Breaking News

Fujifilm announces new mirroless cameras and lens DJI Announces A New Offering to DJI Care BIOSTAR ANNOUNCES THE NEW RACING Z590GTA AND B560GTQ MOTHERBOARDS Sony Announces groundbreaking Alpha 1 Camera with 50mp and 8K Recording ASRock Launches 1L Jupiter X300 Mini PC

logo

  • Share Us
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
  • Home
  • Home
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Forum
  • Legacy
  • About
    • Submit News

    • Contact Us
    • Privacy

    • Promotion
    • Advertise

    • RSS Feed
    • Site Map

Search form

CROSSFIRE vs SLI

Jul 14,2005 0

5. The cards

 

Review Pages

1. Introduction - SLI
2. Rendering Modes
3. SuperAA
4. The mainboards
5. The cards
6. Compatibility
7. Performance
8. The future

 

Next thing you need for Crossfire is of course the graphics cards. One major advantage of Crossfire over SLI is that it doesn't require the cards to be identical. All you need is a "Crossfire Edition" card and then any card from any vendor, as long as it belongs to the same family.

The following table lists the Crossfire Edition cards along with their matching pairs.

Crossfire Edition Works with Price
X850
X850 XT PE
X850 XT
X850 PRO
$550
X800 128MB/256MB
X800 XT PE
X800 XT
X800 XL
X800 PRO
X800
All-In-Wonder X800
$250/$300

The price for an X850 Crossfire Edition is almost double that for an X800 CE. That means the X850 CE is built on an X850XT, whereas the X800 CE (unfortunately for X800XT owners), is probably just a 12-piped X800. That would mean, to get the most performance out of Crossfire, one would have to pair the X850 with an X850 XT PE.

The X850 Crossfire Edition

If you decide to match an X800 Crossfire Edition with a 16-pipeline card like the X800XT, then the XT would have its 4 extra pipelines ignored, to match performance with its counterpart. However, apart from the pixel pipelines, there is no restraint on the cards' clock frequencies. ATI claims no card gets underclocked and even Supertile runs problem-free.

The CE cards are pretty much the same as the ordinary cards we've seen before with just two differences. One is that instead of a DVI output, you'll find a new slot called DMS.

DMS
The new DMS slot

DMS looks just like DVI but serves a difference purpose. Along with your CE card, you'll find a cable dongle. This dongle is to be plugged on the DMS slot of the CE and on a DVI slot of your standard VGA card.

Two X850XT ready for action

As you can probably guess, all data is sent through that cable to the CE card. This leads us to the other difference which is the compositing engine located on board. Its sole purpose is to combine data from the two cards and prepare the final image to be output on screen as you can see in the diagram below.

Another interesting fact that differentiates Crossfire from SLI is the use of the system's physical memory. ATi utilizes system memory to hold each card's command buffer but also shared data and some more space to use for non-local memory.

Finally, note that if you unplug the dongle from the secondary card, crossfire gets automatically disabled and you can use the 4 slots along with the onboard VGA slot of the Radeon 200 Crossfire Edition to enable SurroundView for up to 5 monitors!

SurroundView

 

Review Pages

1. Introduction - SLI
2. Rendering Modes
3. SuperAA
4. The mainboards
5. The cards
6. Compatibility
7. Performance
8. The future

 

Pages

  • « first
  • ‹ previous
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • next ›
  • last »

ATI

Nvidia

Tags: ATI Nvidia
Previous Post
Asus P5WD2 Premium
Next Post
Connect3D X300SE

Related Posts

  • NVIDIA Introduces GeForce RTX 30 Series Laptops, RTX 3060 Graphics Cards, New RTX Games & Features in Special Event

  • NIO Partners with NVIDIA to Develop a New Generation of Automated Driving Electric Vehicles

  • Quake II RTX with Vulkan Ray Tracing Game Ready Driver Released

  • Cyberpunk 2077 Available Now With Stunning Ray-Traced Effects and Performance Accelerating NVIDIA DLSS

  • Minecraft with RTX Now Officially Available For All Windows 10 Players

  • NVIDIA Debuts GeForce RTX 3060 Family for the Holidays

  • GeForce NOW Streaming Comes to iOS Safari

  • NVIDIA Announces A100 80GB GPU, Supercharging World’s Most Powerful GPU for AI Supercomputing

Latest Reviews

HLDS portable DVD Android external Recorder
Optical Storage

HLDS portable DVD Android external Recorder

Crucial X6 2TB portable SSD
PC components

Crucial X6 2TB portable SSD

Migrate Windows Installation to SSD
PC components

Migrate Windows Installation to SSD

8 Best Tips to Improve MacBook Performance
Consumer Electronics

8 Best Tips to Improve MacBook Performance

Terramaster F4-210 NAS Server
Enterprise & IT

Terramaster F4-210 NAS Server

Popular News

Samsung Releases New Flash Laptop

Samsung Releases New Flash Laptop

Facebook Unveils New Technology to Fight Child Exploitation

Facebook Unveils New Technology to Fight Child Exploitation

Samsung's Next Smartphone foray: Galaxy S10, 5G, Folding Phones

Samsung's Next Smartphone foray: Galaxy S10, 5G, Folding Phones

YouTube to Invest $20m in Educational Creators

YouTube to Invest $20m in Educational Creators

Samsung HMD Odyssey+ Mixed Reality Headset Comes WithTwo 3.5-inch AMOLED Displays

Samsung HMD Odyssey+ Mixed Reality Headset Comes WithTwo 3.5-inch AMOLED Displays

Twitter's Ad Sales Surge

Twitter's Ad Sales Surge

Japanese Wireless Carriers to Cut iPhone XR Price: report

Japanese Wireless Carriers to Cut iPhone XR Price: report

Google To Deliver Personalized Audio News Lists Through AI Assistant

Google To Deliver Personalized Audio News Lists Through AI Assistant

  • Home
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Forum
  • Legacy
  • About
    • Submit News

    • Contact Us
    • Privacy

    • Promotion
    • Advertise

    • RSS Feed
    • Site Map
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Contact Us
  • Promotional Opportunities @ CdrInfo.com
  • Advertise on out site
  • Submit your News to our site
  • RSS Feed