question about ATi crossfire technology

[kingpinxB]

from what it looks like and what i understand the board only needs 2 PCI-Ex16 slots to run crossfire... correct me if i'm wrong but shouldn't the DFI NF4 ultraD be "crossfire ready", or is ATI going to make it proprietary technology in their R200 crossfire motherboards?

 

[Matthias99]

Earlier reports made it sound like you needed a special motherboard, but the article on AT today made it sound like it should work in any board that can take two or more PCIex16 graphics cards.

As with the last dozen threads on this topic, we'll really have to wait until ATI puts out a product until we know for sure.

 

[kingpinxB]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
Earlier reports made it sound like you needed a special motherboard, but the article on AT today made it sound like it should work in any board that can take two or more PCIex16 graphics cards.

As with the last dozen threads on this topic, we'll really have to wait until ATI puts out a product until we know for sure.

well i plan on using it either way, I'd jsut rather not have to go through a motherboard THAT quickly and i HAAATE swaping them out.

 

[Bar81]

While it technically could work in nvidia SLI boards odds are ATI will only enable it to work in dual PCI-E physical x16 slot ATI, SiS, and Intel boards. No reason to support the enemy.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Bar81
While it technically could work in nvidia SLI boards odds are ATI will only enable it to work in dual PCI-E physical x16 slot ATI, SiS, and Intel boards. No reason to support the enemy.

By that logic, ATI graphics cards shouldn't work in NForce chipset-based motherboards at all. :disgust:

Artificially limiting their graphics card market would be incredibly stupid. If it can work in any dual-PEG motherboard, it will almost certainly work in today's NForce4 SLI boards.

 

[Bar81]

You obviously have no clue about promoting a product. The only thing incredibly stupid would be your brilliant idea to have ATI help sell nvidia products. I guess by your genius logic then nvidia should enable its SLI technology to work in Intel boards. Oh wait, they haven't done that have they? What a bunch of idiots? You better email them and tell them how to properly manage their product </sarcasm>

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Bar81
You obviously have no clue about promoting a product. The only thing incredibly stupid would be your brilliant idea to have ATI help sell nvidia products. I guess by your genius logic then nvidia should enable its SLI technology to work in Intel boards. Oh wait, they haven't done that have they? What a bunch of idiots? You better email them and tell them how to properly manage their product </sarcasm>

Actually, NVIDIA first demoed SLI on an Intel-based Tumwater chipset with two PCIe x16 slots. Thanks for playing.

They're not "helping sell NVIDIA products", they're creating a larger market for their own video cards. Artifically limiting the market to their own motherboards is dumb -- they wouldn't sell enough ATI motherboards to make up for it. And there's some fraction of people who simply won't ever buy a relatively unproven ATI-based motherboard, but will buy an ATI video card and put it in an NVIDIA or VIA motherboard. I'm sure they'd like to do this, and deny some MB sales to NVIDIA, but they don't have enough marketshare in the motherboard market to make it feasable.

Again, by your logic, NVIDIA video cards should only work on NVIDIA chipsets, and NVIDIA chipsets should be incompatible with everyone else's video cards. Isn't NVIDIA "helping sell" ATI products by letting ATI video cards work on their motherboards? And "helping sell" VIA motherboards by letting their video cards work with them?

Think about it. They'll sell more of both products if they are interoperable with the competitors. In a competitive market like this, artifically limiting the audience for one of your products is a really, really bad idea.

 

[exar333]

i agree, it would be a good idea to have these cards compatible with nforce chipsets as well....ATI cant expect to saturate the market with it's 1st gen boards, it might be able to make a more proprietery system the next time around, but just getting the cards out should be their first priority....

i would LOVE (dripping with sarcasm) to see only Nvidia cards work with Nvidia and ATI only work with ATI boards

then we all lose

 

[Bar81]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: Bar81
You obviously have no clue about promoting a product. The only thing incredibly stupid would be your brilliant idea to have ATI help sell nvidia products. I guess by your genius logic then nvidia should enable its SLI technology to work in Intel boards. Oh wait, they haven't done that have they? What a bunch of idiots? You better email them and tell them how to properly manage their product </sarcasm>

Actually, NVIDIA first demoed SLI on an Intel-based Tumwater chipset with two PCIe x16 slots. Thanks for playing.

