ATI CrossFire Preview

Closing Thoughts

The price of the CrossFire Edition video cards is set to be slightly higher than the video cards that they are complimenting. The Radeon X850 CrossFire Edition is likely to retail at $549, which should be around the same price as a Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, and the Radeon X800 CrossFire Edition will have two SKUs – a 256MB and a 128MB version. They are likely to fit in to the $299 and $249 price brackets. It is important to note that using a 128MB Radeon X800, or a 128MB Radeon X800 CrossFire Edition in conjunction with a 256MB part will result in the card with more memory disabling part of its memory footprint in order to make the two cards work together in tandem.

On the whole, CrossFire looks good. The thing that really stands put for us is the fact that the gamer does not need to fiddle around with profiles – everything is done for you and it will default to Super Tiling if there is no specific application detection for a better alternative. Instant plug and play compatibility is awesome – it is what we want, and also what gamers want to see.

This looks great on paper, but we are really interested to see how well this works in reality. We understand that hardware is not going to be available for consumers to buy for at least two months at the time of writing, and drivers aren’t close to final at the moment. ATI are working hard to ensure that they hit the ground running with this technology from the driver point of view. Support from vendors looks good, and we’re definitely interested in how well DFI’s board fares. We’ll bring you more information on that product when we get it – hopefully that should be tomorrow.

Super Anti-Aliasing is another feature that we like – it will bring a new level of realism and image quality to games that are no longer limited by the GPU. It may mean that we’re ready to fire up the likes of Quake 3 and Unreal 2 again, just to appreciate the new lease of life that Super AA is likely to deliver. The thought of 1600x1200 with 14xAA is one that is greeted with a warm fuzzy feeling – we can’t wait in all honesty.

Right now, the best solution is NVIDIA’s SLI, because you cannot buy ATI’s CrossFire solution – if you are after some dual video card goodness, you will not be wholly disappointed by NVIDIA’s SLI, and we think it is great. However, ATI’s CrossFire technology is a very interesting proposition for anyone who is considering holding tight for a couple of months, or indeed, for anyone who has their heart set on having their 3D gaming experience powered by ATI’s products.

Whichever way you look at it, the gamers are the winners here – ATI have reacted well to NVIDIA’s great technology surprise last summer, and in a little under a year have come up with something that looks great on paper. We really hope that it works as well in reality, as we’re pretty excited about CrossFire. In the mean time, NVIDIA have got their own things going on and we’re in for an interesting next few months, with next generation parts and the inevitable increased compatibility coming to SLI.

Editor's Comment: Wil Harris

Having seen CrossFire in action last week, it's certainly an impressive technology. I was incredibly sceptical about the external dongle - anyone who remembers 3DFX will remember the appalling 2D image quality the dongle caused - but I was able to see for myself that these fears were unfounded. CrossFire offers exactly the same base image quality as a single card.

For me, the major win here is the fact that Super Tiling works with every game under the sun, as long as it's Direct3D. Universal compatibility is what gamers have been wanting NVIDIA to implement for a while now, and so far, they haven't. For ATI to come along with this 'catch-all' mode is fantastic - City of Heroes, Guild Wars, Chronicles of Riddick - these are all titles from NVIDIA's The Way It's Meant To Be Played scheme that are not supported under SLI. These titles work under CrossFire and give a performance increase with SuperTiling. That is most definitely A Good Thing™.

Here's the funny thing though. By ATI's own admission, CrossFire with X800 and X850 won't be on the shelves for another two months. Before it hits the retail shelves, NVIDIA's G70 SLI will be out, which is bound to be faster. After G70 launches, ATI will bring out R520, which will also have a CrossFire Edition. It's conceivable that R520 CrossFire will [i]launch before X850 CrossFire ships. So X800 and X850 CrossFire is going to be great for people that already have an X-series card. But surely, for anyone else looking for dual-graphics, it's better to wait for R520 CrossFire or G70 SLI? The logistics are utterly baffling.

Regardless, CrossFire, as a platform, looks like a great solution - it even looks like ATI have learned how to build an enthusiast motherboard chipset. We can't wait to get our hands on a kit from ATI, and we'll be sure to bring you a CrossFire shootout (boom boom!) just as soon as we do.[/i]