NEW DFI Crossfire Setup

[BobyJo]

Here is a great piece of news from DFI. There was two negative remarks, NO SATA 2 and the board is extremely expensive.

It has taken a very long time for the first retail ATI Crossfire motherboard to arrive. However, ATI could not have done better than to have the first retail board come from DFI, the current leader in motherboards based on the nForce4 chipset. In every performance area important to overclockers and AMD hobbyists, the DFI is at least as good as the legendary DFI nForce4 motherboards. In some areas, the DFI RDX200 is even superior to their nForce4 boards.

[Bires]

Someone please tell me how/why Crossfire and SLI are different and require a specialized motherboard for each.

[Showtime]

Crossfire works with some ATI cards. SLI only works with 6600 and up Nvidia cards.

[shocky123]

Quoting Tomshardware:
"Currently, in order to run a system in SLI, both of the graphics cards have to be identical, with the same BIOS. With even the slightest variation, you can - and most likely will - get errors. NVIDIA has yet to reveal whether limitation is driver or hardware related."

Crossfire on the other hand.. doesnt require two 'special' (both cards being SLI capable and identical -> 2x6800Ultra SLI). Crossfire allows quasi-SLI by using an existing card(which may not be a Crossfire card), in addition to a Crossfire-capable card.

SLI and Crossfire both require specialty chipsets on the motherboard, so there isnt much difference in that respect, other than the obvious.

I guess the whole idea of Crossfire is that it allows you to use your pre-existing ~$300 card, allongside your new $500 card and have the same or similar benefits performance wise as an SLI setup where you'd have to buy 2 of the same $400 cards. Either way you're likely going to spend about the same amount of cash.. Crossfire is just more.... to quote TomsHW: 'flexible'.

~Kyle

[Bires]

thanks for the 411, shocky.

[Daversinger]

very good description!