They're not "helping sell NVIDIA products", they're creating a larger market for their own video cards. Artifically limiting the market to their own motherboards is dumb -- they wouldn't sell enough ATI motherboards to make up for it. And there's some fraction of people who simply won't ever buy a relatively unproven ATI-based motherboard, but will buy an ATI video card and put it in an NVIDIA or VIA motherboard. I'm sure they'd like to do this, and deny some MB sales to NVIDIA, but they don't have enough marketshare in the motherboard market to make it feasable.

Again, by your logic, NVIDIA video cards should only work on NVIDIA chipsets, and NVIDIA chipsets should be incompatible with everyone else's video cards. Isn't NVIDIA "helping sell" ATI products by letting ATI video cards work on their motherboards? And "helping sell" VIA motherboards by letting their video cards work with them?

Think about it. They'll sell more of both products if they are interoperable with the competitors. In a competitive market like this, artifically limiting the audience for one of your products is a really, really bad idea.

Look, I'm not arguing that it would be preferable for all systems to interoperate. For those people who think Xfire/SLI is a good idea (I'm not one of them) then that is the optimal situation.

I think the thing that you are ignoring is that both nvidia and ATI want to make money from chipset sales on the desktop. That's where your Tumwater example doesn't change things. nvidia knows that no person with half a care about their business is going to buy an nvidia chipset based server mobo, so they allow SLI on Intel chipsets.

On the other hand, the desktop arena, where all the sales are for chipsets, has nvidia denying simply through drivers interoperability of SLI with ANY other chipset besides their own. Why? Because they're in the business to make money, and if they can get every SLI user to buy their chipset based mobos along with their nvidia video cards, that means more profit for nvidia. That's *exactly* why you don't see SLI being enabled on SLI ready Intel 955X chipsets. Nvidia knows that enabling the SLI on the Intel chipsets will kill their Intel SLI chipset sales.

ATI is in a little bit of a different position. ATI knows SLI is already established but it doesn't want to help nvidia sell more nvidia chipset based mobos. So, ATI has done the smart thing and allowed Xfire to be used on everything BUT nvidia based mobos. Why? Because it's starting from behind. If you're a user who wants to run Xfire, you have the option of using ATI, Intel, or SiS motherboards. ATI obviously makes money from its own chipset sales and also racks up royalties on every SiS Xfire enabled mobo. Why give Intel free Xfire? Because ATI knows that Intel chipsets are still in a league of their own and nvidia chipsets are certainly not of the same caliber. Many Intel users will feel more comfortable getting Intel Xfire than nvidia SLI which helps Xfire establish itself in the market, and even without the chipset sales/royalties, ATI is still getting cash from the video cards, particularly the only through ATI Xfire Master cards. Even more importantly nvidia is losing out on both chipset sales in the Intel arena as well as video card sales. Given that sales in the Intel arena in all areas continue to dwarf AMD, it seems a smart decision to get in bed with Intel and allow their chispets to support Xfire for free.

As you can see, ATI's marketing strategy, rather than limiting its market, is designed to eliminate nvidia's dominance in the Xfire/SLI game. On paper, it's a great plan. Whether it works out is up to the consumer.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Bar81
<snip -- long, nonsensical rant>

1. ATI has not said they're not allowing CrossFire to work on NVIDIA SLI motherboards, or even if it could. This is all just speculation.

2. AFAIK, there aren't any 955X boards with dual PCIEx16 actually out. I wasn't aware that NVIDIA had prohibited SLI from working on such boards (I know they disallowed running SLI on modded NF4 Ultra chipsets).

