ATI Crossfire Review @ [H]

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Looks like SLI may still be the way to go. At least ati is getting better.
 
I think they should've put a regular 7800GTX and 7800GTX SLI in there.

Looks like SLI may still be the way to go. At least ati is getting better.
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Why's that?
 
Very disapointed, after that nice little attack on ATi availability I thought maybe (H) would hold these guys accountable. Instead we get a comparison with a card that is not for sale? Didn't even bother showing us how Nv cards actually available fare. Oh well, not that I have any intention of running dual gpu's at this time anyways. :p
 
It looks like the GTX 512 was a last ditch attempt to retain the 'we have the best card' title. The XT is on par with the GTX 512, but I guess it can whoop the regular GTX.
 
I had a GTX 512, sold it to someone and it died like 3 days later... maybe ATI was right about the lifetime of the product.

Anyways, I just get the feeling that [H] is really trying to make ATI look "undesirable". I dumped my GTX and GTX 512 because of the lousy IQ (shimmering) and terrible COD2 performance online. I have been much happier gaming since switching to the X1800XT, flashing to the PE bios and swapping the cooler for a Zalman VF700. 6x AA rox and performance is smoother than the GTX 512 ever was in everything I play. (BF2, COD2, FEAR, Madden 2006, TW 2006, GTA SA, etc)

The sad fact is that the GTX 512 benchmarked faster - 3dmark, Aquamark, etc, so when looking at the numbers alone the GTX 512 would be the clear winner. But fire up a game and it was almost immediately evident the ATI X1800XT was a much better gaming card. Smoother framerates, less drops in performance, better AA and AF (my gtx512 would not AA everything in a scene in a few games, could see jaggies on one place yet the rest of the scene would be aliased). All in all Im much happier with the X1800XT and so have the few folks I've gotten to switch from GTXs and GT SLI combos. Benchmarking may not prove that the X1800XT holds the numerical superiorty but when you actually sit down and play a game it excels.

Just my 2cents.

Stop bagging on ATI for late product to market - the GTX 512s have poof up and gone so the whole availability argument out the window, also the X1800XTs are dropping so fast in price last I checked they were $489 range on Newegg. After market cooling and a bios flash - it's the fastest single card solution you can actually afford and is available to purchase.
 
hardocp's playable settings are to low. i can play quake 4 1600x1200 6xAAA and 16x AF HQ Ultra mode. i dont know what they are talking about. all those gmaes settings can have adapative enabled and 4x-6x Adapative, 16x AF HQ and are perfectly playable
 
MaxOut313 said:
hardocp's playable settings are to low. i can play quake 4 1600x1200 6xAAA and 16x AF HQ Ultra mode. i dont know what they are talking about. all those gmaes settings can have adapative enabled and 4x-6x Adapative, 16x AF HQ and are perfectly playable
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:rolleyes:

Please feel free to back up your statements with proof. As you can see we have given plenty of proof to back up ours.
 
Where is my review!

The availability of this review was very poor, it should have been available about a month ago.

I hope [H] can sort out there availability problems in the future and catch up with the competition.
 
good read. I would like to see the tests on a new board (DFI or MSI, ATI board) with a 4800+ because both companies have dual core drivers.
 
Here's to the X1900XTX review!
16 days away. I sure hope they've got the NDA and card in house already.
 
MaxOut313 said:
hardocp's playable settings are to low. i can play quake 4 1600x1200 6xAAA and 16x AF HQ Ultra mode.
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First off your system specs are different from ours. Second while Quake 4's Ultra Quality mode was playable in performance, it wasn't playable overall because of game crashes we experienced in that mode. For example even the first level airdefense1 would crash to the desktop when in Ultra Quality mode. Going down to High Quality worked just fine. There is some kind of problem with Quake4 and the X1800 XT in Ultra Quality mode. Thirdly we were able to have Adaptive AA enabled in the game, as you can see 4X AD AA. We used the default AF provided by High Quality mode in Quake 4 which is 4X AF.

i dont know what they are talking about. all those gmaes settings can have adapative enabled and 4x-6x Adapative, 16x AF HQ and are perfectly playable
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Depends on the resolution and in-game settings you have set, I always opt to maximize in-game quality settings and raise resolution to 1600x1200 before I engage TR SSAA (or forms thereof), unless the game just looks ugly at 1600x1200 with no AA then I'll drop it down to 1280x1024 and crank up the AA to what is playable, either way I always use the in-game AA/AF settings available. It is all totally dependent per game, so you can't really make a wide sweeping statement like that.
 
