Via X-bit Labs: "Later this year AMD plans to announced new ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU technology that will bring such benefits as 3- and 4-way CrossFire, CrossFire Overdrive, hybrid CrossFire and other features that are set to improve performance, compatibility, scalability and flexibility of ATI’s multi-GPU technology, sources close to AMD told X-bit labs. The new technology will be supported by AMD’s forthcoming chipsets, including AMD 790X and AMD 790 FX that feature PCI Express Gen. 2 as well as various graphics cards, such as ATI Radeon HD 2600-series, ATI code-named RV670-series and, perhaps, ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT/Pro/GT graphics cards. Currently AMD’s graphics product group is mulling on exact configurations and specifications to be supported via CrossFireX.

Since at the moment AMD can hardly offer the highest-performing graphics solution on the market, it is projected that the company will push its triple and quad CrossFire configurations consisting of three or four graphics cards based on ATI RV670 against Nvidia SLI and Nvidia triple SLI configurations. Even though when it comes to 3-way and 4-way graphics processing actual rendering performance is fully dependent on drivers, ATI tells its partners that the technology will deliver benefits in key DirectX 10 games, such as Bioshock, Call of Juarez, Company of Heroes, Crysis and Lost Planet.

ATI CrossFireX will be a part of AMD’s code-named Spider high-performance platform along with AMD Phenom triple- and quad-core processors, but is likely to become available already later this year, not in Q1 2007 [sic]."


Although this aspect of the spider launch is certainly not the most appealing, it does represent a huge leap in the graphics industry. While NVIDIA, or at least 3dfx, has used more than two video cards for graphics production in the past, this will be the first time it is possible with high-performance graphics cards in the consumer market. As mentioned in the news post by Mr. Shilov, the success of this technology will lie almost entirely on the shoulders of the drivers that accompany the hardware. Standard CrossFire has seen tremendous gains through driver updates since it was introduced, and AMD/ATI has been able to show significant general performance increases through driver releases in the past.

NVIDIA also has plans to implement triple SLI configurations in the near future, which will finally bring GPU-based physics processing into the limelight. AMD's CrossFireX is also Physics capable, so it will be interesting to see which solution performs better.

AMD's upcoming November launch is definitely the largest development in the hardware world in the past decade, as it will encompass three major component classes: Processor, Graphics card, Motherboard. Intel's Core 2 Duo and NVIDIA's G80 launches were also very significant in that they revolutionized their respective industries, but in terms of magnitude, AMD has both of them beat.

CrossFireX or Triple SLI?

CrossFireX

Triple SLI

Meh, too much hassle

Source @ X-bit Labs