Future Crossfire with internal bridge

[Darksaber]

ATI seems to go the same way as NVIDIA has done from the beginning. They will loose the dongle and go with an internal bridge to connect the two cards. VR-Zone has some very nice pictures of the ATi RV570 & RV560 using that internal bridge.
http://www.techpowerup.com/img/06-06-12/IMG_0063_thm.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/img/06-06-12/IMG_0063.jpg)

Source: VR-Zone (http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=3724)

[HLTP]

wow!!!!!!:D

There has two *ross*ire bridge:cool:

but will the bandwidth associate with S*I many?

[PVTCaboose1337]

ATI is behind on all this two card buisness... but thats ok, I can wait for crossfire to evolve and become as good as NVIDIA's... (mainly support, there are almost no crossfire AM2 board...)

[Sasqui]

ATI is behind on all this two card buisness... but thats ok, I can wait for crossfire to evolve and become as good as NVIDIA's... (mainly support, there are almost no crossfire AM2 board...)

Ok, try running SLI on an intel board... NVidia doesn't allow it even though it's possible and has been done. Thier legal team even went after someone who modded thier drivers to enable it.

They also don't allow ATI CF to work on an NForce chipset.

In two words, "NVidia Sucks". They are forcing proprietary hardware compatibility in hopes to to make a buck and more marketshare. (IBM was famous for that) - I hope they lose.

And I'd rather have an internal bridge than external myself - they aren't changing much, just making it more seamless. The idea is not new.

[newtekie1]

You do realize that there are Intel NForce4 SLI boards right, so you can run SLI on an Intel setup just fine.

ATI isn't any better. The Intel chipset that is "Crossfire Compatible" technically works with crossfire, only because Intel and ATI partnered up on it so they both could make a buck off it. Crossfire isn't platform independant either.

[BigD6997]

whatever the cause it will help, i didnt think the donggle was to horrible, just kinda pointless, but al long as this stuff gets better its all good, i like ati better that nvidia and hope that there crossfire platform will improve, since its already performance wise good they just need to make it more stable and easyer with just two of the same cards

[RickyG512]

ATI 4 life

[warup89]

GO ati!; they should go more towards dongless crossfire for all the cards, that way they'll kick Nvidia's ass.

[Sasqui]

You do realize that there are Intel NForce4 SLI boards right, so you can run SLI on an Intel setup just fine.

ATI isn't any better. The Intel chipset that is "Crossfire Compatible" technically works with crossfire, only because Intel and ATI partnered up on it so they both could make a buck off it. Crossfire isn't platform independant either.

You cannot run SLI on a board based on an Intel Chipset. Gigabyte and Abit even ship an SLI bridge with thier intel 975x based boards, but the bridge is useless when NVidia won't let it work, because they specifically wrote thier drivers to prevent it.

Oh did I mention that NVidia sucks?

[newtekie1]

You cannot run SLI on a board based on an Intel Chipset. Gigabyte and Abit even ship an SLI bridge with thier intel 975x based boards, but the bridge is useless when NVidia won't let it work, because they specifically wrote thier drivers to prevent it.

Oh did I mention that NVidia sucks?


Hey guess what, ATI's drivers are written to prevent Crossfire on anything but their chipsets and the ones they partnered with Intel to make...So ATI is no better.

[KennyT772]

m you my friend are wrong..and confused. crossfire will work on any chipset that supports it. its kinda hard to support crossfire on a compediters product when they write the chipset drivers to dissalow it.. as far as i know the reason sli doesnt run on ati chips is cuz 1 ati has very little knowledge on sli and 2 that info is closly garded by nvid...

[newtekie1]

m you my friend are wrong..and confused. crossfire will work on any chipset that supports it. its kinda hard to support crossfire on a compediters product when they write the chipset drivers to dissalow it.. as far as i know the reason sli doesnt run on ati chips is cuz 1 ati has very little knowledge on sli and 2 that info is closly garded by nvid...