3. Your claims to the contrary notwithstanding, ATI will sell a lot more Crossfire cards if they can be used on existing and future NVIDIA SLI motherboards than if they can't. Someone with an NF4 motherboard but an ATI graphics card is MUCH more likely to buy a Crossfire card to pair with it if they don't need a new motherboard. Someone with an NF4 SLI board is MUCH more likely to try an ATI dual-card solution if they don't need a whole new motherboard to do so. IMHO, forcing anyone who wants to try Crossfire and already has an SLI board to buy a whole new motherboard is a bad plan. I know they'd love to use this to cut into NVIDIA's marketshare in the desktop chipset market, but doing so at the expense of their videocard market seems highly counterproductive.

 

[Bar81]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

<snip -- short, nonsensical post>

You have NO CLUE about marketing and you're wrong on everything. The fact that you aren't "aware" of all these commonly known facts about SLI and Xfire should cause you to think maybe you shouldn't be commenting on things you're not "aware" of.

 

[SNM]

I don't know why I'm getting into this, but I'm gonna have to jump on Matthias' boat here.

ATI's motherboard marketshare isn't nearly large enough for them to try taking on nVidia by restricting who can use their graphics cards; nVidia could afford losing a few people with SLI only because they've got such a huge portion of the enthusiast market (and you know darn well only an enthusiast is gonna go with SLI).
And while I've lost the site, I saw on some tech site that nVidia was considering stripping some of the driver limits off SLI because ATI is imposing either none or fewer on Crossfire.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Bar81

Originally posted by: Matthias99

<snip -- short, nonsensical post>

You have NO CLUE about marketing and you're wrong on everything. The fact that you aren't "aware" of all these commonly known facts about SLI and Xfire should cause you to think maybe you shouldn't be commenting on things you're not "aware" of.

Certainly a compelling argument there. :roll:

 

[0roo0roo]

doesn't seem like it. but the whole insane 14x fsaa or whatever modes are just rather interesting indeed totally would justify sli with that kinda premium quality rendering.

 

[SNM]

14x aa? Yuck, no thanks. The whole screen would be a solid color.

There's a reason most reviews run AA @ 4x now, and it's not because of power limits.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: SNM
14x aa? Yuck, no thanks. The whole screen would be a solid color.

That's not the way MSAA works. Increasing the number of samples and the effective AA "resolution" increases the accuracy of the blending. It doesn't blur the image.

There's a reason most reviews run AA @ 4x now, and it's not because of power limits.

Yes -- it's because that's the highest setting that both ATI and NVIDIA cards can do. ATI's next step up is 6xMSAA, and NVIDIA goes to 8x(4xMSAA + 2xSSAA). Those settings aren't directly comparable, whereas the 4x on both cards is.

 

[Bar81]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: Bar81

Originally posted by: Matthias99

<snip -- short, nonsensical post>

You have NO CLUE about marketing and you're wrong on everything. The fact that you aren't "aware" of all these commonly known facts about SLI and Xfire should cause you to think maybe you shouldn't be commenting on things you're not "aware" of.

Certainly a compelling argument there. :roll:

Wow, you truly are an idiot.

 

[SNM]

Well, I tried America's Army with both 4 and 8 on my 6600GT, and 8x drove me nuts since I started being unable to read text messages.
But whatever.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: SNM
Well, I tried America's Army with both 4 and 8 on my 6600GT, and 8x drove me nuts since I started being unable to read text messages.
But whatever.

This is a problem with games that draw text in certain ways (I know BF1942 has this issue as well). Basically, the video card tries to AA the game's text, which is NOT good for readability (what you want is for it to AA the 3D scene, then draw the text over that without AA being applied to it).

This is a bug in the game engine, not a problem with AA. It might also be an issue with the SSAA on the GeForce cards, if they treat the text as a transparent surface in order to avoid having it processed by MSAA.

 

[ericlala]

What is Crossfire?

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Bar81

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: Bar81
You have NO CLUE about marketing and you're wrong on everything. The fact that you aren't "aware" of all these commonly known facts about SLI and Xfire should cause you to think maybe you shouldn't be commenting on things you're not "aware" of.

