Computex 2005 Coverage Day 1
Bluetooth 31 May 2005

ATI

The ATi Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire platform comprises the CrossFire ready mainboard, a CrossFire Edition graphics card plus a Radeon X850 or Radeon x800 graphics card. The CrossFire Edition card is is currently only available from ATi itself at this moment. In order to take advantage of CrossFire, users with existing cards Radeon X850 or X800 can purchase the RD400 or RD480 boards and add in another CrossFire Edition graphics card to take advantage of this technology.

Just like what we gathered last time, the technology uses a cable that interconnects the two cards behind the two cards. This method is more flexible and board makers can reduce costs and reduce the complexity of the board design.

We asked if this technology will be made available for lower x600 or below. The answer is that if the market wants it, it is possible but at this moment, it is limited to X800 and X850. The CrossFire could also be used together with integrated chipset in the future for multi view operation.

Early results shows that the CrossFire combination runs faster by up to 60% in NFS underground 2 on a 1600x1200 4xAA xAF AMD Atlhon 64 FX57, 1GB DDR400, RD480, 8.151 driver using the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe, 71.89 driver when compared to a equivalently configured Geforce 6800Ultra SLI system. IN fact in Splinter cell, it runs almost two times faster when in CrossFire mode using Radeon X850XT + CrossFire

The CrossFire technology largely works based on the compositing engine which actually blends the load from bot cards. This compositing Logic is programmable image, fast performing and has a flexible support for graphic card. It supports SuperTiling which has good performance and load balancing (D3D). Scissor  is supported in D3D and OpenGL applications. Alternate Frame Rendering is also available on both OPenGL and D3D. SuperAA uses each card to render the frame using different sample patterns. CrossFire compositing engine then blends the two images for ultimate image quality with real time performance.

As for games, CrossFire already has a list of thousand of titles that will work correctly. This is something that might be frustrating to some users when they find out that their old titles do not work with another competiting technology.

The CrossFire Edition card pricing for Radeon X850 (CrossFire Edition) 256MB is 549 USD and it works with Radeon X850XT Platinm Edition, Radeon X850XT, Radeon X850Pro.

The X800 CrossFire Edition 256M costs 299USD and 128MB costs USD249 nad it will work with Radeon X800XT platinum Edition, X800XT, X800XL, X800Pro and X800. All CrossFire Edition cards will have High Denisity DMS+DVI which supports DVI+DVI with cable and supports CRT with adapter.

ATi Reference board RD400 for Intel Pentium 4 and supports Dual Core P4 8xx series processors.

ATi RD480 Reference board supporting Athlon 64/FX/X2 processors.

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