The key point there is that the chipset has to support it, meaning ATI has to provide the info to allow the chipset to support it, which they only provide to Intel. Both technologies have the potential to completely ignore the chipset, and work no matter what as long as there are 2 PCI-E x8/16 slots. Yet neither will work on any motherboard that fulfills that requirements. They are both just as bad.

[markkleb]

ATI is behind on all this two card buisness... but thats ok, I can wait for crossfire to evolve and become as good as NVIDIA's... (mainly support, there are almost no crossfire AM2 board...)
ATI behind? lol

check this out...(its a Conroe 2.93 w/X1900 Crossfire)
http://forums.pcpitstop.com/index.php?showtopic=119330

20119 in 3DMark05...( I thought my 5000 was cool)

[Sasqui]

Hey guess what, ATI's drivers are written to prevent Crossfire on anything but their chipsets and the ones they partnered with Intel to make...So ATI is no better.

Wrong. Crossfire works fin on ATI's Chipset and Intel Chipsets. SLI only works on NVidia chipsets.

NVidia Sucks. Sorry to keep repeating myself.

[newtekie1]

Wrong. Crossfire works fin on ATI's Chipset and Intel Chipsets. SLI only works on NVidia chipsets.

NVidia Sucks. Sorry to keep repeating myself.


Yes, because ATI and Intel <b>Partnered</b> to do it, again I am tired of repeating myself. ATI is just as bad as NVidia, they just partnered with Intel so crossfire would work on Intel chipsets as well as ATI chipsets. If Crossfire was any better then I woud be able to use it on an NForce board if I wanted too, or any board that had 2 PCI-E x8/16 slots, but I can't because ATIs drivers limit Crossfire to specific Intel Chipsets and their own Crossfire chipsets. You can't even use it with all the Intel chipsets, only the few that ATI allows though their partnership with Intel.

They both are not platform independent so they both suck...sorry to keep repeating myself, the fanboys can't seem to get it through their heads.

[Sasqui]

Yes, because ATI and Intel <b>Partnered</b> to do it, again I am tired of repeating myself. ATI is just as bad as NVidia, they just partnered with Intel so crossfire would work on Intel chipsets as well as ATI chipsets. If Crossfire was any better then I woud be able to use it on an NForce board if I wanted too, or any board that had 2 PCI-E x8/16 slots, but I can't because ATIs drivers limit Crossfire to specific Intel Chipsets and their own Crossfire chipsets. You can't even use it with all the Intel chipsets, only the few that ATI allows though their partnership with Intel.

They both are not platform independent so they both suck...sorry to keep repeating myself, the fanboys can't seem to get it through their heads.

Newtekie1 - NVIDIA specifically DISABLES SLI on Intel Chipset Platforms (975x, 955x, 965?) in thier drivers. The hardware is fully capable of doing it, but NVIDIA won't enable it!!! ATI has done nothing like that. If so, an example would be helpful...

I think both companies have great technology, but NVIDIA has some downright crummy business tactics - and the customer suffers in the end.

Now I could understand if NVIDIA didn't support the ATI chipset, but why disable it on Intel chipsets? The really weird thing is that AMD is rumored to be buying ATI. :confused:

[newtekie1]

Newtekie1 - NVIDIA specifically DISABLES SLI on Intel Chipset Platforms (975x, 955x, 965?) in thier drivers. The hardware is fully capable of doing it, but NVIDIA won't enable it!!! ATI has done nothing like that. If so, an example would be helpful...

I think both companies have great technology, but NVIDIA has some downright crummy business tactics - and the customer suffers in the end.

Now I could understand if NVIDIA didn't support the ATI chipset, but why disable it on Intel chipsets? The really weird thing is that AMD is rumored to be buying ATI. :confused:

And ATI specifically disables Crossfire on certain Intel chipset/platforms also! The only three chipset families they allow it on is the 975, 955, and 945. The 965, 915 are both fully capable of supporting and running 2 cards in Crossfire, but ATI does not allow it. The same is true with the SIS 656 chipset, and I am sure a few others. If ATI was any better then they would allow crossfire to run on ANY chipset that is capable of it(has 2 PCI-E x8/16 slots), but they don't they only limit crossfire to the few chipsets that they are partnered with Intel to use.

