AMD Radeon Phases Out the CrossFire Brand

Megalith

Megalith

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AMD’s longstanding brand for multi-GPU (mGPU) solutions has been terminated: PCWorld reached out to a representative after noticing that their latest drivers lacked any mention of CrossFire, and they said that the branding is no longer relevant because it technically refers to DX11 applications. “In DirectX 12, we reference multi-GPU as applications must support mGPU, whereas AMD has to create the profiles for DX11. We’ve accordingly moved away from using the CrossFire tag for multi-GPU gaming.”

That’s a surprising twist to come out of the blue—CrossFire is a firmly established brand with a meaning (“multiple Radeon graphics cards”) that enthusiasts are very familiar with. With AMD pushing DX12 so heavily though, establishing the distinction in marketing copy may be worthwhile. And yes, this is a branding change, not a technical one. AMD is correct that enabling mGPU support in DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 games are very different. Developers need to build multi-GPU support into DirectX 12 engines and games, explicitly telling the software how to control the hardware.
 
To those morons "it technically refers to DX11 applications" , but to us enthusiasts CrossFire means multi-gpu and the driver support. I didn't know it referred to DX11. Also the moniker "Tri-Fire" & Quad-Fire" means more than 2 Gpu's. AMD sure knows how to keep shooting themselves in the head :rolleyes:
 
Nebulous said:
To those morons "it technically refers to DX11 applications" , but to us enthusiasts CrossFire means multi-gpu and the driver support. I didn't know it referred to DX11. Also the moniker "Tri-Fire" & Quad-Fire" means more than 2 Gpu's. AMD sure knows how to keep shooting themselves in the head :rolleyes:
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Was thinking it's a move to open standard blurring the Crossfire and SLi line.
 
Jim Kim said:
Don't go there. ;)
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It's hard not to go there. I haven't owned console since I joined this forum, but when DX12 hit, I've been confused about PC gaming.
I had a SLI PC for 4K gaming and it became useless. The only way to get more power I would have to purchase the Titan Xp. If that's where PC gaming is headed, I don't want any part of it.

I'm probably going to purchase the Vega Frontier Edition for my Mac Pro, the Xbox1X and PS. Times are changing.
 
WorldExclusive said:
It's hard not to go there. I haven't owned console since I joined this forum, but when DX12 hit, I've been confused about PC gaming.
I had a SLI PC for 4K gaming and it became useless. The only way to get more power I would have to purchase the Titan Xp. If that's where PC gaming is headed, I don't want any part of it.

I'm probably going to purchase the Vega Frontier Edition for my Mac Pro, the Xbox1X and PS.
Times are changing.
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A 1080ti runs 4k nicely
A 1080 or 1070 will run if you lower details or okay with lower frame rates. You don't have to run 4k while 4k is amazing its not the end of the world if you droop the res a notch. But keep in mind 4k is the high-end resolution right now for pc gaming so parts need to be colse to top of the line to get the best experience. In 2 or 3 years i think 4k will become the mainstream resolution and oppen to a lot more people.
 
tunatime said:
A 1080ti runs 4k nicely
A 1080 or 1070 will run if you lower details or okay with lower frame rates. You don't have to run 4k while 4k is amazing its not the end of the world if you droop the res a notch. But keep in mind 4k is the high-end resolution right now for pc gaming so parts need to be colse to top of the line to get the best experience. In 2 or 3 years i think 4k will become the mainstream resolution and oppen to a lot more people.
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Not going back to buying high-end hardware for gaming, but I still enjoy the conversation about it here.
 
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Trying to mask up that mGPU for DX12/Vulkan failed with DX11 titles now?
 
WorldExclusive said:
It's hard not to go there. I haven't owned console since I joined this forum, but when DX12 hit, I've been confused about PC gaming.
I had a SLI PC for 4K gaming and it became useless. The only way to get more power I would have to purchase the Titan Xp. If that's where PC gaming is headed, I don't want any part of it.

