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Hardware Next Gen ATI, On-Chip Crossfire
Sven Olsen (Blog) - February 21, 2006 9:48 AM

23 comment(s) - last by thomasxstewart.. on Feb 22 at 12:08 AM

Next generation ATI video cards won't need a Master Card...

Internal ATI memos and roadmaps have revealed to us that the next generation 80nm RV570 and RV560 GPUs will not require a master card to operate in Crossfire mode. Both GPUs have on-board Crossfire support, meaning they are both effectively "masters."

Without master cards, ATI will also be dropping the external Crossfire TDMS transmitter. Radeon X1300 and Radeon X1600 require neither the dongle nor master cards to operate in Crossfire mode, but they are relatively low end cards as well. Unfortunately, all is not beer and Skittles: the same memos claiming RV570 and RV560 have on-chip Crossfire support also claim that the chips may require a PCB bridge to really operate in full Crossfire mode. This is extremely similar to NVIDIA's SLI implementation.

These memos also reveal to us that due to the on-chip Crossfire will allow the possibility of multi-GPU dice and packaging. Several manufacturers attempted multiple GPUs on a single card over the last couple years with very minimal success.

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Wonders

By Perium on 2/21/2006 10:35:03 AM , Rating: 2

If it was for the wastefull SLI and Crossfire would we be seeing PCI express soundcards, Nics, and other expansion cards?

RE: Wonders

By BioRebel on 2/21/2006 10:40:57 AM , Rating: 2

Wasteful? I really don't see how the PCI-e x16 cards are stopping Creative from using the regular PCI-e slots...

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RE: Wonders

By Furen on 2/21/2006 10:48:05 AM , Rating: 2

Probably because using 2x 16x cards with double-height heatsinks pretty much blocks all the other PCIe slots in most motherboard. It's a layout problem more than anything else but pretty much all motherboards out there experience it.

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RE: Wonders

By Lonyo on 2/21/2006 10:48:42 AM , Rating: 3

Be quiet with your silly logic. Just because motherboards come with say 3 other PCIe slots in addition to 2x x16/x8 slots doesn't mean we should pay any attention to them, and we should complain about companies trying to get us to buy multiple graphics cards instead ;)

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RE: Wonders

By BioRebel on 2/21/2006 11:14:59 AM , Rating: 2

Ok, good point. But on some boards the PCI-e slots aren't blocked at all by the x16 slot. Like on my board the smaller slots are on the top while the x16 is between them and my PCI, so right now I'd LOVE to see something use those damn ports, otherwise the mobo companies should fucking get rid of them! I can barely suffice with only 3 PCI slots, and one half covered by my 7800GTX's heatsink.

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RE: Wonders

By Perium on 2/21/2006 12:18:27 PM , Rating: 2

Its wastefull beacuse when 16x slots where actually running as 8x in SLI they performed pretty much identical as 2x 16x slots . This shows we dont need 16x lanes for graphics cards. If we were to only use 8x lanes we would have plenty of OTHER lanes for slots greater then 1x. Most boards these days ahve 2x16 and 2x1 slots. There are other devices that could be put to use in slots greater then x1. Also for those who dont realize there are many other slots besides 16x and 1x.....

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RE: Wonders

By Heatlesssun on 2/21/2006 5:25:03 PM , Rating: 2

Actually, those X16 slots may not be going to waste. Quad SLI will actually put two cards in one X16 slot and only works with X16 motherboards.

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RE: Wonders

By threEchelon on 2/21/2006 12:49:15 PM , Rating: 2

Creative hasn't released a pci-express soundcard because it is much harder to do sound over pci-express compared to regular pci. They're working on it though. I don't know why this is but that's what I've read.

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RE: Wonders

By DigitalFreak on 2/21/2006 12:53:13 PM , Rating: 2

It's because they don't need to.