Both technologies are more then capable of being completely platform/chipset independent, but yet both companies choose to put limits on the chipsets that you can use. Both companies suck in that area.

[Sasqui]

And ATI specifically disables Crossfire on certain Intel chipset/platforms also! The only three chipset families they allow it on is the 975, 955, and 945. The 965, 915 are both fully capable of supporting and running 2 cards in Crossfire, but ATI does not allow it.

Dude - You are grasping at straws... first, show me a 915 based board that has more than one PCIx16 slot... not to mention the 915 chipset was developed before SLI or CF was even announced!!! :laugh: Second, the 965 board isn't even available yet! Where do you get your information?

[newtekie1]

Dude - You are grasping at straws... first, show me a 915 based board that has more than one PCIx16 slot... not to mention the 915 chipset was developed before SLI or CF was even announced!!! :laugh: Second, the 965 board isn't even available yet! Where do you get your information?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813170010

There, one of the many 915 boards with 2 PCI-E x16 slots. That board is more then capable of running 2 cards in crossfire, regardless of when the chipset came out all the technology needs to work is 2 PCI-E x16 slots, but it is ATI and NVidia that limit it to specific chipsets, they both do it and they both suck because of it.

I get my 965 infomation from experience. I have used and tested a 965 board, it will not run a crossfire setup because ATI won't support it.

I don't understand how you can be that dense. :banghead:

[newtekie1]

Also here is a quote directly from Anandtech:

Much to our surprise, ATI recently informed all of the motherboard manufacturers that CrossFire is currently not supported on 965 (Broadwater) platforms.

They say it is because of a technical issue. I think it is because AMD is looking to buy them and it wouldn't really look that good for their Dual card solutions to continue to support Intel.

[Sasqui]

Also here is a quote directly from Anandtech:



They say it is because of a technical issue. I think it is because AMD is looking to buy them and it wouldn't really look that good for their Dual card solutions to continue to support Intel.

Who knows, that may indeed be the case, but your are speculating and I have a hard time believing that you have a 965 based board... prove it.

And to say they could support Crossfire (or SLI :roll: ) on a platform (intel 915) that was developed before the two even existed is a joke! Yes, someone provided a dual PCIx board, but hey, windows supports multiple graphics. Maybe they could make it work with Crossfire, but would it be worth it? NVidia certainly wouldn't try.

Did you know that doling out insults is reserved for those who are intelligent enough to write good ones?

[newtekie1]

Who knows, that may indeed be the case, but your are speculating and I have a hard time believing that you have a 965 based board... prove it.

And to say they could support Crossfire (or SLI :roll: ) on a platform (intel 915) that was developed before the two even existed is a joke! Yes, someone provided a dual PCIx board, but hey, windows supports multiple graphics. Maybe they could make it work with Crossfire, but would it be worth it? NVidia certainly wouldn't try.

Did you know that doling out insults is reserved for those who are intelligent enough to write good ones?

I'm not going to prove anything to you because I don't have to prove anything to you, besides that I was only given a short time to test it and didn't exactly think I should waste it taking screenshots and pictures to prove to some punk on some message board that I had it. Plus, there are several rebutable sources that back up my claims that the 965 chipset will not support crossfire.

As for the 915 debate, once again you are wrong. The fact that the 915 chipset was released before crossfire/SLI came out makes no difference. Besides that the 915 chipset and SLI came out within days of eachother. Also, the 915 does work just fine with SLI using the driver hacks that leaked onto the internet a few months ago, and I am sure that if similar hacks existed for Crossfire it would also work just fine with the 915 chipset since again both technologies have the potential to be chipset independent if ATI and NVidia would just remove the restrictions from their Drivers.