I think it was a good review guys, and it shows that Nvidia has had more time to prefect SLI more than ATi's Crossfire. Nvidia had there same growing pains as ATI is now. But one thing is why did you guys use the 512MB GTX when for one is no where to be found and two, is much more money, at least 100-150$ easy. Another thing is why did you guys bash ATI with no master cards in stock. I understand it is intergreal part, but with X1900 comming I am willing to bet we will see very limited master cards. I guess late is better than nothing.Lately Hardocp has been very hard on ATI and for somethings is completely valid, but others I really don't see the big deal. Anyways still I find hards reviews some of the best B/C the way they test, and attention for details in there reviews. Congrats and keep them comming through 2006.
 
I say give ATi as much time as nVidia had for fixing SLi, and Crossfire will be a good decision. You have to give ATi the benefit of the doubt that they know about the problems and are working to fix them. GO GREEN!
just kidding.
 
Brent_Justice said:
First off your system specs are different from ours. Second while Quake 4's Ultra Quality mode was playable in performance, it wasn't playable overall because of game crashes we experienced in that mode. For example even the first level airdefense1 would crash to the desktop when in Ultra Quality mode. Going down to High Quality worked just fine. There is some kind of problem with Quake4 and the X1800 XT in Ultra Quality mode. Thirdly we were able to have Adaptive AA enabled in the game, as you can see 4X AD AA. We used the default AF provided by High Quality mode in Quake 4 which is 4X AF.



Depends on the resolution and in-game settings you have set, I always opt to maximize in-game quality settings and raise resolution to 1600x1200 before I engage TR SSAA (or forms thereof), unless the game just looks ugly at 1600x1200 with no AA then I'll drop it down to 1280x1024 and crank up the AA to what is playable, either way I always use the in-game AA/AF settings available. It is all totally dependent per game, so you can't really make a wide sweeping statement like that.
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def understand where u are coming from. but i wouldnt consider the crashes a playable settings thing. Thats driver flaws and not to amke arguement. by the way i just didnt the video stress test in losat coast at two settings. ill post them in second.
 
AndoOKC1 said:
defintely late....

brought nothing new to the table
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Yep even the drivers used are dated. I hope (H) gets back on track, as their reviews used to be the best. Wonder if Ati is withholding hardware? Guess we will see with the upcoming launch.
 
great review. after reading this, i'd have to go with the 7800GTX sli, as for the games i play fear and bf2, there is a large gap between the crossfire and sli..
 
TheJackal said:
great review. after reading this, i'd have to go with the 7800GTX sli, as for the games i play fear and bf2, there is a large gap between the crossfire and sli..
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Good luck in finding a pair of 512MB GTX's anywhere.
 
TheJackal said:
great review. after reading this, i'd have to go with the 7800GTX sli, as for the games i play fear and bf2, there is a large gap between the crossfire and sli..
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You mean 7800gtx 512mb SLI ;) Good luck finding them. Kinda wish they'd included the 7800gtx SLI results too.
 
MaxOut313 said:
Ok i test to resolutions. Just for your info. The game was run at max settings. HDR mode on full bloom. In windows i had my settings on 6x AA (Adpative = Quality), 16x AF (High Quality), best mipmap quality, vsynce on off unless appz wants to. Again these both are playable.

Here is 1280x1024 result
http://img493.imageshack.us/my.php?image=12809he.jpg

Here is 1600x1200 result
http://img334.imageshack.us/my.php?image=16007dq.jpg
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The video stress test means nothing in terms of actual gameplay performance.