Certainly a compelling argument there. :roll:

Wow, you truly are an idiot.

What, exactly, were you expecting in response? Your post did nothing but say I was wrong, without providing any reasoning or evidence. I hadn't seen anything that NVIDIA was explicitly disabling SLI on Intel chipsets, and there aren't any 955X chipsets with dual PEG available (so I'm a little unclear on how you could be sure it doesn't work).

IMO, ATI not allowing CrossFire to be used on NF4 SLI platforms (which are certainly the most popular dual-PEG chipset right now by a long shot) is cutting off their nose to spite their face. You seem to somehow think this is a brilliant marketing strategy.

If they wanted to push CrossFire sales, they'd make it work on every platform. If they wanted to push ATI chipset sales, they'd restrict CrossFire to only work on the ATI platform. But doing what you're suggesting would accomplish neither goal -- it would cut down CrossFire sales while not particularly boosting ATI chipset sales. It doesn't make any sense.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: SNM
14x aa? Yuck, no thanks. The whole screen would be a solid color.

There's a reason most reviews run AA @ 4x now, and it's not because of power limits.

read boy..read!! http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2432&p=6
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Nzc4LDM=

 

[SlitheryDee]

What if AMD manufactured their cpus to work only on AMD chipsets? After all, nvidia would be a direct competitor to AMD in the chipset arena.

What would end up happening is AMD chipset sales would go up somewhat, but AMD's processor sales would go WAY down.

Nvidia makes considerable profits on both chipsets and graphics cards, while ATI is FAR more dependant on graphics card sales than chipset sales. Why wouldn't they want Nvidia's relative domination of the chipset market work FOR them by allowing crossfire to work on Nvidia chipsets?

If they want to sell ATI chipsets all they have to do is make them competitive with (or better than) the other chipsets in the market performance-wise. They don't have to use their much stronger graphics card prowess to achieve that end.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: Bar81

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: Bar81

Originally posted by: Matthias99

<snip -- short, nonsensical post>

You have NO CLUE about marketing and you're wrong on everything. The fact that you aren't "aware" of all these commonly known facts about SLI and Xfire should cause you to think maybe you shouldn't be commenting on things you're not "aware" of.

Certainly a compelling argument there. :roll:

Wow, you truly are an idiot.

Haha, really dude, you need to step back from the ledge. You haven't offered a single reason why you are "aware" of anything and everyone else isn't. Me thinks you should quit posting before ATI releases Crossfire and it works perfectly fine in NF4(and other SLI) chipseted mobos. Who becomes the "Idiot" is still pending.

 

[Bar81]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: Bar81

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: Bar81
You have NO CLUE about marketing and you're wrong on everything. The fact that you aren't "aware" of all these commonly known facts about SLI and Xfire should cause you to think maybe you shouldn't be commenting on things you're not "aware" of.

Certainly a compelling argument there. :roll:

Wow, you truly are an idiot.

What, exactly, were you expecting in response? Your post did nothing but say I was wrong, without providing any reasoning or evidence. I hadn't seen anything that NVIDIA was explicitly disabling SLI on Intel chipsets, and there aren't any 955X chipsets with dual PEG available (so I'm a little unclear on how you could be sure it doesn't work).

IMO, ATI not allowing CrossFire to be used on NF4 SLI platforms (which are certainly the most popular dual-PEG chipset right now by a long shot) is cutting off their nose to spite their face. You seem to somehow think this is a brilliant marketing strategy.

If they wanted to push CrossFire sales, they'd make it work on every platform. If they wanted to push ATI chipset sales, they'd restrict CrossFire to only work on the ATI platform. But doing what you're suggesting would accomplish neither goal -- it would cut down CrossFire sales while not particularly boosting ATI chipset sales. It doesn't make any sense.

How is it my fault that you don't know how to use google or read. Here's an article from TODAY as ONE of many examples on the topic at hand:

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD0xMjI1