digitalfreak
Limp Gawd
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Any proof that Crossfire will work on Nforce4 SLI boards?
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Does Crossfire work on Nforce4 boards?
- Thread starter digitalfreak
- Start date
Does dog sperm work in cat uterus?
Of course not! My understanding is that Intel has the most flexible of architectures for multiple graphics setups and that ATi decided work with intel to make XF work on intel mobos with some driver updates. I would imagine that this is because ATis entry into the chipset arena has been rough with extremely slow adoption.
Of course not! My understanding is that Intel has the most flexible of architectures for multiple graphics setups and that ATi decided work with intel to make XF work on intel mobos with some driver updates. I would imagine that this is because ATis entry into the chipset arena has been rough with extremely slow adoption.
to be honest i'm suprised that Crossfire doesn't work on an Nforce4 board, the only thing the Nforce4 board is doing is going from 16x1 to 8x8 PCIe configuration, its the cards themselfs and the software that should be doing the SLI/Crossfire..
if ATI were smart, they see the Nforce4 market as a place they can expand to, by not providing compatability with these motherboards they are essentially cutting those people out as potential customers. Which they may not care, but just seems like a bad business decision..
i guess one question is, has anyone even tried it? has anyone thrown a crossfire set of cards on an Nf4 board and to see if crossfire will enable?
if ATI were smart, they see the Nforce4 market as a place they can expand to, by not providing compatability with these motherboards they are essentially cutting those people out as potential customers. Which they may not care, but just seems like a bad business decision..
i guess one question is, has anyone even tried it? has anyone thrown a crossfire set of cards on an Nf4 board and to see if crossfire will enable?
Un4given said:
i would like to see a little bit of an article or written proof of this..
will ATI cards work at all in an Nf4 boards?
if the ATI cards work in the PCIe slot of an NF4 board as a single card, i don't see any reason why they wouldn't work in crossfire unless ATI has something in their own motherboard that is required for crossfire..
like i said, all the NF4 board is doing in SLI configuration is changing the PCIe configuration from a 16x1 to an 8x8 lanes. its the Video card drivers themselves that are doing the SLI for Nvidia cards..
i guess i just don't understand enough of what ATI is doing in crossfire , whether it is strictly a driver enabled or if the ATI motherboards are somehow controlling the crossfire.
its all part of the chipset. Ati's will work in nforce 4 boards but everything really comes down to the motherboard chipset. Nvidia motherboard only knows how to do sli period images and data is handled totally different with ati's Crossfire so that is why you can't use crossfile on sli boards because it's just not hard coded into the board.
psychoace said:
As far as I know, there is no reason a crossfire setup will not work with an Nforce sli board. The main culprit is the drivers, I believe a different driver would be needed to have both cards communicate with each other through the nforce chipset. Hopefully sooner, rather than later something comes out.
Since all of the compositing work is done on the cards with ATi, the only thing that the motherboard needs to do is switch to and 8x8 PCI-e lane for the two x16 slots. However, detection of a multi-card setup is easy enough and could be prevented unless qualifying NV hardware is detected, and thus the reason why they could easily disable the ability of X-Fire from functioning in an NF4 based system.
NV knows they can't restrict any single card solution from working in their systems, or they would completely lose their motherboard chipset market, especially among the OEM vendors. However, such high-end workings like SLI are such a small portion of users, and such a specialty item, that disabling the ability of other multi-card solutions would not be such a big deal.
We know Brent has both an NF4 SLI board and X-Fire hardware. I wish we could get him to make a quick test of this. I'd be interested to know for sure myself.
NV knows they can't restrict any single card solution from working in their systems, or they would completely lose their motherboard chipset market, especially among the OEM vendors. However, such high-end workings like SLI are such a small portion of users, and such a specialty item, that disabling the ability of other multi-card solutions would not be such a big deal.
We know Brent has both an NF4 SLI board and X-Fire hardware. I wish we could get him to make a quick test of this. I'd be interested to know for sure myself.
xX_Jack_Carver_Xx
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2005
- Messages
- 2,542
The only reason Crossfire doesn't work in SLI boards and SLI doesn't work in Crossfire boards is.... the respective companies have crippled thier drivers to DIS-ALLOW the functionality.
Until thier customers make enough of a stink, they will continue this strategy. Early prototype drivers for Crossfire actually worked on an SLI NF4 board last fall, at CeBit I believe.
Basically DFI's NF4 SLI motherboard is the best A64 board out there and unfortunately you cant use X1800 X1900 etc Crossfire on it. The current Crossfire motherboards all suck. Oh well.
But ther eis NO TECHNOLOGICAL REASON why SLI/Crossfire aren't functional on ANY x8/x8 PCI-e motherboard.
Until thier customers make enough of a stink, they will continue this strategy. Early prototype drivers for Crossfire actually worked on an SLI NF4 board last fall, at CeBit I believe.
Basically DFI's NF4 SLI motherboard is the best A64 board out there and unfortunately you cant use X1800 X1900 etc Crossfire on it. The current Crossfire motherboards all suck. Oh well.
But ther eis NO TECHNOLOGICAL REASON why SLI/Crossfire aren't functional on ANY x8/x8 PCI-e motherboard.