I'm probably going to purchase the Vega Frontier Edition for my Mac Pro, the Xbox1X and PS. Times are changing.
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lol i'm not going to sacrifice the flexibility that i can get with PC just because some niche tech (even among PC gamer) are no longer being supported.
 
If support is garbage, makes sense to not care that too much about it... Surprised they got is done at all i guess.
 
Nebulous said:
To those morons "it technically refers to DX11 applications" , but to us enthusiasts CrossFire means multi-gpu and the driver support. I didn't know it referred to DX11. Also the moniker "Tri-Fire" & Quad-Fire" means more than 2 Gpu's. AMD sure knows how to keep shooting themselves in the head :rolleyes:
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the difference is that AMD/Nvidia had to supply the software/code and money to developers for crossfire to be suported in dx9/10/11 games where as dx12 the developer does to all the work themselves to support mgpu.. this isn't AMD shooting themselves in the foot, this is AMD removing their end of the responsibility for mgpu actually working. so with dx12 games customers can no longer blame AMD or Nvidia for mgpu not working which is smart on their end because both companies have had to deal with way to much bs from the media/customers for stuff that was never their fault when it came to cfx/sli working in games. you'll probably see Nvidia officially dropping the SLI brand soon enough as well.
 
Who has a power supply that can handle two vega's anyways? 345W x 2, lol. not to mention the 10 degree hotter operating temp. poor amd trying to brute force themselves into viability.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
the difference is that AMD/Nvidia had to supply the software/code and money to developers for crossfire to be suported in dx9/10/11 games where as dx12 the developer does to all the work themselves to support mgpu.. this isn't AMD shooting themselves in the foot, this is AMD removing their end of the responsibility for mgpu actually working. so with dx12 games customers can no longer blame AMD or Nvidia for mgpu not working which is smart on their end because both companies have had to deal with way to much bs from the media/customers for stuff that was never their fault when it came to cfx/sli working in games. you'll probably see Nvidia officially dropping the SLI brand soon enough as well.
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So this is the end of CrossFire/SLi as we know it eh? Why keep making motherboards that support multi GPU's if this was already in the works? Stupid move on both parties, and a waste of resources to make these boards for it.
 
Nebulous said:
So this is the end of CrossFire/SLi as we know it eh? Why keep making motherboards that support multi GPU's if this was already in the works? Stupid move on both parties, and a waste of resources to make these boards for it.
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Yeah, I don't get too much either, i know the big ones work like little ones, but they could make just one big one and a bunch if little ones like before with the one AGP and a bunch of pci32s.. might make mobos a bit cheaper maybe.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
the difference is that AMD/Nvidia had to supply the software/code and money to developers for crossfire to be suported in dx9/10/11 games where as dx12 the developer does to all the work themselves to support mgpu.. this isn't AMD shooting themselves in the foot, this is AMD removing their end of the responsibility for mgpu actually working...
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Meaning the outcome is exactly the same: no more games with multi-GPU support.

Kinda sad but it's probably for the best. Multi-GPU solutions never worked very well.
 
M76 said:
How? It's still one GPU, and a significantly less powerful one.
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2017-09-21-0922-lvga.png
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
the difference is that AMD/Nvidia had to supply the software/code and money to developers for crossfire to be suported in dx9/10/11 games where as dx12 the developer does to all the work themselves to support mgpu.. this isn't AMD shooting themselves in the foot, this is AMD removing their end of the responsibility for mgpu actually working. so with dx12 games customers can no longer blame AMD or Nvidia for mgpu not working which is smart on their end because both companies have had to deal with way to much bs from the media/customers for stuff that was never their fault when it came to cfx/sli working in games. you'll probably see Nvidia officially dropping the SLI brand soon enough as well.
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But it was nvidia and AMD that "invent" multigpu in the first place to sell more GPU. When a single GPU was strong enough for one specific resolution both company start promoting even higher resolution or stuff like multi monitor gaming to justify the need to use crossfire or SLI. Game developer never asked for multi gpu support as part of "must have" feature in their game.
 
