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Masterless Crossfire

J

Joobot

n00b
Joined
May 25, 2006
Messages
44
http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=3724
We got pics of the new Crossfire here. Intresting indeed.

Okay, the board they're on is obviously an ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe, meaning that the Crossfire controller must be on EACH card as opposed to a mastercard or on the mobo. It also has 2 connectors, which I'm guessing one comes with each card. Double the bandwidthe? Who knows. This also means XHD Dual-Link DVI for Crossfire now. Very good news for any 2560x1600 users out there. I hope this will be available on R580+. Not for me, but for ATI's sake. If this new Crossfire pans out, I may wait for an RD600 with Conroe, as opposed to my current dream of a P5B/Deluxe.

I still say the best thing ever would be an Intel dual x16 that supported SLI and Crossfire. Not that that will ever happen.
 
Interesting.

Im sure the dongle hating people are really excited for this.

ATI did say Crossfire is going to greatly improved by the end of the year. Time to play the waiting game and wait for ATI to announce this.
 
That is interesting.

I like how they used a flexible strip to connect the two cards together. It means motherboard designers don't have to be restricted by the distance between the cards.

NVidia take note.
 
Never understood why everyone got their panties into such a wad over the dongle anyway, it sits at the back of your pc, how often are you gonna see it? The way people got on was like it had a 4 foot flourescent sign over it saying please look down here for the dongle. :rolleyes: :eek:
 
its not the dongle for me... its the whole "great now where the F*** do i get me a "Crossfire Edition" master card!" issue...
 
^^ exactly, that would be the bigger issue, sure people complain aout the dongle, but i think those were more NVIDIA lovers who thought the SLI bridge was superior.

it would be nice if you could get diff size bridges for that, the flexibility of it is much better then a solid piece of plastic.
 
Yea, that must mean the bridges come with the cards. If they came with the mobos, why make flexible ones? The only major problem with the dongle is no XHD. Other than the dongle, your upgrade otions are very limited with the current setup. Like to get Crossfire with an X1900GT, you need an X1900XTish Crossfire board. That just looks weird, and doesn't make sense. Or there was no way to pair an X1900XTX with an equivelent card.
 
Mysterae said:
That is interesting.

I like how they used a flexible strip to connect the two cards together. It means motherboard designers don't have to be restricted by the distance between the cards.

NVidia take note.
Click to expand...

Umm high end Asus SLI MB's (like that ATI one) ship with a flexible SLI bridge.. So that is a ASUS thing, not a ATI thing..

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/12/20/asus_a8n32-sli/1.html
"Rather than the typical PCB-based SLI bridge, ASUS has decided to include a ribbon-based 'soft' SLI bridge."


==>Lazn
 
Thanks for the heads up Lazn_Work, I hadn't seen the ribbon cables on any other rigs before.

The dongle thing isn't a big deal to me, I have one between X1900's but you have to think it costs the manufacturers more to produce than a ribbon cable. Those savings can be given to the customer :rolleyes: .

Getting rid of the CF edition card would end the confusion of some noobs who can't search/won't search and just can't seem to get a grip of it.
 
its not that I cant search or dont understand it...

its just a matter of the fact that I am a poor singey bastard... I build a system every 5 years and future proof it. So if I buy a x1800 now, then 2 years from now when I need more performance I can find another x1800 to go with it.

and whats with the whole all in wonders not doing crossfire anyways!? make a crossfire edition all in wonder, and we'd be talken...
 
Mysterae said:
That is interesting.

I like how they used a flexible strip to connect the two cards together. It means motherboard designers don't have to be restricted by the distance between the cards.

NVidia take note.
Click to expand...
My A8N32-SLI Deluxe came with a flexable bridge.

Mysterae, take note.
 
Mysterae said:
That is interesting.

I like how they used a flexible strip to connect the two cards together. It means motherboard designers don't have to be restricted by the distance between the cards.

NVidia take note.
Click to expand...

That is the motherboard designers CHOICE. ASUSs makes their new ones flexible, NVIDIA isn't forcing anything

Im cool and dont read the rest of the thread to see this has been posted twice before me lol sorry
 
GUYS, the flexible Crossfire bridge is special because it's CROSSFIRE. Crossfire motherboards don't come with it right now, and I doubt they will in the future. I am certain they must come with the graphics cards. That being said, them being flexible is special because they have to work with multiple motherboards, as opposed to ASUS's flexible SLI that are built specifically for the motherboard they come with.

The guy had never seen flexible SLI, and saw an innovation that made sense. It can reach across two expansion slots, such as most 975Xs, and can reach across three, like most Xpress 3200 out there.
 
Mysterae said:
That is interesting.

I like how they used a flexible strip to connect the two cards together. It means motherboard designers don't have to be restricted by the distance between the cards.

NVidia take note.
Click to expand...

You're implying that the manufacturers would include bridges that don't fit their own motherboards :rolleyes:
 
Sly said:
You're implying that the manufacturers would include bridges that don't fit their own motherboards :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Thats what i was thinking, and since when have board makers been restricted by the sli bridge? Its just a pcb, make it longer.
 
