crossfire actually work? The entire article is just a brief explanation of the various generations. There is no explanation of how the cards function together to enable a higher frame rate. If two cards have 1GB of memory does that mean there is 2GB of texture memory (answer is no but this should be explained)?

I think it would be good if we could get a technical explanation of what the ribbon cable does that interconnects each card. From the article it appears to be an internal DVI or video link that enables the video output of each card to be overlaid together creating one complete video signal which is then sent to the display(s). If that is the case, each video card has the same texture data in its memory and is rendering a different part of the frame or different frame. 68.165.249.102 (talk) 16:02, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

About the "disadvantages" section

With the last release of AMD Catalyst drivers (11.12), it is no more true that only SLI rendering allows to set manually a profile for each application. — Preceding unsigned comment added by roccometeora (talk) 17:50, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

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CrossFire or CrossFireX?

Hello, I wanted to let you know that I moved the page from AMD CrossFireX back to AMD CrossFire. The article used to be named AMD CrossFire, as you can see here: Talk:AMD CrossFire#CrossFireX.

The reason I moved it back is because AMD CrossFire is the correct name:

• https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/crossfire
• https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/dh-018

--Soluvo (talk) 01:25, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

parallel processing ?

application of parallel processing for computer graphics, yes or no? should be stated in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.201.184.159 (talk) 08:04, 26 April 2020 (UTC)