AnandTech Exclusive: CrossFire Benchmarks Revealed
by Derek Wilson on July 22, 2005 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
So, what have we learned? CrossFire is a solid competitor to SLI at the high end. The hardware and drivers are far enough along to provide very good performance on quite a few titles. SuperTiling works using 32x32 blocks and doesn't seem to have any problems other than the odd glitch while changing modes. CrossFire AA modes don't work quite yet, but games will run and something near what should be there shows up.Gigabyte has stated that they not only have NVIDIA SLI working on their GA-K8AMVP Pro, but that dual 3D1 cards will work as well (with a modified BIOS and driver at the moment). We haven't had a chance yet to test this ourselves, but we will definitely have something up on the combination as soon as we can.
There are some downsides, however. While CrossFire often provides more performance than the 7800 GTX, we don't get the benefit of SM3.0, which is being used in more and more games. The added cost will either eat into your budget for a next generation card when they come along, or will usurp money that might be better spent on a monitor to handle very high resolutions. There are plenty of examples of CPU limited games at 1600x1200 using CrossFire (basically the same list as the 7800 GTX). As time goes on, it will be important to invest in a monitor or money spent on ultra high end graphics solutions will go to waste.
The bottom line is that CrossFire is a success in implementation. We are impressed with the performance of the solution, especially considering the very early hardware and software that we have our hands on here. When a final solution is released, we will be doing a much more in-depth performance and image quality analysis of the hardware, but at this point, we just want to get a solid idea about what to expect. And right now, we expect exciting things for ATI. To recap performance, we've put together a table showing improvement due to the addition of a second GPU under CrossFire and SLI.
| Multi GPU % Performance Improvement (16x12 noAA) | |||||
| Doom 3 | Everquest 2 | Half-Life 2 | Splinter Cell 3 | UT 2004 | |
| CrossFire | 42.9 | 2.3 | 11.1 | 82.3 | 5.7 |
| SLI | 34 | 1.4 | 22.2 | 88.8 | 4.4 |
| Multi GPU % Performance Improvement (16x12 4xAA) | |||
| Doom 3 | Half-Life 2 | Splinter Cell 3 | |
| CrossFire | 70.6 | 29.9 | 83.8 |
| SLI | 81.3 | 68.2 | 33.6 |
Clearly, even in it's early stages, CrossFire can bring some good competition to SLI.
If ATI can get their chipset out there alongside CrossFire master cards, we could see some good adoption. Their new chipsets are no slouches (well, maybe the southbridge is a little lacking). What is very clear is that ATI needs to get a solution out as soon as possible. Time isn't standing still for ATI while the 7800 GTX is out with zero competition in a single slot.
Once again, we would very much like to thank Gigabyte for providing us with the hardware necessary to run these tests. We were very happy with the performance of their hardware, and will have a more in-depth look at the motherboard as soon as possible.
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Furen - Friday, July 22, 2005 - link
X850 crossfire doesnt seem too apealing in a world with the 7800GTX. This would have been great 6 months ago, or even 3.Cookie Crusher - Friday, July 22, 2005 - link
Maybe I was a bit hasty in my disappointment, but still, I expected Ati to come over the top with something special. :(Looks like there will be plenty of battles this coming year between sli and crossfire.
The trick is: who can make their dual card solutions more affordable?
Cookie Crusher - Friday, July 22, 2005 - link
I would have expected a little more than the results posted....but oh well, hurry up already ati.Hasse - Wednesday, July 27, 2005 - link
Nice, Don't know what to say... It's nice to see Anandtech's involvement in the discussion!I'ld like to point that as a halfway gamer I did get rid of a Sony F520 which did 2048x1536 at 85Hz, and it was beautiful and HUGE. It ate all the space on my desktop so when transforming to LCD which uses allmost no space there are a few issues to consider. Like responsetime, colors, artifacts yadda yadda yadda. I found a nice companion in the Nec 2080UX+ which is a 20" 16ms panel, and I have no smearing, no artifacts, vivid colors and last but not least NO lag what so ever..
Apart from that back to topic:
I feel that ATI has made a good effort, while abit late it's still nice from a consumers stand to have competition. What makes me a bit worried is the way ATI made their solution. As a consumer I'ld really not get stucked with a card that REQUIRES a slave card to work at all (correct me if I'm wrong..), that is you cannot run a CrossFire card by itself in a system. Whilst Nvidia's solution is more flexible (you can run your system with either one of the cards used in SLI).
I wonder also if CrossFire will work with cards from different vendors, as that was one of the quirks Nvidia was bothered about (same vendor and bios).
I'm also concerned about how much trouble Anandtech had getting the setup to work properly, ok it's a prerelease, but Giga said it was close to finished... shuld we be worried? Who knows... I've had bad encounters with highend ATI cards in the past, whilst my friends have had few or none. It makes me wonder if CrossFire is having the same trouble with drivers as the "old" drivers had with standard ATI cards....
Lastly, I find it annoying as a consumer to have to buy a more (in case of XT -> Crossfire) expensive card than the one I allready have because the new one also supports the faster XT PE.. (correct me if I'm wrong regarding the cost and so forth...)...
Last.. Despite all my reservations regarding ATI's solution to Nvidia's SLI I'm still very interested in the development, and not least: Will CrossFire also come for R520 (probably, but if they're having this much trouble with x850 how will the new cards fare?)
Thanks for the Article. Kepp up the good work.
Best Regards
Hasse
Hasse - Wednesday, July 27, 2005 - link
And Stupid as I am I pressed reply.. I should have pressed post a new comment.. sorry.-Hasse