crossfire ready?

D

daveisconfused

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 28, 2004
Messages
208
hello, i just bought an ABIT fatal1ty mobo and a radeon X850 crossfire edition video card and i look on the box when i got it, it says i need a crossfire ready motherboard.. what does this mean? will i be able to use the motherboard i got anyways? thanks
 
daveisconfused said:
hello, i just bought an ABIT fatal1ty mobo and a radeon X850 crossfire edition video card and i look on the box when i got it, it says i need a crossfire ready motherboard.. what does this mean? will i be able to use the motherboard i got anyways? thanks
Click to expand...

The short answer is that you'll need a new motherboard, based either on the Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire Edition or the Intel i955X, to run a Crossfire SLI system. Further details can be found here:

http://www.ati.com/technology/crossfire/faq.html
 
asianguy80 said:
Isn't Crossfire ATi's answer to nVidia's SLI, so Crossfire != SLI (?)
Click to expand...

It is only if you use the definition of SLI which is two cards connected together, either via cable or other means, to share 3D rendering duties. However, the root technology that is used by both companies end there. For example, while Nvidia uses a "bridge" adapter ATI uses a cable. Another difference is that while Nvidia will only allow you to do SLI between two cards based on the same chipset. ATI, on the other hand, will allow you do to their form of SLI with any card providing it is Crossfire ready.

In both cases however they only play nice with their own chipsets and/or video cards. The only company that has managed SLI without using either Nvidia's or ATI's chipsets is ULi. However, even then they are totally dependent upon the display driver "closing the switch" so to speak to turn that feature on otherwise the two cards will not communicate with each other.
 
pjladyfox said:
It is only if you use the definition of SLI which is two cards connected together, either via cable or other means, to share 3D rendering duties. However, the root technology that is used by both companies end there. For example, while Nvidia uses a "bridge" adapter ATI uses a cable. Another difference is that while Nvidia will only allow you to do SLI between two cards based on the same chipset. ATI, on the other hand, will allow you do to their form of SLI with any card providing it is Crossfire ready.

In both cases however they only play nice with their own chipsets and/or video cards. The only company that has managed SLI without using either Nvidia's or ATI's chipsets is ULi. However, even then they are totally dependent upon the display driver "closing the switch" so to speak to turn that feature on otherwise the two cards will not communicate with each other.
Click to expand...

Ahhh I see, thanks for clearing that up. I just thought it was kind of weird to hear Crossfire and SLi together. :p
 
pjladyfox said:
It is only if you use the definition of SLI which is two cards connected together, either via cable or other means, to share 3D rendering duties. However, the root technology that is used by both companies end there. For example, while Nvidia uses a "bridge" adapter ATI uses a cable. Another difference is that while Nvidia will only allow you to do SLI between two cards based on the same chipset. ATI, on the other hand, will allow you do to their form of SLI with any card providing it is Crossfire ready.

In both cases however they only play nice with their own chipsets and/or video cards. The only company that has managed SLI without using either Nvidia's or ATI's chipsets is ULi. However, even then they are totally dependent upon the display driver "closing the switch" so to speak to turn that feature on otherwise the two cards will not communicate with each other.
Click to expand...

This is only partially true. All SLi and Crossfire really require are motherboards with either 2 x16 PCI-Express slots (mechanical) and at least x8 PCI-E lanes for each slot. That is all. It's just standard PCI-E stuff. All the card communication is handled by the dongle in ATi's case and the SLi Bridge on the SLi cards. So while each technology is proprietary, in that they work a certain way for each companies cards, the motherboard stuff is the same.

All the initial nVidia SLi demos were done with Intel Turnwater based motherboards. SLi and Crossfire BOTH are capable of being done on non-nVidia/ATi chipsets and using the other companies chipsets. The problem is that sometime after the nForce 4 became plentiful, nVidia and ATi both have locked their drivers so they won't run on other chipsets.

Intel's i955x chipset won't have this limitation only because Intel is trying to get ATi and nVidia to unlock their drivers.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top