We actually play the game to determine what is playable, we look at many situations and types of gameplay in the game to determine what is playable. Basically, we play the game.
 
Brent_Justice said:
The video stress test means nothing in terms of actual gameplay performance.

We actually play the game to determine what is playable, we look at many situations and types of gameplay in the game to determine what is playable. Basically, we play the game.
Click to expand...

Oh I know u do. Who wouldnt with a system like that. I've also played the game and the reason why I only posted the fps is to just show ya my average so u can compare. U cant see my game and i cant see yours. None the less its that way with all reviews but we base if off them, kinda round them all up, and make a decision on what we like. I will admit at certain parts when Im facing that one part where my fps drops to maybe 40 then yea i wouldnt say thats playable, but it only happens at one or two parts in that whole level when im standing perfectly still. The rest is smooth as silk. See from what i get out of that is if i overclock it just enough that stutter will go away (x1800xt highly overclockble, crossfire when possible). Again i know u played the game, but i did also and im a total nut about stutters in games and any little glitch. That crap just annoy's me and im just stating how mine runs. I dont know if windows X64/64bit mode lost coast, or the fact that my drivers are 5.13 makes a difference, but the game is playable.. One more thing u should add to the review is the super AA results. In other reviews i've read i've noticed X1800XT crossfire always topped the 7800GTX 512 SLi in super AA modes (eye candy).
 
ill skip all of this stuff for now, none of it seems mature or affordable enough yet - maybe next year

i guess we'll be seeing 8800 vs. x2xxx sometime, that's when my market strikes :p

anyway nice review...if I had a crossfire mobo, could I buy any master card i want and use it with my x850 xt?
 
HopePoisoned said:
ill skip all of this stuff for now, none of it seems mature or affordable enough yet - maybe next year

i guess we'll be seeing 8800 vs. x2xxx sometime, that's when my market strikes :p

anyway nice review...if I had a crossfire mobo, could I buy any master card i want and use it with my x850 xt?
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if u had a mobo u could buy a master card but it has to be the X800 series crossfire card and both have to be pci-e. X1800xt crossfire card isnt capatible with x800 series cards
 
Kinda wierd to read a review of a product that will be "last generation" in 16 days; made me read the first and last page only.

My big question is why do the "evaluation" with a phantom card called the GTX 512? The X1800XT was to go after the 7800GTX since those were the only cards available at launch for both vendors. The GTX 512 is a refresh part which should be compared to ATI refresh part releasing in 16 days.
 
to tell you the truth i'm very suprised to see how CLOSE the x1800XT is to the GTX512, for being a card that seems to only obtain the performance crown it doesn't take it by much (maybe in need for speed)

if i had any extra money to spare i'd go with the X1800XT if the X1900 was being released in 16 days, the review was great and it does show how powerfull Crossfire can be

kudos to ATI for getting the platform so solid already and performing great, now fix your performance problems with need for speed because i actually play that right now with my XL :(
 
the review seems to be a bit off its mark.
considering that the 1800XT is priced in between the gt and the 512.
it would have been nice to include both.
(and maybe include the 1800 XL)
 
I was hoping to see some FP HDR + AA numbers, the Farcry beta patch
is on the net for some time now.

Oh i see, the GTX/512 rig can't do that. :)
 
What took so long to kick this review out the door? And why were the 5.12's used, even when 5.13s were made available on the 21st of december, three weeks ago?

