Crossfire limited to 16X12 resolution!

[nRollo]

http://www.rage3d.com/index.php?cat=75#newsid33828812

This means that the max 3D resolution for any X8-series Crossfire setup is 1600x1200 @ 60Hz! That means no high-res Crossfire gaming beyond 1600x1200, no 1600x1200 at a flicker free refresh rate, and no widescreen 1920x1200!

What a joke. Apparently ATI thinks no one will buy Dell 2405s, or owns a high end CRT. Crossfire seems to be targeted at people whose monitor budget is much lower than their video card budget.

Anyone remember all the complaints about no widescreen on SLI originally? I assume those same people will see this as at least as bad, IMHO, much worse.

16X12 at 60Hz?!?!? Hope you like eyestrain and headaches.

 

[amdnVuser]

WTF are ATI and Silicon Image thinking?

 

[fbrdphreak]

:Q:Q:Q:Q:Q:Q

 

[xtknight]

Now it's really useless. wtf I don't understand. It can't be that hard to make it dual-link so you can go higher res. Don't their current cards already have it? Certainly they've done it before in the FireGL series, and now they can't do it where it's really needed. What really irks me is the dual-link chips are probably not that much more expensive than the single-link.

 

[Munky]

I dont think anyone would seriously consider getting a x850 x-fire system, because there are now single cards that offer similar performance. And AFAIK this limitation is due to the Silicon Image chip used for DVI, so if they use a newer, better chip on the r520 then it's not a problem. It would suck, however, if the r520's were also limited by this setup.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: munky
I dont think anyone would seriously consider getting a x850 x-fire system, because there are now single cards that offer similar performance. And AFAIK this limitation is due to the Silicon Image chip used for DVI, so if they use a newer, better chip on the r520 then it's not a problem. It would suck, however, if the r520's were also limited by this setup.

Why didn't they just use an internal link like NVIDIA? It's patented or something? At the rate they're going I'm surprised they didn't link the two cards together with a composite video connection.

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: munky
I dont think anyone would seriously consider getting a x850 x-fire system, because there are now single cards that offer similar performance. And AFAIK this limitation is due to the Silicon Image chip used for DVI, so if they use a newer, better chip on the r520 then it's not a problem. It would suck, however, if the r520's were also limited by this setup.

Why didn't they just use an internal link like NVIDIA? It's patented or something? At the rate they're going I'm surprised they didn't link the two cards together with a composite video connection.

I also would like to know why they couldnt make it work without any connectors? I mean Nv made SLI functional without the bridge (although a bit slower), why coudnt Ati do that? And why does it need it's own mobo/chipset? I'm not likely to ditch my DFI Ultra-D to switch over to crossfire, especially when I can have SLI for free, technically.

 

[nRollo]

Where are the "Crossfire is a more elegant solution" guys now?

Let's see:

Last we heard here at AT, AA only works on D3d games that allow you to enable it in the game.

Now we learn you can only use it up to 16X12, at an eyeball burning 60Hz refresh rate that hasn't been acceptable since the 1970s.

What's next? It will only run in DOS? :roll:

ATI really screwed the pooch with this "tech"......

 

[Hacp]

To all you ATI guys out there, don't feed the trolling.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Hacp
To all you ATI guys out there, don't feed the trolling.

I wouldn't call this "trolling".

I think anyone even half considering this needs to be made aware of these huge limitations?

 

[BFG10K]

I have serious doubts about this being true but if by some chance it is it's one of the greatest balls-ups of all time.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
I have serious doubts about this being true but if by some chance it is it's one of the greatest balls-ups of all time.

I actually heard about this a couple weeks ago from an industry insider, but didn't want to spread rumors.

If Rage3d is posting it, I think we can assume it's true.

 

[SynthDude2001]

:Q

I wasn't too keen on the external DVI cable connection thing to begin with, but to limit a (supposedly) super-high-end video solution to 1600x1200@60Hz...doesn't make sense at all. Anyone with more than a <$400 2001FP will be out of luck if they go that route, essentially.

Edit: I wonder if they could use something like reduced blanking interval to go above 16x12@60? Most single link DVI connections can drive 1920x1200@60Hz... (Then again, I know nothing about how this DVI/TMDS setup is going to work for data transfer )

 

[BFG10K]

Most single link DVI connections can drive 1920x1200@60Hz...

That's still totally unacceptable. You should be able to do at least 2048x1536@85 Hz to match what single GPUs can do now.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Most single link DVI connections can drive 1920x1200@60Hz...

That's still totally unacceptable. You should be able to do at least 2048x1536@85 Hz to match what single GPUs can do now.

Oh, I agree. I was actually thinking about that excluding 2048x1536 (at any refresh rate), but I forgot to include that in my post.

This doesn't sound good...

 

[jiffylube1024]

Time for Rollo to buy a Dell 2405 to really drive the point home.

On topic, this is a dumb idea by ATI. It's not a total and utter dealbreaker (2005fpw, 2001fp: A-OK ), but I think it's pretty bad. Equally bad, IMO is the need for Master cards (which I think is often overlooked). The need for two different types of cards is a royal pain in the arse, and something Nvidia doesn't make users do.