Am I missing something here, the X1600 series supported masterless crossfire from the beginning. Wouldn't it make sense that any newly released series would also support it?

Now the bridge thing is new because the X1600s didn't need a bridge or dongle of any sort if I remember correctly.
 
This master-less Crossfire will be higher end.

What he's saying is if they made hard bridges come with the graphics cards, then all the motherboards would have to have the same distance. I think he's also working under the assumption of the bridges coming with the cards.
 
pakotlar said:
ATI is starting to catch up with Crossfire. I'm sure they are keeping nVidia busy.
Click to expand...


switching to an internal dongle has nothing to do with catching up.
 
Mysterae said:
That is interesting.

I like how they used a flexible strip to connect the two cards together. It means motherboard designers don't have to be restricted by the distance between the cards.

NVidia take note.
Click to expand...

I have three ribbons from NVIDIA that are flexible, one in fact is 7 inches long. It is up to the mobo makers to include whatever connector they want.
 
Chris_B said:
Never understood why everyone got their panties into such a wad over the dongle anyway, it sits at the back of your pc, how often are you gonna see it? The way people got on was like it had a 4 foot flourescent sign over it saying please look down here for the dongle. :rolleyes: :eek:
Click to expand...

It is a more messy solution than a nice and neat internal connection. There are bandwidth concerns as well as signal degradation and interference concerns. Also the whole master/slave concept is not as appealing as just buying 2 of the same card and putting them together. ATI is learning though, it looks like their next gen CrossFire stuff is going to kick ass.
 
Mysterae said:
Thanks for the heads up Lazn_Work, I hadn't seen the ribbon cables on any other rigs before.

The dongle thing isn't a big deal to me, I have one between X1900's but you have to think it costs the manufacturers more to produce than a ribbon cable. Those savings can be given to the customer :rolleyes: .

Getting rid of the CF edition card would end the confusion of some noobs who can't search/won't search and just can't seem to get a grip of it.
Click to expand...

The problem is you have to buy a more expensive card to make CrossFire work with a less expensive card. The beauty of two of the same cards is that they are the same price.
 
MrGuvernment said:
switching to an internal dongle has nothing to do with catching up.
Click to expand...

Yes it does. It allows 2560*1600 resolution in Crossfire configuration, as well as the convenience of not having a Crossfire series Master Card, which is generally very hard to find. I see those as benefits that nVidia has with SLI.
 
It also means faster communication. Come on, how well can the mastercard communicate with the slave through a DVI connection made for video? It seems silly. And, with no mastercard, it's possible both cards will be doing Crossfire management. So more bandwidth and more processing? Also, I think ATI's Crossfire drivers are still young, and have lots more optimizing to do. Like the Chuck Patch helped quite a bit for some games in Crossfire, right?
 
Yes, I was under the impression the flexible bridge came with the video card, after all the dongle comes with the CF mastercard. I was also thinking about the R&D deparments of video card and manufacturers, they don't always talk to each other. By making the bridge flexible, it's one less restriction to worry about when designing the motherboard to accomodate their video cards.

It will be more important when motherboards have more than 2 PCIe slots, giving the user the option of where to put each card.
 
You just gave me a brilliant idea! 7 full PCIe x16 SLOTS!

HAHA, I know it's not possible with current chipsets, but wouldn't that be something? They could run graphics cards and any other PCIe device. If only Creative would make a PCIe soundcard, and Ageia a PCIe PhysX then we'd be set! A master chipset that could do SLI and Crossfire at the same time! For no reason!
 
The composite chip on the master enables this sort of thing. Look at the number in first chart below for SLi 8xAA at 1600x on 7900GTXs. Then look at the second chart for Crossfire 14x Super AA at 1600x as well. Here at every resolution Crossfire 14x Super AA is faster than nVidia SLi AA at 8x.

cod8x2rq.gif


cod16x4yi.gif
 
I think that's becasue SLI chipsets processes SLI, while in order for this new Crossfire to work on old Crossfire motherboards, both cards are going to require the master chip.
 
pakotlar said:
Yes it does. It allows 2560*1600 resolution in Crossfire configuration, as well as the convenience of not having a Crossfire series Master Card, which is generally very hard to find. I see those as benefits that nVidia has with SLI.
Click to expand...

Um, you can do 2560x1600 with an X1xx series Crossfire. The resolution limitation was only found on the X8xx Crossfire, which is no real loss since those older cards wouldn't have the horsepower to do much 3d at that res even if they could display it.

Joobot said:
It also means faster communication. Come on, how well can the mastercard communicate with the slave through a DVI connection made for video?
Click to expand...

Count the pins in a DVI-D connector, then count the "teeth" on a SLI bridge. I think you'll be surprised how much data can be passed over the dongle connection, in ADDITION to what's being passed over the PCI-e bus. And ask yourself, what's the "D" in DVI stand for?

Remember, it's bandwidth and speed concerns that makes a dongle required on X1800 and X1900 setups, even when running on dual PCI-e x16 motherboards. Crossfire gets more bandwidth by using the dongle, AND it speeds up the image stitching process by letting the compositing chip do that work, leaving the both GPUs to do the actual rendering.

