ATI's dual-graphics board Crossfire solution supports Intel's latest 955X chipset, as was demonstrated in the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.
Like Nvidia's SLI, Crossfire allows two graphics chips on different boards to render parts of an image. A compositing engine puts the images together and feeds them to the display. In a variety of games, the dual-card solution can get close to twice the performance.
In the demonstration, a pair of RADEON X850 XT video cards were installed on the Intel D955XBK motherboard, in the provided PCI-Express slots.
Top of the line Intel chip set 955X and the D955XBK motherboard, which offers Serial ATA and dual PCI-Express interfaces, multiple graphics slots and support for DDR2 dynamic random access memory.
Intel has been shipping 955X boards with dual graphics slots for a while now and this is official confirmation that CrossFire won't require an ATI chipset motherboard, opening up the opportunity for system builders to continue to use chipsets they're already familiar with.
ATI representatives at IDF also said that all of the X800 cards from ATI will support Crossfire, including the X800GT and X800GTO.
CrossFire is due to be launched in the middle of next month with ATI's current generation of cards. Although the cards will not support Shader Model 3.0, ATI fans will have the chance to taste the CrossFire technology in a new set of video cards and motherboards, until the launch of ATI's highly anticipated R520 (SM3) cards.
At the same show, rival NVidia showcased its nForce4 SLI X16 on the PS600 platform from Dell.