Have you seen this??? http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/CrossfireTruth If this stuff is right then ATi's Cross fire solution wont be much better than NVidias SLI. I was hoping that XFire would provide reall dual card performance that wasnt based on drivers. According to ATi we should be able to plug in 2 cards and have the performance of 2 cards runing as one. Unlike the SLI system that requires drivers in order to have games support the 2 cards. Anyone have an opinion on this?
Well of course the big green N is going to say that. It not to long before lauch and its typcial product spoiling, can anyone remeber, the death of the dreamcast by ps2 product spoiling (oh ours will be so much better, bull crap as it turned out). Wait a few weeks and all will be revealed by pretty mcuh every online mag site there is. ATI wouldn't have delayed this long for no reason, so either they have went for a quantum leap over the 7800 with this chip or nvidia had the jump on them and they are having to quickly(ish) make something thats competative. The ATI config does sound alot better as its hardware based, but no game released since sli is gonna come without sli config, and if you can't play old games at a desired res or quality with a new card there is something up. The only people who are suffering are those that went the 6600 GT route, which in all hoensty was probably a bit of false economy, you'b be much better off with a 6800GT and SLI that if desired (but everyone does not have such funds).
I read somewhere that xfire is limited to <1600 x 1200 due to the chip limitations on the branching connector between the two cards. If that's the case then xfire is pretty pointless as you'd probably only want it to run at max resolutions Hope this is wrong ati have given nvidia a run for their money the last couple of years. ATI certainly have got a lot of catching up to do imo. I still tend to buy a one card solution though so xfire's not for me anyway at res 1280x1024.
Most LCD's max res is less than 1600x1200 and few people have decent crt's that are cabable of that anyway. Also LCD's are relitivly uneffected by refresh rate so non of this really matters that much to be honest. Nvidia are taking a spin on things that really don't have that much of a practicle effect. I have a 7800 GTX so i have nothing against Nvidia and hopefuly in a year or so i'll be able to sli it with a 7800 GT, i just think with this pressentation Nvidia is making a last chance to get on board the N train style approach. I say wait and see.