Catalyst 5.13 release notes said:
Catalyst® Release Note Version 5.13

The WDM version 8.20 is installed on:
· All-in-Wonder® X1800 Series
· All-in-Wonder® X800 Series
· All-in-Wonder® X600 Series
· All-in-Wonder® 9800 Series
· All-in-Wonder® 9700 Series
· All-in-Wonder® 9600 Series

The WDM version 4.07 (6246) is installed on:
· Radeon® 9200 series or earlier All-in-Wonder® products.
· ATI VIVO™ products

Note: These release notes provide information on the Radeon® display driver only. For information on the ATI Multimedia Center™, HydraVision™, HydraVision Basic Edition, WDM, Remote Wonder™, or the Southbridge/IXP driver, refer to their respective release notes found at: https://support.ati.com/
ATI Desktop product family support

The Catalyst® software suite is designed to support the following ATI desktop products:

* Radeon® X1800 series
* Radeon® X1600 series
* Radeon® X1300 series
* Radeon® X850 series
* Radeon® X800 series
* Radeon® X700 series
* Radeon® X600 series
* Radeon® X550 series
* Radeon® X300 series
* Radeon® 9X00 series
* Radeon® 8500 series
* Radeon® 7X00 series

Note: ATI All-In-Wonder™ variants based on the above are also supported.
Note: All ATI Radeon® PC Graphic cards are optimized for Microsoft's Media Center Edition 2005 when coupled with a supported video capture card.
ATI Chipset Product Support

The Catalyst® software suite is designed to support the following ATI chipset products:

* Radeon® Xpress 200 series
* Radeon® 9000 IGP
* Radeon® 9100 IGP
* Radeon® 9100 IGP Pro
* IXP 300

ATI FireMV™ 2D Drivers Support

The Catalyst® software suite 5.13 also provides 2D graphics driver support for the following FireMV™ products:

* FireMV™ 2400
* FireMV™ 2200 PCIe
* FireMV™ 2200

Operating systems supported

The latest version of the Catalyst® software suite is designed to support the following Microsoft Windows platforms:

* Windows XP
* Windows XP Media Center Edition (graphics driver support only)
* Windows 2000

Note: As of January 1, 2004, Microsoft no longer accepted certification submissions for the Microsoft® Windows® Millennium Edition operating system. The ATI Catalyst® CREW however is committed to all its customers and is now providing non certified WHQL software drivers for users of the Windows Millennium Edition operating system. Windows Millennium Edition users can obtain the software driver at: http://www.support.ati.com/. Windows 98/98SE is supported through the ME driver.
New Features

This section provides information on new features that are introduced in this release of Catalyst®. New features include:

* H.264 Hardware Acceleration
* ATI CrossFire™ Support for the ATI Radeon® X1800
* HQV Video Benchmark Support

H.264 Hardware Acceleration

Catalyst® 5.13 software suite introduces H.264 hardware acceleration for the ATI Radeon® X1800, X1600, and X1300 product line. H.264 is advanced video coding that provides significant reduction in bit-rate compared to standards such as MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. The ATI Radeon® X1800, X1600, and X1300 products provide hardware acceleration for the playback of high-definition content that is encoded using H.264. Using the Catalyst® software suite 5.13, along with the Cyberlink H.264 decoder available from http://www.ati.com/technology/h264.html provides H.264 hardware acceleration.
ATI CrossFire™ Support for the ATI Radeon® X1800

ATI CrossFire™ allows for multiple Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to be placed within a single PC, to provide superior gaming performance. The Catalyst® 5.13 software suite is the first Catalyst® to provide ATI CrossFire™ support. CrossFire™ support is available when an ATI Radeon® X1800 CrossFire™ Edition product is installed with another Radeon® X1800 product. Further information on ATI CrossFire™ can be found at: http://www.ati.com/technology/crossfire/faq.htm

HQV Video Benchmark Support

The Catalyst® software suite 5.13 introduces full support for the HQV DVD Benchmark. These driver tweaks provide a better DVD image quality, and higher benchmark scores.
Issues Resolved in Catalyst® Software Suite 5.13

The following section provides a summary of the issues that have been resolved in the latest version of Catalyst®. These include:

