ATI fires the next blow in the battle of video technology with their Crossfire solution. Unlike ATI's rival, Crossfire will not depend on game specific profiles will work with almost any Direct3D or OpenGL game, but it will require specific motherboard support. Anandtech has an in-depth look, complete with benchmarks. HardOCP and Tech Report have previews as well. (Thanks, Shack)
Looking at all the features, if performance ends up equal or in ATI's favor, we have to consider CrossFire the more interesting solution. The flexibility of easily using multiple displays along side multi-GPU performance combined with the option of enabling higher quality AA (including rotated grid SSAA) is impossible to ignore. Add to that the ability to upgrade existing hardware without needing an exact match and we are sold.
... The performance of the solution was equally impressive; at 1024x768 the dual GPU CrossFire setup improved performance by 49%. At 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 the performance went up by 72% and 86% respectively. We had our doubts that ATI would be able to offer performance scaling on par with what we've seen on NVIDIA's SLI but these initial numbers, despite being run on early hardware/drivers, are quite promising.
Looking at all the features, if performance ends up equal or in ATI's favor, we have to consider CrossFire the more interesting solution. The flexibility of easily using multiple displays along side multi-GPU performance combined with the option of enabling higher quality AA (including rotated grid SSAA) is impossible to ignore. Add to that the ability to upgrade existing hardware without needing an exact match and we are sold.
... The performance of the solution was equally impressive; at 1024x768 the dual GPU CrossFire setup improved performance by 49%. At 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 the performance went up by 72% and 86% respectively. We had our doubts that ATI would be able to offer performance scaling on par with what we've seen on NVIDIA's SLI but these initial numbers, despite being run on early hardware/drivers, are quite promising.