Topic: Crossfire or SLI

[Dracho]

I'm thinking about a new board, and I plan to use 2 graphics cards.  What's everyone's opinion on crossfire vs. ATI? From what I read, Crossfire seems to have a substantial technical edge, and that seems to be where I am leaning.

Mostly because:

A) I already have an ATI Radeon X1900 card
B) Crossfire does not require the cards to be identical, like SLI.
C) Crossfire has 4 different methods of display, with checkerboarding and Super antialaising seemingly to be a superior methodology.

[Sirgod]

That's a tough one, I'm pretty familiar with ATI, so I'd be hesitant to change. Kinda like the whole why fix it If It's not broken, But If the tech has an edg, I can see the lure to go that way.

Stephen

[Elvis]

I'm currently running an SLI system; 2 7800GTs.

Is your 1900 a crossfire edition card? If it is not you are going to have to get a crossfire edition( not crossfire ready) card. The crossfire edition has the necessary hardware to merge the work of 2 cards into 1 image.  If your using 2 different ATI cards the number of pipelines defaults to the lowest number between the 2 cards. The cards do run at the exisitng capablities however. The other benefit of using crossfire is multiple monitors, SLI does not support multiple displays.

As far as SLI is concerned you don't need 2 of the exact same card, just 2 with the same gpu; they could be different manufacturers. I like the way SLI is implemented, 2 of the same cards can be bridged together, rather than having a mother/daughter card set up. I also think the SLI bridge is a better way to go than the crossfire dongle set up.

[Javora]

SLI is the only way I would go in a duel video card setup as of right now as SLI is much more mature than ATI's Crossfire platform.  Crossfire (as of this writing) requires you to buy a "Master" video card where as SLI only requires you to buy two card from the same class.  Also as of right now when you run a duel ATI video card setup, ATI's Avivo display program must be turned off.  This Avivo is how ATI processes it's HD video, currently SLI doesn't have that limitation.  ATI also takes a hit in FPS where game speed is concerned in Crossfire.

It pains me to say this because I like ATI, in fact I'm running a ATI in my system now.  In time I think that ATI's crossfire will catch up to what nVidia is doing with SLI but I can't recommend crossfire to anyone at this time.  In fact when I build my new system at the end of the year, I plan on building the system around SLI myself.  Hope this helps.

[Dracho]

Well, I went with Crossfire because I already owned too much hardware.  Turns out, I have a X1600 XT with 512 of DDR3, not a x1900.  However, though it's not as fast as a 1900 series, the 1600 uses radiation cooling and does not needs its own power, so that helps with the power problems caused by 2 cards.  Also, the 1600 has 2 GPU's onboard.  Finally, the 1600 series does not need a crossfire cable or a crossfire master card.  2 1600s will communicate through the PCiE bus.

I bought another identical Visiontek x1600 XT card and a DFI LANPARTY DFX3200 CR motherboard (for my AMD 3500 processor).  It's running a GB of Dual Chanel 400 MHZ RAM, and I have to say I was impressed.  I initially had some problems getting Crossfire to work with the ATI drivers, but when I uninstalled the drivers and re-installed them clean, everything worked fine. (MB does not have a parallel port though, which annoys me).

This configuration ate Obvilion alive.  I jumped the screen up to 1200x900 and maxed the settings and it felt like I needed to run Moslo to throttle it down.  Anyone know a good FREE video benchmarking tool?

I also think I may upgrade my processor, but I am at a loss as to whether to go with an AMD 64x2 Dual Core, or an AMDFX chip for gaming.  any opinions?  The most annoying part of the experience was having upgraded my PC too many times and Windows XP Pro made me call some guy in India, who asked me 4 times how many PCs I was running windows on, before he'd give me an autorization code.  If MS is going to treat me like a thief even if I buy a ligitimate copy of their product, I'm not seeing a lot of logic in why I shouldn't just run a bootleg copy.

[Javora]

Well, I went with Crossfire because I already owned too much hardware.  Turns out, I have a X1600 XT with 512 of DDR3, not a x1900.  However, though it's not as fast as a 1900 series, the 1600 uses radiation cooling and does not needs its own power, so that helps with the power problems caused by 2 cards.  Also, the 1600 has 2 GPU's onboard.  Finally, the 1600 series does not need a crossfire cable or a crossfire master card.  2 1600s will communicate through the PCiE bus.

Be careful, I've heard of ATI having problems ruining data through the PCIe.  Mostly with the 1900 series but IMHO I would try to stay on the safe side of things and use the data cable if you can.  Also since your video cards are running without fans make sure you have really good air flow in your PC case to avoid overheating the components.

This configuration ate Obvilion alive.  I jumped the screen up to 1200x900 and maxed the settings and it felt like I needed to run Moslo to throttle it down.  Anyone know a good FREE video benchmarking tool?

Wow, I've heard Oblivion is a resource hog.  I'm glad to hear your having good luck with the ATI setup, gives me hope that ATI can still turn things around.  As for the benchmarking tool I'll try to find one later on after I can get some sleep.  Although I'm surprised we don't already have one listed in the free software thread.

I also think I may upgrade my processor, but I am at a loss as to whether to go with an AMD 64x2 Dual Core, or an AMDFX chip for gaming.  any opinions?  The most annoying part of the experience was having upgraded my PC too many times and Windows XP Pro made me call some guy in India, who asked me 4 times how many PCs I was running windows on, before he'd give me an autorization code.  If MS is going to treat me like a thief even if I buy a ligitimate copy of their product, I'm not seeing a lot of logic in why I shouldn't just run a bootleg copy.

The best thing you can do right now is wait a month or two and see how things shake out with the release of the latest AMD and Intel chips.  After we see who wins the latest round of the processor wars, buy from whoever wins.  Plus buying the latest processor chipset will allow you easier upgrade path in the future.  IMHO your pocketbook will thank you for waiting.


P.S.  You should be able to find a good benchmarking tool here:  http://www.majorgeeks.com/    It's one of the first places I would have started looking for one.  Hope this helps.

[Nemesis]

Crossfire with Intel CPUs is effectively dead with the AMD/ATi merger followed by Intel revoking the bus license that ATi needed to make Intel compatible chips.  So no more ATi chipsets for Intel.  No more Intel chipsets with Crossfire.