Joobot said:
It seems silly. And, with no mastercard, it's possible both cards will be doing Crossfire management. So more bandwidth and more processing?
Click to expand...

Don't underestimate the power/utility of the master card's compositing chip, which offloads some of the work from the GPU itself. From ATI's Crossfire FAQ
ATI Crossfire FAQ said:
3. What is the difference between CrossFire Ready graphics cards and CrossFire Edition graphics cards?

A. CrossFire Edition graphics cards include a “compositing engine” chip on-board. This chip takes the partially rendered image from the CrossFire Ready graphics card, and merges it with the partially rendered image from the CrossFire Edition graphics card. The result is a complete frame rendered at up to twice the performance of a single graphics card. The CrossFire compositing engine is a programmable chip that offers flexible support of different graphics cards, allows a superior feature set (advanced compositing modes), and enables further enhancements to be quickly implemented on next generation products. The CrossFire compositing engine also offers a performance benefit over combining the final image on the GPU.
Click to expand...

If the R600 and later cards won't require a master card to run in Crossfire, I can almost guarantee that means that some form of a compositing chip will either be found on every high-end card rather than just being found on CFE cards. If not, that means the R580+ or R600 has oodles more horsepower, and can spare the cycles to handle the compositing tasks, or has put the compositing functionality on-die.

Joobot said:
Also, I think ATI's Crossfire drivers are still young, and have lots more optimizing to do. Like the Chuck Patch helped quite a bit for some games in Crossfire, right?
Click to expand...

I don't disagree with ATI needing more time to smooth out Crossfire, but in many ways it's more mature at this point in its life than SLI was at the same point. Also, the Chuck Patch really didn't boost performance in anything, even Oblivion, it just allowed one feature combo to be enabled in one game.

Just to make this perfectly clear, I'm no fan of the Master/Slave concept, I'm just like everyone else that would like to go out and simply buy two matched cards and be done with it, saving a few bucks in the process. But with this generation of cards, I can put up with needing a Crossfire Edition and paying a ~10% price premium for that card, because the results are worth it to me in this generation of games.

The dongle itself I don't mind that much, it's behind my computer which is shoved close to a wall so I never see the thing when I'm not tinkering with the box. Then again I'm not a case modder, nor do I build rigs to display at LAN parties, so that particular offense to aesthetics doesn't bother me.
 
Croak said:
Um, you can do 2560x1600 with an X1xx series Crossfire. The resolution limitation was only found on the X8xx Crossfire, which is no real loss since those older cards wouldn't have the horsepower to do much 3d at that res even if they could display it.
Click to expand...
But doesn't 2560x1600 require dual-link DVI? With the Crossfire dongle, you can only use 1 DVI connector. I could be horribly wrong though.
 
Joobot said:
But doesn't 2560x1600 require dual-link DVI? With the Crossfire dongle, you can only use 1 DVI connector. I could be horribly wrong though.
Click to expand...

Yeah, you are :)

You've made the common error of confusing DUAL LINK with dual DVI connectors.

Dual Link is the connector/cable type (and associated hardware on the video card and monitor), that is backwards compatible with regular DVI connectors.

Single link DVI uses one TMDS 165Mhz transmitter, while dual link DVI uses two. The 6 extra pins on Dual Link DVI and second transmitter built into the video card double the power of transmission and provide the increase in bandwidth and signal quality needed for higher resolutions.

dvi-d-dual-link-digital-video-interface-cable.jpg
 
So, is this masterless configuration compatible with the current Crossfire mobos?
 
pakotlar said:
Yes it does. It allows 2560*1600 resolution in Crossfire configuration, as well as the convenience of not having a Crossfire series Master Card, which is generally very hard to find. I see those as benefits that nVidia has with SLI.
Click to expand...

You can do 2560x1600 now.

Where do you live? Here in the US, a CF card is very easy to find. A fast look at newegg, shows 10 in stock. ZZF and MonarcPC have several as well.
 
Wow, that makes so much more sense. Yeah, this new Crossfire will work on current Crossfire boards. The pics are shown on an A8R32-MVP.
 
All of this improvement is making that R600 Crossfire Conroe rig very tempting. It may be my next rig!!! I can't wait to see what these new GPU's bring. With R600 I'll bet Crossfire drivers will be much more mature and give SLi a run for it's money. I'll see how they measure and buy what's better. Man competiton is great!
 
fallguy said:
You can do 2560x1600 now.

Where do you live? Here in the US, a CF card is very easy to find. A fast look at newegg, shows 10 in stock. ZZF and MonarcPC have several as well.
Click to expand...

Ok, well it seems i was wrong on a couple of points. However, I still stand by the idea that not having to rely on Crossfire edition cards will give us benefits in flexibility of configurations. And it is a "neater" solution. And there may be bandwith benefits that we don't know about yet (though this is probably a moot point). Also, while x1900 Crossfire cards are readily available right now (there at least were supply issues some time back) they are also more expensive than x1900xt's by ~$50 us. And x1800,x1600,x1300 crossfire cards are not available (at least not on newegg).
 
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