So once again, ATI is no better then NVidia, they both use their drivers to limit what chipsets their technology can be used on.

[Sasqui]

I'm not going to prove anything to you because I don't have to prove anything to you, besides that I was only given a short time to test it and didn't exactly think I should waste it taking screenshots and pictures to prove to some punk on some message board that I had it. Plus, there are several rebutable sources that back up my claims that the 965 chipset will not support crossfire.

Man, you are totally FOS. Bluff called, cards folded.

And wow, I've been promoted to "punk" - that was even more clever than "dense".

[newtekie1]

Man, you are totally FOS. Bluff called, cards folded.

And wow, I've been promoted to "punk" - that was even more clever than "dense".

Yeah right kid, you can't respond to anything else. Ignore the fact that several sources confirm my statements about the 965, or the fact that SLI runs just fine on a 915 board with the driver hack. Forget all that, lets focus on the fact that I can't actually prove I have used a 965 board...lets dwell on that because you can't think of anything to say about the actual relavent issues at hand.

You are the one that is FOS, not me.

[Sasqui]

Yeah right kid

Yawn...

[newtekie1]

Yawn...

You seem to be tired, is it nap time little child?

Still don't want to talk about the relavent issues? Thats fine, that is usually what happens when the fanboy runs out of BS, they ignore the relavent things. I'm done with you, fanboy waste of space.

[Sasqui]

Still don't want to talk about the relavent issues? Thats fine, that is usually what happens when the fanboy runs out of BS, they ignore the relavent things. I'm done with you, fanboy waste of space.

You certainly have a gift for writing insults... keep those clever ones coming. If you can't substantiate anything, then don't bother writing it in the first place - and let me get back to my nap. Besides, the topic was about an internal CF bridge, not the waste of a PCB called an SLI bridge. LOL! NVIDIA, beeeelow me!

[BigD6997]

SLI runs just fine on a 915 board with the driver hack.

if so wouldnt that mean that crossfire would work fine with a driver hack, if not then there is some compatibility issue... just like my x1800xt wont work in my evga sli motherboard, its fully "compatible" but just doesnt work, i believe both of u have good points but arguing over who is a better company is childish, they both have to do what they need to do to make money, tho nvidia is worse, paying game developers off so stuff runs better on there hardware...

[newtekie1]

if so wouldnt that mean that crossfire would work fine with a driver hack, if not then there is some compatibility issue... just like my x1800xt wont work in my evga sli motherboard, its fully "compatible" but just doesnt work, i believe both of u have good points but arguing over who is a better company is childish, they both have to do what they need to do to make money, tho nvidia is worse, paying game developers off so stuff runs better on there hardware...


The problem is that no driver hack exists for ATI's crossfire. The only reason that an SLI driver hack exists is because NVidia was messing around and started implementing support of ULI chipsets to work with SLI, so people being the sly people that they are figured out from that how to make the drivers work with all chipsets. A similar hack has not yet arrived for crossfire, and the SLI hack only works with older driver.

If you just have a single card, it should work just fine, and if it doesn't is isn't a fault of NVidia since people use x1800s with NF4 SLI chipsets all the time.

I never argued or even suggested which one is the better company, just which one was better in terms of the drivers locking out specific chipsets, and even then I said they both suck.

As for the NVidia paying game comanies to develope stuff to run better on NVidia that is just plain wrong. They pay them to put the NVidia logo and "The Way it is meant to be played" in their games. The games runs the same on either hardware, for the most part. Obviously some games run better on NVidia cards and others run better on ATI card, but that is how it has always been and how it will always be, it doesn't have anything to do with NVidia paying game companies to put their logo in the game. Hell, I have played games on my PS2 with that logo in it...did NVidia pay those game developers to make my PS2 games run better on the NVidia equipped PS2s...despite the fact that there aren't any?

[Sasqui]

Right you are... if it weren't for the competition between the two companies, the state of the video card probably wouldn't be where it is - so thanks to both.