This is the important fact in the grand scheme of things, its not that nvidia dissallows crossfire on nforce4 boards, its that ATI themselves disable it through the driver, they must want to sell more of their chipsets, thats why the video driver disables it, nothing to do with the chipsets.xX_Jack_Carver_Xx said:
copyright infringment? SLI i believe is owned by Nvidia (who bought out 3dfx) so ATi would have to liscense said property in order to use it. So they had to find another way to handle dual card configuration and if it worked on sli boards they might be paranoid about the nvidia lawyers
well after thinking about it i did some detective work
http://voodoopc.blogspot.com/2005/12/nvidia-buys-uli-makes-sense-to-me.html
interesting note
From this take it sounds like they were able to run crossfire on an NF4 board or a slightly modified one..
i was unable to find any instances where someone actually plugged in and tried the ATI cards in crossfire on an NF4 board.. i guess until someone tries that we really will never know.
http://voodoopc.blogspot.com/2005/12/nvidia-buys-uli-makes-sense-to-me.html
interesting note
From this take it sounds like they were able to run crossfire on an NF4 board or a slightly modified one..
i was unable to find any instances where someone actually plugged in and tried the ATI cards in crossfire on an NF4 board.. i guess until someone tries that we really will never know.
xX_Jack_Carver_Xx
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2005
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Umm,
copyright infringment? SLI i believe is owned by Nvidia (who bought out 3dfx) so ATi would have to liscense said property in order to use it. So they had to find another way to handle dual card configuration and if it worked on sli boards they might be paranoid about the nvidia lawyers
SLI is NVs way of doing dual video cards. It counts on a minimum (2) x8 PCIe slots to be able to work. The exact implementation with bridge card, etc is NV's. Crossfire is ATI's implementation.
Both hold one thing in common, (2) x8 PCIe slots. The MOTHERBOARD need only supply that requirement, beyond this the MOTHERBOARD has nothing to do with SLI or Crossfire.
SLI or Crossfire will work on ANY (2) x8 or (2) x16 [like the ASUS AN32] motherboard UNLESS the company codes thier drivers to specifically NOT WORK on a non-whatever-Im-not board.
Ati and NV have both decided to code thier video drivers to implement this policy. The policy is not in the best interests of thier customers, it is to allegedly protect thier marketing positions. I for one, as a customer, am not interested in thier marketing positions, I want the frigging product to WORK for me, solving my problems. I want to use 2 x1900's on my DFI NF4 motherboard. I cannot solely due to ATI's refusal to allow this by coding thier drivers to support Crossfire only on Crossfire motherboards.
If may be possible to HACK the ATI drivers to trick them into thinking a NF4 is a CFire motherboard, but noone has done it yet. The early driver that allowed NF4 use was an alphatest level that didnt even have the prohibition coding in it to bother asking.... gee, what motherboard am I on?
ATI, NV, knock of the bs and provide your customers with the solutions THEY WANT not what you feel like allowing. All you accomplish is selling FEWER video cards, as I am forced to go 2x7800 ultimately instead of 2-x1900. Oh well, your loss.
copyright infringment? SLI i believe is owned by Nvidia (who bought out 3dfx) so ATi would have to liscense said property in order to use it. So they had to find another way to handle dual card configuration and if it worked on sli boards they might be paranoid about the nvidia lawyers
SLI is NVs way of doing dual video cards. It counts on a minimum (2) x8 PCIe slots to be able to work. The exact implementation with bridge card, etc is NV's. Crossfire is ATI's implementation.
Both hold one thing in common, (2) x8 PCIe slots. The MOTHERBOARD need only supply that requirement, beyond this the MOTHERBOARD has nothing to do with SLI or Crossfire.
SLI or Crossfire will work on ANY (2) x8 or (2) x16 [like the ASUS AN32] motherboard UNLESS the company codes thier drivers to specifically NOT WORK on a non-whatever-Im-not board.
Ati and NV have both decided to code thier video drivers to implement this policy. The policy is not in the best interests of thier customers, it is to allegedly protect thier marketing positions. I for one, as a customer, am not interested in thier marketing positions, I want the frigging product to WORK for me, solving my problems. I want to use 2 x1900's on my DFI NF4 motherboard. I cannot solely due to ATI's refusal to allow this by coding thier drivers to support Crossfire only on Crossfire motherboards.
If may be possible to HACK the ATI drivers to trick them into thinking a NF4 is a CFire motherboard, but noone has done it yet. The early driver that allowed NF4 use was an alphatest level that didnt even have the prohibition coding in it to bother asking.... gee, what motherboard am I on?
ATI, NV, knock of the bs and provide your customers with the solutions THEY WANT not what you feel like allowing. All you accomplish is selling FEWER video cards, as I am forced to go 2x7800 ultimately instead of 2-x1900. Oh well, your loss.
I thought Ati and Nvidia handled there processes differently aswell. I know nvidia has each card working on half the screen while Ati I believe runs a little differently. To have this done the drivers and the chipset on board will have to distribute the date differently then it normally would to each card. I would believe they wouldn't make it an all software affair so I am sure there are some optimizations for each method in the chipset. So you probably can run crossfire under an sli board but I bet it wont be as optimized as geforce boards doing sli. Also I am sure if Nvidia allowed Ati card's to run on there board Ati would sue Nvidia for allowing there technology to be run on nvidia's system without paying the proper liscence and vice versa. Remember it's all about the mighty dollar not about who is the friendliest company
xX_Jack_Carver_Xx said:
Um you do know this is exactly what they want right? By making 1 format the standard you are forced to buy more of one product. So it's Ati's loss but it's another win for Sli domenance and makes for a much more lacking chance at a unified system. Buying neither at all would be the optimal choice. I mean you said all it accomplishes is selling fewer video cards but yet your still buying two no matter what.
Nvidia staff just took a high five break because of your comment.