[rippinchikkin]

<img src="http://parcom.pronetworks.org/PROneT-News/ati2.jpg" align="right"> ATI CrossFire multi-GPU platform, Worth the wait?
By Trusted Reviews
September 28, 2005 15:43 GMT

If you have even a passing interest in 3D graphics, you've probably been waiting for the appearance of ATI's dual-GPU solution. It seems like aeons ago that ATI announced that it would produce a platform to rival Nvidia's tremendously successful SLi, but now, finally I have a CrossFire system in front of me and it's time to see if it was worth the wait, writes Riyad Emeran.

What I'm talking about is the ability to install two graphics cards in a single PC so the two cards share the load when it comes to 3D rendering - resulting in a significant performance boost when you fire up your favourite game. My first foray into the dual-GPU scene was when I got my hands on two 3dfx Voodoo2 cards.

I remember having to keep pretty quiet about it in the office - having one Voodoo2 at the time was considered lucky, but installing two in the same machine was positively greedy! This was the birth of SLi, although as I remember, back then it stood for 'Scan Line Interleave', rather than the 'Scalable Link' Interface that Nvidia now attributes to the acronym.

It was a long time before I gave up my dual Voodoo2 cards, despite advances in 3D technology from other companies. But eventually 3dfx went the way of the Dodo, and it was time to move on. I had to wait quite a while before I saw a PC with two graphics cards again. The barren spell ended about a year ago when Nvidia started to ship SLi kit into the market.

<img src="http://www.pronetworks.org/forum/images/smiles/source.jpg"> The Register
<img src="http://www.pronetworks.org/forum/images/smiles/view.jpg" border="0"> <a href=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/28/review_ati_crossfire/ target=_blank> complete review</a>

<img src="http://parcom.pronetworks.org/images/crosfireATi.jpg" align="right">

[Curtybob]

Kinda hard to get a clear idea of what they think about Crossfire in that review. It starts out with small positive foreshadowing, and then ends on a slightly dismal note. I've always been an nVidia user, but I'd like to see ATi come out on top again like they did when nVidia choked on their FX series. Right now, nVidia has some good stuff, but surely they aren't unsurpassable.

[zest]

Read this.
<img src="http://www.pronetworks.org/forum/images/smiles/source.jpg"> http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1816/

Models & pricing: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1817/

[Grav!ty]

To me the real advantage of ATi's Crossfire is that Intel users are able to run dual GPU's as there is close collaboration on this between Intel and ATi

[zest]

You can also with Nvidia..Intel Nforce chip sets!!

The only collaboration between ATI & Intel as far as I gather is that Crossfire will work on the 955 chip set other than that nothing much else..
Anyway the dual 7800Gt will be coming soon..with 24pipelines and ATI will take the back seat again.
LOL.

Anyhow now we are looking at 1GGB of hyper speed graphics...I would very much like to know who and what could possibly utilise such extreme graphics?

[b_a88]

Yeah nVidia sent me an email on how you can have an Intel system with SLI and I think it mentioned the 7800 too.

[zest]

Actually my ASUS P5wD2 Premium 775/955x board that I got way back in March 05 has a hybrid SL2 mode and is capable of full SL2 mode with a bios update.
It in fact has 3 Pci-e port st. 16x,4x and 1x.