* F.E.A.R: Slow game performance is no longer noticed when using CrossFire. Further information on this resolved issue can be found in topic number 737-21270
* The Video Preview no longer fails to change to its default settings when swapping the display mappings using the Catalyst® Control Center. Further information on this resolved issue can be found in topic number 737-21174
* Attempting to stretch the display horizontally using the Catalyst® Control Center, no longer results in the horizontal stretch mode failing to be applied unless the display is stretched vertically first. Further information on this resolved issue can be found in topic number 737-21175
* The PowerPlay™ option found in the Catalyst® Control Center no longer defaults to the enabled state after initial install of the display driver for systems containing an ATI Radeon® Xpress 200 series product. Further information on this resolved issue can be found in topic number 737-21180
* Auto-detect no longer fails to be applied as the default setting for the Deinterlacing option when first entering the Video aspect page of the Catalyst® Control Center. Currently the option is set as Weave. Further information on this resolved issue can be found in topic number 737-21185
* Catalyst® Control Center: Attempting to extend the desktop display when using a CRT, TV and DFP display devices no longer results in display corruption being noticed on the primary display adapter. Further information on this resolved issue can be found in topic number 737-20982
* Attempting to set the CRT as the primary display device after hot-plugging a DFP display device and enabling extended desktop mode, no longer results in the CRT failing to be set as the primary. Further information on this resolved issue can be found in topic number 737-21269
* Catalyst® Control Center: Entering the Overdrive™ aspect and changing the GPU setting to 509 and the memory setting to 505 no longer results in color corruption and the Windows XP operating system rebooting. Further information on this resolved issue can be found in topic number 737-21229

Known Issues for Catalyst® Software Suite 5.13

The following section provides a summary of open issues in the latest version of Catalyst®. These include:

* BattleField 2 Special Forces: A blooming or ghosting effect may be noticed when playing the game in night vision mode. Further details can be found in topic number 737-21263
* Beyond Good and Evil: Flickering artifacts are noticed on the game characters after approximately 15 minutes of game play. Further details can be found in topic number 737-20795
* Dark Age of Camelot: The game exits to the desktop immediately after launching, or may play for up to 15 minutes followed by a VPU Recover error message being displayed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-20794
* Dragonshard: Playing the game under Windows XP Media Center Edition with CrossFire™ enabled, may result screen becoming out of sync, and a scrolling display image occurring shortly there after. Further details can be found in topic number 737-20975
* Fable: The Lost Chapters: Playing the game under Windows XP MCE may result in the shadows found within the game appearing jittery, when the desktop resolution is set to 1024x768 32bpp, and all the game options are set to default. Further details can be found in topic number 737-21184
* Serious Sam 2 Demo: Enabling CrossFire™ may result in a performance drop being noticed when playing the game under Windows XP Media Center Edition. Further details can be found in topic number 737-20976
* WARHAMMER: DAWN OF WAR: Starting a skirmish game on a 4 player map under Windows XP, may result in the game performance appearing choppy when using an ATI Radeon® X800 series, and having all of the game options set to high. Further details can be found in topic number 737-20974
* World of Warcraft: A VPU Recover event may occur when launching the game with high level avatar and rotating or zooming within the Blackwing Lair or within Searing Gorge Further details can be found in topic number 737-21265
* Catalyst® Control Center: The SmartShader™ effect is not removed from the 3D preview when attempting to restore the default values in the Catalyst® Control Center. Further details can be found in topic number 737-20846
* The Apply button in the Custom settings of the Advanced mode, within the Catalyst® Control Center Video standard settings, is grayed out when playing a media file. Further details can be found in topic number 737-497
* Connecting an HDTV to an ATI Radeon® X700 series may result in the HDTV being detected as a CRT or TV under the Windows XP operating system. Further details can be found in topic number 737-20783
* Attempting to install the integrated WDM driver under Windows XP may result in an error message being displayed indicating that the hardware is not installed because the install Wizard cannot find the necessary software. Further details can be found in topic number. 737-20784
* The PAL FM fine tuning algorithm is currently using 200 MHz bandwidth which may overlap FM channels resulting in the same FM channel being found several verdana during the scan function. Further details can be found in topic number 737-20979
* Launching the Adobe Gamma calibration application and moving the gamma slider back and forth, results in the Task Manager being filled with cli.exe until the system becomes low on memory. Further details can be found in topic number 737-20980
* Catalyst® Control Center: The preview for the Deinterlacing aspect found in the Catalyst® Control Center is currently unavailable when using the ATI Radeon® X1300. Further details can be found in topic number 737-20986
* The Video Preview found in the Standard Settings of the Video option of the Catalyst® Control Center may fail to provide a preview after hotplugging an LCD panel to an ATI Radeon 9500 or 9800 and selecting to extend the desktop. Further details can be found in topic number 737-21173
* Connecting two display devices to the ATI Radeon® X850 CrossFire™ Edition and one display device to the ATI Radeon® X850 XT may result in the display device connected to the Radeon® X850 XT still being active once CrossFire™ is enabled. Further details can be found in topic number 737-21177
* The WDM Drivers may not be enumerated due to the Capture chip not being detected when using the ATI Radeon® X850 XT (ViVo) as a slave card on a system containing an ATI Radeon® X850 CrossFire™ Edition. Further details can be found in topic number 737-21178
* The secondary display device may fail to activate when attempting to enable clone mode when using an ATI Radeon® X800 GTO. Further details can be found in topic number 737-21179
* Using the Custom option when installing the software driver results in the Theater™ 550 software driver not being present. Further details can be found in topic number 737-21183
* The apply button may remain inactive when attempting to change the Hue and Saturation settings found in the TV Properties\Avivo Color settings when enabling a TV as the primary display device and a CRT as the secondary display device. Further details can be found in topic number 737-21264
* Connecting two display devices to an ATI Radeon® X1600 series product may result in the device manager failing to detect the secondary display device. Further details can be found in topic number 737-21266
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Brent_Justice on 25 December said:
It is in the editting phase
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So a full four days after the X1800 series received official crossfire driver support, you did not re-test the X1800 crossfire benchmarks, and did not publish the review until 14 days after that?
 
