Interesting speculation bout new rd580 ati chipset

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Geronimo

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Since this new chipset has more pcieX bandwidth you think the dongle and/or master card requirement will be abolished. Or maye you can use 2 x1800 xl or xt ala x1600 masterless mode? What do ya think??
 
You can use the lower end cards in dual x8 slots for masterless operation. The lower end cards are designed to do that.

As far as running RD580 and Crossfire Masterless, i don't think you can. It's not a issue of the chipset, but rather the way the cards are designed. Not that they couldn't be re-engineered to communicate over the PCI-Express bus, the NVIDIA cards all can. So in that we see that it is possible since the technology is basically the same. My 7800GTX's can in fact operate that way. Though there is a performance hit though. This was something I tested because I left my bridge uninstalled by accident.

Reguardless, ATI can in fact change that anytime they want. Essentially all they'd need to do is make the cards the same, and place a protocol onboard in firmware that decides which card serves what role.
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
You can use the lower end cards in dual x8 slots for masterless operation. The lower end cards are designed to do that.

As far as running RD580 and Crossfire Masterless, i don't think you can. It's not a issue of the chipset, but rather the way the cards are designed. Not that they couldn't be re-engineered to communicate over the PCI-Express bus, the NVIDIA cards all can. So in that we see that it is possible since the technology is basically the same. My 7800GTX's can in fact operate that way. Though there is a performance hit though. This was something I tested because I left my bridge uninstalled by accident.

Reguardless, ATI can in fact change that anytime they want. Essentially all they'd need to do is make the cards the same, and place a protocol onboard in firmware that decides which card serves what role.
Click to expand...
I dunno where you got that information but any PCI-E duel card solution can work over the bus. When ATI cards dont use a dongle the GPU stitchs the images together(or CPU dont remember).
 
Wasn't the primary reason for the dongle that there wasn't enough bandwidth over x8 PCI-E? Full x16 should be pleanty of bandwidth I'd think.

I'd guess it would be possible but that extra compositing engine on the master cards would likely help performance considerably in some situations.
 
pArTy said:
I dunno where you got that information but any PCI-E duel card solution can work over the bus. When ATI cards dont use a dongle the GPU stitchs the images together(or CPU dont remember).
Click to expand...

Didn't I actually say that? But I don't think the ATI card lets you do that. I am not sure how their communications protocols work.

NVIDIA and ATI both have their own proprietary solution for improving performance on their higher end cards. Thus allowing them to scale better as they have their own dedicated bus for communication.

I could always bench my cards on my system at home with and without the bridge installed.

My motherboard uses the NForce Professional chipset and therefore has support for both I could test to find out if there is a difference in performance between using the SLI bridge and running with a full 32 lanes of PCI-E bandwidth for video.

I may just do that.
 
I am curious as well. Which is why I am going to do it.

I'd like to see if 2 PCI-Express x16 slots can alieviate the problem of communication on a proprietary bus. I am thinking it could, but maybe not in it's current implimentation.

I am thinking that ATI and NVIDIA are keeping their high end cards dual card communications off the PCI-Express bus for long term considerations or some other unknown technical factors other than just bandwidth reasons.
 
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