Who knows if the NF4 simply prevents ATI cards from working? :wtf: I am on a Tirade today...

Gigabyte attempted SLI on a 915 board, but it pretty much failed:

http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/article.php?cat=edit&id=340&pagenumber=2
http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?page=2509&head=0

[newtekie1]

I have used several ATI cards with NVidia chipsets with no problems at all. In fact I had an x800GTO2 in my A8N32 before I got the 7800GTX, and know several people with A8N-SLI boards that have ATI cards.

The Gigabyte 915 issue was mainly due to them trying to make their own video card drivers, I am pretty sure they were just combining the hack into the driver for the user and it basically failed horribly. The hacked driver method isn't really that much better since it also only works with older drivers and is in all honesty buggy...but that is to be expected when you are hacking drivers, it isn't going to be perfect. It is really a proof of concept sort of thing anyway, IMO. It proves that these lower end chipsets can in fact support dual graphics card, if the manufactures of the drivers would just allow it and put a little effort into supporting it.

[BigD6997]

its not the nvidia chipset, its just something in the evga board, it hates 95% of memmory and the high end x1k ati cards

[newtekie1]

Oh hey, what do you know. The 965 chipset handles Quad-SLI just fine, yet it doesn't work with Crossfire. Odd, could it be that ATI is locking out chipsets in its drivers, possibly due to AMD's interest in buying them? No, a fine company like that wouldn't do such a thing now would it?

[pt]

Competition is a good thing, because it's the custommer that benefits from it, if there wasn't such big competition we still were in the rock age of graphics card, because it's the hardware that opens the path for software, not the reverse

[rpg711]

u just use dna drivers for ati and nvidia and all troubles are taken away

[darxmen]

Yes, because ATI and Intel <b>Partnered</b> to do it, again I am tired of repeating myself. ATI is just as bad as NVidia, they just partnered with Intel so crossfire would work on Intel chipsets as well as ATI chipsets. If Crossfire was any better then I woud be able to use it on an NForce board if I wanted too, or any board that had 2 PCI-E x8/16 slots, but I can't because ATIs drivers limit Crossfire to specific Intel Chipsets and their own Crossfire chipsets. You can't even use it with all the Intel chipsets, only the few that ATI allows though their partnership with Intel.

They both are not platform independent so they both suck...sorry to keep repeating myself, the fanboys can't seem to get it through their heads.


your saying an AMD OWNED company had a partnership with intell?? NO! do some research. Intel devised there crossfire based design to compete with nvidia to be able to release there own form of dual card systems wich they choose the only other leader in 3d cards... ATi. after wich ATi bought out the technology (paid intel) for the rights and renamed it crossfire in so allowing intel to continue to use there Crossfire chipsets as a thank you for creating it. Now ATi + AMD are working on improving this to meet the demands of new graphics cards and to eliminate the flawed bottle necks in the intel design. so NO! it was not a partnership it was simply a retaliation against Nvidia trying to dominate the market with there slow crappy low framerate second hand crap they stick in out faces.
Im sick of the debate between ATi and Nvidia. fact remains that if you are using a dual card setup then Ati is best for Direct 3d based games hence Nvidia built theres around OpenGL based games. this is no secret. do some research. this doesnt mean that either cant run the other, both sli and crossfire are designed to support direct 3d and opengl but the numbers dont lie and each excells in there own field. so before you go slandering screaming ati is trying to keep other people from using there chipsets lets take a look at this. Nvidia used there corporate power in the late 1990's to basicly send the best 3d chip maker ever (3D FX) bank rupt. Ati at the time was only toying with game chips and focussed there market in the multimedia and buisiness user market. ATi then started to produce 3d based gamming cards with the Radeon 64 to try to hold Nvidia back from a complete monopoly of the industry. The early radeons worked but couldnt compete in the OpenGL dominated gamming arena that Nvidia had formed so it has left them crippled over the years. Over time ATi has improved there OpenGL support but not before Nvidias Monopoly took over hence games featuring the "nvidia the way its ment to be playd" splash screens swept the market. Now ATi is simply trying to find a way to end the Monopoly and shut Nvidia's cold money sucking clutches down and it has become a fight that may never end because of so called "band waggon gamers" that keep the monopoly alive. In all Honesty ATi offers a more powerful product in every aspect. the only thing nvidia cards offer better than ATi is most of there cards have close to double the pixel pipelines of ATi. ATi makes up for this with blazzing fast VPU and Memory clock speeds that if you tried to overclock your cheap Nvidia card too, it would simply Burn up and catch on fire. so do some research and know your stuff. The Nvidia monopoly is comming to an end slowly as ATi starts to get more recognition for there product. And its not because they are monopolizing the industry cutting out competitors, its because people are trying there cards and finaly seeing that you can get more performance for your money.
The end

