Any crossfire benchmarks?

MumboJumbo · 16 Sep 2007 at 19:25

Hey currently trying to find some on Toms hardware and bit-tech to no success. Although still looking. I dont find either of their searchs to be very helpful with finding things.

Well as the title states. Are there any crossfire benchmarks? especialy on the new dx10 cards as im now very intrested in the new 2900 Pro coming out

LoadsaMoney · 16 Sep 2007 at 19:31

Only Crossfire reviews i know of with the 2900's are using very old drivers, so wont be much cop as they've improved a helluva lot since then.

Margaret · 16 Sep 2007 at 19:35

Last Xfire benchmarks I saw showed the 2900XT on par or in some cases beating a single 8800 Ultra. Something like that anyway.

jrodga2k5 · 16 Sep 2007 at 19:38

Best solution is a fast single card

Crossfire/SLi doesnt work with all games and annoying when considering it doesnt work in recent titles like Bioshock and MoH Airborne

RavenUK · 16 Sep 2007 at 19:42

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/diamond-viper-hd2900xt-1024mb.html

A CrossFire tandem made out of two ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT cards is quite a different thing. Costing about $800-1000, which is comparable to the price of a GeForce 8800 Ultra, this configuration outperforms the Nvidia solution across a number of applications. Our testing has shown that ATI CrossFire technology enjoys a solid support in Windows Vista, obviously due to the high-quality Catalyst driver for the new OS.

MumboJumbo · 16 Sep 2007 at 19:43

Crossfire is a lot better then SLI though. Its ment to be down to drivers unlike sli which must be coded for by the game. Therefore id never do SLI but i dunno, kinda tempted with the 2900 PRO and crossfire.

Aslo you said the 2900 XT was on par with a 8800 Ultra, was this with single cards?

Margaret · 16 Sep 2007 at 19:43

8igdave said:
Aslo you said the 2900 XT was on par with a 8800 Ultra, was this with single cards?

2 2900XT's vs 1 Ultra.

Margaret · 16 Sep 2007 at 19:45

RavenUK said:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/diamond-viper-hd2900xt-1024mb.html

WHOA?

2x 1GB 2900XT's are barely beating a single GTX in a few of them tests, but in some it does get up to 15-20 FPS more performance, but only at high resolutions. :eek:

At 1600x1200 the Crossfire 2900XT's barely beat a single 8800 GTX, infact sometimes they are beaten by the GTX in the majority of games. :eek:

MumboJumbo · 16 Sep 2007 at 19:50

Jihad said:
2 2900XT's vs 1 Ultra.

Is that ment to be impressive :O lol.

Gues crossfire is a no

RavenUK · 16 Sep 2007 at 19:51

Well dohh, not every game takes full advantage of XFIRE, but when it does it blows the competition away, take HL2E1 and prey as examples.

Margaret · 16 Sep 2007 at 19:52

RavenUK said:
Well dohh, not every game takes full advantage of XFIRE, but when it does it blows the competition away, take HL2E1 and prey as examples.

Only like 3 games where the Crossfire seems to rocket, the majority of the tests are pretty underwhelming.

Shame, maybe sometime in the future multi-gpu's will be properly supported by all games.

Final8y · 16 Sep 2007 at 19:54

jrodga2k5 said:
Best solution is a fast single card Crossfire/SLi doesnt work with all games and annoying when considering it doesnt work in recent titles like Bioshock and MoH Airborne

The percentage of titles that don't work in crossfire is so small its not worth worrying about.. these new game are less than a month old.. they will get fixed.

Out of 30 or so games that i have only 1 does not work in crossfire

jrodga2k5 · 16 Sep 2007 at 20:03

Final8y said:
The percentage of titles that don't work in crossfire is so small its not worth worrying about.. these new game are less than a month old.. they will get fixed.

Out of 30 or so games that i have only 1 does not work in crossfire

Well I didnt know that, thats pretty cool!

So its all just driver based then?

Margaret · 16 Sep 2007 at 20:14

Final8y said:
these new game are less than a month old.. they will get fixed.

Well this review: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/diamond-viper-hd2900xt-1024mb.html

Is 5 days old and Crossfire 2900's barely beat single cards in the majority of the tests and most of them games are rather old now. (Oblivion, FEAR, Far Cry, Stalker, Battlefield 2142)

Rroff · 16 Sep 2007 at 20:15

jrodga2k5 said:
Best solution is a fast single card Crossfire/SLi doesnt work with all games and annoying when considering it doesnt work in recent titles like Bioshock and MoH Airborne

BioShock works perfectly fine with SLI - don't know about crossfire but I heard it was troublesome...

8igdave said:
Crossfire is a lot better then SLI though. Its ment to be down to drivers unlike sli which must be coded for by the game. Therefore id never do SLI but i dunno, kinda tempted with the 2900 PRO and crossfire.

Aslo you said the 2900 XT was on par with a 8800 Ultra, was this with single cards?

Games don't need to be coded to work with SLI - the default mode for crossfire is alternate frame rendering and is also available for SLI so any game that work with crossfire in theory should work with SLI also without any special programming... games can be programmed in such a way that they make better use of SLI however... some games do need specific driver tweaks to work properly with crossfire or sli and won't work or won't work optimally without a profile that enables said tweaks but nVidia atleast are usually quite good on keeping upto date on that.

Final8y · 16 Sep 2007 at 20:20

Rroff said:
BioShock works perfectly fine with SLI - don't know about crossfire but I heard it was troublesome...

Games don't need to be coded to work with SLI - the default mode for crossfire is alternate frame rendering and is also available for SLI so any game that work with crossfire in theory should work with SLI also without any special programming... games can be programmed in such a way that they make better use of SLI however... some games do need specific driver tweaks to work properly with crossfire or sli and won't work or won't work optimally without a profile that enables said tweaks but nVidia atleast are usually quite good on keeping upto date on that.

Ati seem to be better by the fact that they release new drivers every month.

LoadsaMoney · 16 Sep 2007 at 21:42

Yeah but at the moment their Dx10 performance is diabolical, Bioshock in Dx9 the 2900 is faster than the Ultra, yet when its ran under Dx10, the performance plummets to below the 320mb GTS, where as the Nvidia cards only lose about a frame going from Dx9 to Dx10, the 2900's drop an absolute shed load. :eek:

jrodga2k5 · 16 Sep 2007 at 21:46

LoadsaMoney said:
Yeah but at the moment their Dx10 performance is diabolical, Bioshock in Dx9 the 2900 is faster than the Ultra, yet when its ran under Dx10, the performance plummets to below the 320mb GTS, where as the Nvidia cards only lose about a frame going from Dx9 to Dx10, the 2900's drop an absolute shed load.

Im sure they'll be working to get that sorted in the next few months

I have faith in the ATi support!

LoadsaMoney · 16 Sep 2007 at 21:49

yeah they'll sort it, but ATi were supposed to be going to be the dogs gonads at Dx10 what with their experiance from the 360, but hasn't turned out like that yet.

Margaret · 16 Sep 2007 at 21:54

jrodga2k5 said:
Im sure they'll be working to get that sorted in the next few months I have faith in the ATi support!

Luckily you're not missing out too much in BioShock Dx10, just hope they sort it by UT3/Crysis.