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RE: Wonders

By Assimilator87 on 2/21/2006 2:08:55 PM , Rating: 2

This would all be fixed if the industry agreed upon a new motherboard specification that allowed more spacious boards.

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RE: Wonders

By Howard on 2/21/2006 2:27:44 PM , Rating: 2

And new cases, and PSUs too? That'd be nice, but I dont see it happening any time soon.

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RE: Wonders

By swishbish33 on 2/21/2006 3:53:57 PM , Rating: 2

It took awhile to phase out ISA slots. PCI is no different. Either PCI-E will take over PCI when sound cards, etc start to use them, or some other technology will.

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Dice?

By danidentity on 2/21/2006 10:33:42 AM , Rating: 2

FYI, 'dice' is not the correct term for the plural of die when talking about CPU dies. 'Dice' only refers to the cube you play board games with. 'Dies' is the correct pluralization of CPU die.

RE: Dice?

By KristopherKubicki

(blog) on 2/21/2006 10:38:31 AM , Rating: 2

Dice is fine. If you go through the etymology... die are actually *diced* from the wafer.

"Dies" is used more often, but "die" is also used to refer to multiple die. English is a moving target, all three are correct.

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RE: Dice?

By Furen on 2/21/2006 10:44:32 AM , Rating: 3

You are indeed correct if you are referring to mechanical dies. People in the industry, however, chose to refer to these as dice in plural. I suppose this was a mistake at first (since a semi-conductor die has more in common with a mechanical one than it does with a playing die) but became the norm and, thus, is the correct term.

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RE: Dice?

By swishbish33 on 2/21/2006 3:51:27 PM , Rating: 2

And grammar teachers everwhere died a little inside...

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RV = low end?

By DigitalFreak on 2/21/2006 12:54:13 PM , Rating: 2

Aren't the RVxxx series the low end ones? I'd much rather see this on the high end cards.

RE: RV = low end?

By GTMan on 2/21/2006 3:05:52 PM , Rating: 2

There is low end and there is mainstream. Mainstream might be more accurate. The chips probably have fewer pipelines or shaders and therefore there is room for an on-chip crossfire implementation.

Hopefully that will translate to the high end cards in the future. That is if you are inclined to spend your money on two video cards.

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Holy Smokes! Single card CrossFire!

By SushiX on 2/21/2006 10:16:48 AM , Rating: 2

Oh yeah! Now we all can have that extra room for a PCI card that most MBs give up when the graphics slots are set up for CrossFire. My add on cards thank you, ATI! Hopefully no more "packed like sardines" look in my future rig!

Huh?

By ogreslayer on 2/21/2006 1:29:51 PM , Rating: 2

You guys are talking about this as if this makes a damn diffrence... its saying that ATI is gonna take the Nvidia approach and have the logic on all cards you still are gonna need 2 cards. Remember these chips can all be put on one card if they wanted to any way (probably just need one master chip on the board right now) plus these are ATIs value cards we are talking about meaning it will be at least one refresh after these cards that they hit mainstream and enthusist. Your system is gonna be just as crowded as ever until they start multicore (using 2 cores one package) and then still they will just offer 4way, 8way and 16 way (2 multicore on 1 board with 4 cards) systems

LARGE SCREENS NEED MORE THAN 8x.

By thomasxstewart on 2/22/2006 12:08:51 AM , Rating: 2

First 6X is parsed & Bi directional, so its not really made for high speed in large scale formats with extreme action. Two 8x don't do any more than that, as it is still parsed. Crossfire & Nvidia still have to parse all 20 to 32 lane solutions no matter what they may claim or forget to mention. Only "true" solution is 40+ Pci-express lanes on mainboard. Then all this "hockie" stuff will fall by wayside & mainboard will start working correctly.There are 46 lane mainboard pci express controllers made m55 xpe. Yet first mainboard by EPOX was cancelled few weeks ago, so hold on, I feel its going to get hot this spring. Signed:PHYSICIAN THOMAS STEWART VON DRASHEK M.D.