[darxmen]

I am indeed working on building my next ATi based system. My current system is a socket 939 based system with a single PCIE x16 slot powered by the ATi Xpress 200p Northbridge. I chose this because i was not impressed with the stability of the Nvidia based systems. frankly Nvidias core and memories speeds on there graphics cards did not apeal to me either. I usualy build systems with Via based chipsets because of dependability. I was interested to see how the xpress 200 would perform. It did well as a single card system and i am ready to step into the Crossfire market now that the x1950 series cards have come out with an internal crossfire connector. i am buying it 1 piece at a time and heres what ive come up with:

MSI K9a Platinum crossfire xpress 3200 motherboard
I chose this board because it has plenty of space to have 2 PCIE x16 cards installed with plenty of room to breathe. It also leaves plenty of space around the AM2 socket to allow me to put a larger better performing cpu cooler on the board. This board also comes equiped with the most options of any other xpress 3200 crossfire board ive seen wich explains the 10-20 buck increase in price over other leading competitors.

AMD AM2 Athlon64 X2 3800+ Dual core cpu
i chose this because for the price point it offers the most performance on the budget end and also brings me into the dual core arena. It is also an awsome overclocker wich i plan to boost up to 2.0ghz

HIS Hightech Radeon X1950Pro ICEQ3 256mb GDDR3 Graphics card X2 (crossfire)
I chose this because i have ran many HIS manufactured graphics cards featuring the ICEQ cooling systems and they perform well and are excellent overclockers. I plan to remove the cooler and aply arctic silver thermal compound on the VPU and memory so i can overclock it more than it comes with from the factory. With the release of Directx 10 soon to come i decided to go with the X1950pro because it is priced around $250+. i did not want to throw $1000 dollars into 2 graphics cards that are about to lack the new DirectX features that will be associated with dirextx 10

OCZ ATi certified Crossfire edition PC6400 DDr2 800 Memory 2x1gb sticks
I chose this for maximum compatibility with crossfire based setup and because i have used OCZ memory before and like it almost as much as Corair xms memory. It is also well cooled with the honey comb ATi heatsincs wich i will remove and aply arctic silver thermal compound to as well.

the rest of the system is pretty basic, I will be running 2x Western digital caviar hard disk SATAII 3.0gb/s in Raid 0 configuration for maximum performance.

I will post my 3Dmark 2k6 results on this system after i finish getting all the pieces for it.
I hope this system will keep me in the gamming arena for atleast 2-3 years without having to make any major changes. Altho with the release of Direct X 10 is just over the horrizon im sure i will be getting new video cards within the next year.

[newtekie1]

Wow darxman, you really did make yourself look like an idiot. I am not even going to repsond or even read that 10 foot tall wall of text you call a reply. All I am going to say is do some damn research yourself, specifically when it comes to dates. Had you even looked at the dates in this discussion you would have seen that this argument happened MONTHS before the AMD ATI merger was even a rumor. Also, Intel didn't devise the crossfire setup, ATI did, and they <b>partnered</b> with Intel to use Intel chipsets with Crossfire.:nutkick: