Thoughts
I've written, thrown out and rewritten this final page of the HEXUS article on Crossfire's introduction many times more than I'd have liked. Frustrations with ATI sampling Crossfire, ATI locking out X800 Crossfire for the time being (why's that ATI, at this supposedly full launch of your new technology?) and performance that ATI promise is coming in new drivers - drivers that we haven't been able to examine stemming from sampling and internal communications issues - are at the heart of how HEXUS have been able to evaluate it thus far.With a driver that's apparently never going to be released publically it was possible to witness performance scaling in the regions that one would expect if they thought about how it works from a theoretical perspective, which is one of the upsides. Performance was generally good across the board and should only get better with time.
Super AA worked and worked well, despite the performance limitations evident in the driver that HEXUS tested with. You can see image quality improvements in the modes and ATI's first real attempt at giving their consumers supersampling in a recent Radeon seems to work well enough.
However everything else is pretty much a downer. X8-series Crossfire is limited in resolution and refresh rate on LCD and CRT alike. A maximum of 1600x1200 at 60Hz on a CRT will displease many of the gamers that'd consider a Crossfire setup for high resolution gaming. I'm often remiss at not testing higher resolutions in our reference hardware evaluations here at HEXUS but it turns out that even if I wanted to with Crossfire, I couldn't.
The noise and heat given off by a pair of X850 XTs that sport the ATI reference cooler is something I don't think many would tolerate in the long run. I'd be looking to cool them differently immediately, should I run Crossfire myself.
Then there's cost and availability at a time when the new R5-series of ATI GPUs is just around the corner, barely a week away, and existing next-generation hardware from NVIDIA has been shipping in volume for some time now. Availability, while not set in stone yet, is down to the AIBs buying the cards from ATI who aren't allowing the AIBs to make them themselves. That reduces AIB margins and makes them less likely to make them widely available.
Pricing
Pricing for Crossfire needs to be evaluated at the time of launch and availability. Here's ATI recommended pricing for X850 XT Crossfire master boards along with pricing for its nearest comparison hardware from NVIDIA, along with availibility information for them all.| Price | Availibility | |
| ATI Radeon X850 XT Crossfire 256MiB | $349 | TBA |
| NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra 256MiB | $349 | Immediately |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT 256MiB | $349 | Immediately |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 256MiB | $449 | Immediately |
There are a couple of scenarios where you'd be seriously considering Radeon X850 XT Crossfire, the first being you already have an investment in a PCI Express X850 XT or X850 XT Platinum Edition and you want to add the master board and run in Crossfire mode. For the £349 you have available, your realistic choices at the time of writing are the master board or a move to 7800 GT for the same money (plus whatever you can get back for your existing X850 XT or XT PE).
While X850 XT Crossfire is undoubtedly faster than a single 7800 GT in raw performance terms in some games, the 7800 GT has obvious form factor and future looking benefits, just as strong performance in certain games titles and none of Crossfire's display limitations. HEXUS would choose to switch away from X850 XT and Crossfire and look to GeForce 7800 GT or the just-around-the-corner ATI hardware instead, given the downsides of X8-series Crossfire and the limitations it presents you with in that mode.
The second scenario is one where you're deciding on one brand new video card and a move to PCI Express. For the $349, the choice is stark: GeForce 7800 GT or, if you choose to wait and see what ATI themselves have in coming weeks, upcoming new Radeon products to consider. A Radeon X850 XT Crossfire master board makes no real sense at the time of writing, as your sole 3D accelerator.
Both scenarios require a change of mainboard unless you have a i955X board already that you're confident will support Crossfire. All other realistic scenarios don't warrant any purchase of a Radeon X850 XT Crossfire master graphics accelerator.
Further Summary
The platform as a whole is sound. Integrating Crossfire is a piece of cake if you follow the given instructions and the AMD-based mainboards, of which HEXUS has been privileged to sample two of so far, perform well. Halibut is a fine reference design that ATI should be proud of, that'll also support R5-series Crossfire in coming months.Availability of affordable Crossfire mainboards should be strong from the minute this article is published. But, given all of the above - cost and timing of master boards hitting the market, seemingly low availability, complete inability of current drivers to support the cheaper X800 variation of Crossfire for whatever reason, resolution and refresh rate limitations and issues of heat and noise - you wouldn't want to make those seemingly good mainboards the home of a current Crossfire system.
The current downsides massively outweight the good points that do their best to shine through. Too late by far, this level of Crossfire would have been relevant a few months ago before the launch of NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT and GTX and certainly a good while before the ATI replacement for the X8-series of cards. The timing, when most people are looking towards the horizon for new Radeon models, seems almost on purpose.
Most of all, not being able to evaluate what's likely to be the most popular side of Crossfire using the X800 XL master board we possess is wholly frustrating and equally as puzzling. Launch a technology and usually all the pieces to evaluate it properly should be there for folks like us to do so. It's as if half of Crossfire simply isn't ready yet. We'll get round to those missing bits when we can.
Until then, promising technology for when R5xx gets it right, but just now it's just a poor shadow of what it could and should be. SLI is currently a better multi-GPU consumer technology and overall solution (although we loathe the term), that's the simple truth.