Tytanium said:
What took so long to kick this review out the door? And why were the 5.12's used, even when 5.13s were made available on the 21st of december, nearly three weeks ago?

So it's either a seriously compromised review, or you guys have some re-benching to do? Or will you wait for X1900?
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they probally started with the 5.12's and you really can't change mid way through. Its in my opinion the hard does not like ati and is not trying to show them in there best light. Simple as that.
 
Vengance_01 said:
they probally started with the 5.12's and you really can't change mid way through. Its in my opinion the hard does not like ati and is not trying to show them in there best light. Simple as that.
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But for the sake of accuracy and fairness, would they not be obligated to test the hardware with drivers that officially support the hardware it's installed on?
 
Vengance_01 said:
they probally started with the 5.12's and you really can't change mid way through. Its in my opinion the hard does not like ati and is not trying to show them in there best light. Simple as that.
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LOL, people said the same thing about NVIDIA back in the FX days.
 
how come you guys didnt use the fear fix ><? doesn't renaming it help 0.0? without compromising visual quality?

nvm it doesnt help anymore =) maybe it was fixed
 
Agromahdi123 said:
I say give ATi as much time as nVidia had for fixing SLi, and Crossfire will be a good decision. You have to give ATi the benefit of the doubt that they know about the problems and are working to fix them. GO GREEN!
just kidding.
Click to expand...

That's flawed logic because what your saying is hey give Nvidia time to release a refresh to compete with the XT that was half a year late compared to the 256mb GTX which they did anyways the 512mb GTX.

Or you can say hey give ATI more time with avivo since nvidia has had it on older series cards for a long time.

Oh well it just doesn't make sense.
 
R1ckCa1n said:
Kinda wierd to read a review of a product that will be "last generation" in 16 days; made me read the first and last page only.

My big question is why do the "evaluation" with a phantom card called the GTX 512? The X1800XT was to go after the 7800GTX since those were the only cards available at launch for both vendors. The GTX 512 is a refresh part which should be compared to ATI refresh part releasing in 16 days.
Click to expand...

That doesn't make sense ATI was like half a year late on the X1k and they should be compared to older just because? Wow real world people use common sense please!
 
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