I still think SLI is an extremely niche idea, so the ATI version of Rollo will be peeing his pants at this news, but for the most part it's not something I'm going to lose sleep over, or most users.

Originally posted by: Rollo
Where are the "Crossfire is a more elegant solution" guys now?

Did anybody ever say this, or is this just typical Rollo bravado?

The Master card thing alone makes it much more clunky. That and the point that NF4 (with or without SLI) is the de-facto Athlon64/gaming motherboard, and that nobody can actually buy Crossfire boards makes ATI late to the party with dual GPU, unprepared (Crossfire market penetration: 0%), with inferor dual-GPU tech.

 

[Velk]

If true, that amounts to financial suicide for crossfire.

How many people buying a special board to support dual video card setups have a low end monitor ?

Craziness.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
I still think SLI is an extremely niche idea, so the ATI version of Rollo will be peeing his pants at this news, but for the most part it's not something I'm going to lose sleep over, or most users.

Would that person be The Anti-Rollo?

:beer:

 

[ZobarStyl]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
Did anybody ever say this, or is this just typical Rollo bravado?

The original AT preview had people boasting that Xfire was more elegant due to its ability to do tiling and the fact that it didn't need game profiles (which of course is false). At the time, it did make Xfire look nicer, but if this is true, this could be the most insane bungle ever in the GPU industry. If this proves to be true, it's the final nail in Xfire's coffin. First it's 10 months behind the competition, then the required motherboard has a bugged southbridge, now it can't even push the resolutions it's designed to do. Can't see any reason why someone would buy it now.

 

[ddogg]

lol ATI is digging themselves into a deeper hole everytime!!

 

[remagavon]

Well, at least this makes me want only one R520.

It's one of the wallet-saving features of ati's new hardware. Yay.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: Rollo
http://www.rage3d.com/index.php?cat=75#newsid33828812

This means that the max 3D resolution for any X8-series Crossfire setup is 1600x1200 @ 60Hz! That means no high-res Crossfire gaming beyond 1600x1200, no 1600x1200 at a flicker free refresh rate, and no widescreen 1920x1200!

What a joke. Apparently ATI thinks no one will buy Dell 2405s, or owns a high end CRT. Crossfire seems to be targeted at people whose monitor budget is much lower than their video card budget.

Anyone remember all the complaints about no widescreen on SLI originally? I assume those same people will see this as at least as bad, IMHO, much worse.

16X12 at 60Hz?!?!? Hope you like eyestrain and headaches.

I agree it is kind of weak. But most of us gamers now have LCD's, so the refresh rate isn't going to cause eye strain. But I do believe that the resolution cap it kinda weak... It does rule out the high end LCD Monitors.

 

[Pr0d1gy]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Most single link DVI connections can drive 1920x1200@60Hz...

That's still totally unacceptable. You should be able to do at least 2048x1536@85 Hz to match what single GPUs can do now.

Yeah, but as long as it does 1280x728 @ 60hz there will still be a market for it honestly. You know there are plenty of people out there who will get this setup for their HDTV/media center PC's to play games & watch movies & such with. Honestly, this setup will probably run all the games that come out for the next 4-6 years on an HDTV screen, so it's going to be a somewhat moot point to many people....meanwhile there are obviously a ton of you who feel differently...lol

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
I still think SLI is an extremely niche idea, so the ATI version of Rollo will be peeing his pants at this news, but for the most part it's not something I'm going to lose sleep over, or most users.

Would that person be The Anti-Rollo?

:beer:

Perhaps... I was thinking he might be called Anti-Rollo, or negative Rollo, Ollor, ATI-Rollo... Or maybe he's a she .

Originally posted by: ZobarStyl

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
Did anybody ever say this, or is this just typical Rollo bravado?

The original AT preview had people boasting that Xfire was more elegant due to its ability to do tiling and the fact that it didn't need game profiles (which of course is false). At the time, it did make Xfire look nicer, but if this is true, this could be the most insane bungle ever in the GPU industry.

^I don't know, in order for that to be true, you'd have to ignore the Voodoo 4/5/6 series, Rage MAXX, everything produced by XGI, etc...

If this proves to be true, it's the final nail in Xfire's coffin. First it's 10 months behind the competition, then the required motherboard has a bugged southbridge, now it can't even push the resolutions it's designed to do. Can't see any reason why someone would buy it now.

I can't see why anyone would buy it either, frankly...

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: Pr0d1gy

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Most single link DVI connections can drive 1920x1200@60Hz...

That's still totally unacceptable. You should be able to do at least 2048x1536@85 Hz to match what single GPUs can do now.

Yeah, but as long as it does 1280x728 @ 60hz there will still be a market for it honestly. You know there are plenty of people out there who will get this setup for their HDTV/media center PC's to play games & watch movies & such with. Honestly, this setup will probably run all the games that come out for the next 4-6 years on an HDTV screen, so it's going to be a somewhat moot point to many people....meanwhile there are obviously a ton of you who feel differently...lol

But why would you buy a $1000 (presumably) Crossfire setup to play at ~720p?