›
This forum is in permanent archive mode. Our new active community can be found here.

ATI/AMD Hybrid Crossfire Technology

Victor FrostVictor Frost
edited December 2007 in Technology
I was reading an article about this new GPU technology ATI/AMD have come up with called "Hybrid Crossfire". Apparently, if you have both an on-board ATI GPU and an ATI PCI Express graphics card, this technology would allow you to use them both in crossfire mode, thus increasing performance. What is your opinion on this new bit of tech?
Link to Original Article.

Comments

  • AprecheApreche
    This is actually a very good idea, and I'm surprised that neither myself nor Nvidia had thought of it before.

    NVidia has had SLi technology for quite awhile. This technology allows you to increase video performance by purchasing multiple video cards and connecting them together. Because it costs so much to buy extra video cards, and because the performance increase is negligible (sometimes negative), it is a stupid idea. Nvidia just recently announced that they are going to let you use 3 video cards in SLi instead of just two. Obviously that's one of the stupidest things you've ever heard. However, I think NVidia's logic is that by offering 3-card SLi, 2-card SLi looks less stupid than it is.

    This crossfire thing, on the other hand, looks pretty good to me. A motherboard with a built-in video card doesn't cost more than a motherboard without a built-in video card. Usually you will buy this kind of motherboard to save money by not buying a separate video card. Sometimes geeks buy a motherboard that has an IGP (on-board video card), but they put in a PCI-X card, and disable the on-board one. This crossfire thing supposedly allows you to keep using the on-board card to get a performance boost even if you put in a PCI-X card.

    How well this technology works in reality depends on actual performance bonuses and prices of motherboards and cards that have this technology. However, on the surface this is a great idea that should allow people to get SLi-type advantages without having to pay stupid SLi money for multiple video cards.
  • UsagimaruUsagimaru
    edited December 2007
    How well this technology works in reality depends on actual performance bonuses and prices of motherboards and cards that have this technology. However, on the surface this is a great idea that should allow people to get SLi-type advantages without having to pay stupid SLi money for multiple video cards.
    I took a look at what motherboard chipsets they were using, which was the "780". On newegg, they only sell the "770" and "790" chipsets which are ~$90 to ~180 so I'd guess that the 780 would be ~135. And with a $50 graphics card, you would have to see if spending an extra hundred would give you a better performance increase. Which might not happen, since on Call of Duty 4 they went from 33fps to 55fps, and I'm not sure if a card worth $50 more would give you that much of an increase.

    Link to the article I read first (talks about CoD4 performance)
    Post edited by Usagimaru on
  • VhdbloodVhdblood
    Just so you know, ATI has had Crossfire for a long time. It's almost the exact same thing as SLI, except it's worse, and shows much less performance gain than SLI does AFAIK. Hybrid Crossfire as a complete term is what this Onboard to PCI-E connection is. I think it's a brilliant idea. Bravo ATI. How long do you think it will be before we see Nvidia do the same thing?

    (I just wanted to make sure you guys knew that so you wouldn't think Crossfire as a whole was some amazing thing and then sound dumb later in conversation. It's happened to me a few times. :D)
  • AprecheApreche
    (I just wanted to make sure you guys knew that so you wouldn't think Crossfire as a whole was some amazing thing and then sound dumb later in conversation. It's happened to me a few times. :D)
    Ok, got it. Hybrid crossfire is possibly good. Plain old crossfire is just shitty SLi.
  • Victor FrostVictor Frost
    I think we can all agree on that point. However, something I found interesting on the article I originally linked to was that the reviewers found some independent ram close to the IGP. If their assumption that its there to decrease latency that would be an amazing 1-up for ATI.

    This is kinda going the opposite direction that what Rym and Scott predicted when ATI and AMD merged. They predicted that they would bring everything (processor, gpu) all on one chip, but it seems they are keeping them apart. Do you two still stand by your prediction or has this recent news changed anything at all?
Sign In or Register to comment.