New ATi DX10 cards out

[alvino]

I am sticking to nVidia. Better drivers IMO, better budget cards 'cause im poor, Ubuntu supports it better.

Eh, sorta. NVIDIA's drivers aren't that great anymore. The last great Forceware driver was probably 66.93.

EDIT>>> Yeah, NVIDIA does have good Linux support though.

SLI is way better than CrossFire IMO. I have had experience with both and CrossFire didn't impress me.

Yeah, SLI is more matured than CrossFire. ATI has revamped CrossFire so that it's internal, which is good, but it's a bit too late despite the fact that using two connector bridges was better than SLI's one.

The original CrossFire was horrible though. The external dongle completely limited you to using a single-link DVI monitor, which wasn't good for those who had 30" monitors.

The good thing about CrossFire is that you can mix GPU's as long as it's part of the X or HD series. So you can mix a X1800 XT with a X1900 XT CrossFire Edition card and it'll still work. SLI on the other hand requires you to have the same card of the same model. A while ago they loosened it up a bit and allowed different brants to be used, but the models still had to be the same. So you could use a 7900 GT from eVGA and a 7900 GT from BFG and it'll work fine, where as previously you had to use two 7900 GT's from the same manufacturer.

In my opinion, SLI is the way to go for multi-GPU, but CrossFire is starting to catch up. It'll only take time before we see CrossFire and SLI battle.

 

[Istonian]

Let me say that the drivers for nVidia are only butter in Ubuntu. As for Windows, I like the ATI drivers. Personally, I have only owned a nVidia card while I had Window, but my friend has an ATI card and I have played with the Catalyst drivers. They are much better than the Forceware drivers for Windows.

 

[alvino]

Yeah, I agree. ATI Catalyst drivers are really good for Windows.

Linux...eh, not so much.

 

[freestyler105]

I've never had problems with either company's drivers.

I'm just waiting for nVidia to release the effing 8900 series. Unfortunately, they probably won't release it until after ATI releases a more powerful card that is competition for the 8800GTX, which could be a while.

 

[Celegorm]

Does crossfire require the bridge?

I know some SLI setups don't. I know at least on the Evga boards that have the P28 BIOS everything recognizes a SLI setup without the bridge on.

 

[alvino]

With the low end cards, like the X1600 or 2600, you don't need the external dongle or bridge. The PCI-E bus has enough bandwidth to connect both.

For the high end cards, you do. Now it's not an external dongle though (thank goodness), they use two SLI-type bridges instead.

 

[freestyler105]

Does crossfire require the bridge?

I know some SLI setups don't. I know at least on the Evga boards that have the P28 BIOS everything recognizes a SLI setup without the bridge on.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it does for some models:
http://shop.ati.com/product.asp?sku=3186855

 

[alvino]

Yeah, read what I posted.

 

[freestyler105]

Haha yeah my bad, you beat me to it.

 

[alvino]

Haha, no problem.