At
Nebulous said:
So this is the end of CrossFire/SLi as we know it eh? Why keep making motherboards that support multi GPU's if this was already in the works? Stupid move on both parties, and a waste of resources to make these boards for it.
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At least there is still market for it on the high end side regardless it being less and less relevent. But mobo maker have other reason to add more pcie slot onto their motherboard right now: mining :ROFLMAO:
 
Ah yes, the old ATI/AMD "offload the responsibility onto the game devs" strategy. They're effectively saying mGPU is to be killed.

I'm still salty from when ATI decided to say it was up to laptop manufacturers to update ATI's Mobility drivers. Can you imagine AMD/nV saying that now? It would be class action galore. $800 4870m X2... not a single driver update.
 
WorldExclusive said:
It's hard not to go there. I haven't owned console since I joined this forum, but when DX12 hit, I've been confused about PC gaming.
I had a SLI PC for 4K gaming and it became useless. The only way to get more power I would have to purchase the Titan Xp. If that's where PC gaming is headed, I don't want any part of it.

I'm probably going to purchase the Vega Frontier Edition for my Mac Pro, the Xbox1X and PS. Times are changing.
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And you think an Xbox X is remotely going to play in native 4k at 60+ with the same level of fidelity of your PC you're quite mistaken.

Buy a 1060 or RX580 and turn down some settings, there ya go, you aren't paying out the nose and you're getting a better gaming experience than any of the consoles.
 
renz496 said:
But it was nvidia and AMD that "invent" multigpu in the first place to sell more GPU. When a single GPU was strong enough for one specific resolution both company start promoting even higher resolution or stuff like multi monitor gaming to justify the need to use crossfire or SLI. Game developer never asked for multi gpu support as part of "must have" feature in their game.
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No.

It was 3Dfx.

And, it was needed- and it still is needed, considering 4k120, VR, and future games upping the requirements.

Thankfully, all this hubbub about multi-GPU 'being killed off' is mostly BS, as engine developers are working hard to integrate support.
 
WorldExclusive said:
Not going back to buying high-end hardware for gaming, but I still enjoy the conversation about it here.
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See that's actually the beauty of PC gaming. You don't have to buy "high end" hardware to have an enjoyable gaming experience.
 
harmattan said:
I'm still salty from when ATI decided to say it was up to laptop manufacturers to update ATI's Mobility drivers. Can you imagine AMD/nV saying that now? It would be class action galore. $800 4870m X2... not a single driver update.
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AMD technically still does that to an extent. The driver they post is a reference driver with limited vendor specific support, which imo sounds like more of a catch-all statement that they won't know if it breaks anything on those laptops. Manufacturers likely have to test and optimize new drivers on their own products before releasing them on their own.

For APU laptop owners, it's even worse...they only get Crimson drivers from AMD every major release (like 17.7.2), and won't get support on any of the in-between hotfix/betas.
 
renz496 said:
But it was nvidia and AMD that "invent" multigpu in the first place to sell more GPU.
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Wrong, multigpu was created by 3Dfx and was called SLI.

So all these talk about mgpu, can anyone tell me if any games currently out supports it?

If yes, can a pc have both amd and nvidia card and work in unison?

Are the dicks at nvidia still blocking physx if they detect an AMD card installed in the same pc?

Looks like an upcoming article for [H].
 
DX12 feels more and more underwhelming every day. Its primary selling point was to minimize the CPU bottleneck, which it seems to do fairly well, if you have a crap CPU and a 1080p monitor. The way I see it... going from DX11 to DX12, you get like 5%-20% better CPU performance (depending on the software and the CPU), at the cost of 10%-80% GPU performance (depending on the software and the number of GPUs in your Xfire/SLI). I dunno man, to me it feels like one step forward and two steps back.
 
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