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- Date:
- Tuesday , October 17, 2006
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
ATI Radeon X1950 Pro
ATI is announcing a new sub-$200 video card that includes new CrossFire technology advancements enthusiasts have wanted. No dongles or masters here. We explore real-world gameplay with both single and dual-GPU configurations in the latest games.
Native CrossFire
We’ve given a lot of criticism in the past over the dongled CrossFire solution. Our concerns were very real, and ATI has listened to user feedback and have finally moved to a native multi-GPU solution. ATI has placed the CrossFire compositing engine within the ASIC itself on the Radeon X1950 Pro. This means that every Radeon X1950 Pro you purchase will have the CrossFire compositing engine built into the GPU. As you might imagine this opens up new possibilities for CrossFire. No longer do you need a special “Master” or “CrossFire Edition” video card for CrossFire. With native CrossFire all you need are two of the same video cards, just like SLI. Yep, you heard that right, now you can buy two Radeon X1950 Pro’s and “CrossFire” them, this goes for every future Native CrossFire video card.
ATI now employs a bridge connector atop both video cards. In fact, in ATI’s design there are two bridge connections. Each connection is 12-bit so together it is a 24-bit connection. The supported resolution is now at a very high 2560x2048 at 60Hz with this internal connection. The obvious question is now why two connectors and not one? When we asked ATI this their answer was simple, for future scalability. Right now only dual-GPUs are supported in CrossFire, they do not offer a quad-GPU solution like NVIDIA. However, ATI sees that in the future there may be potential for such solutions and thus have created a system that will allow them to expand when they feel they need to. In fact, ATI disclosed that you might be able to run CrossFire with just one bridge connector connected, but it is not recommended as performance and support for high resolutions may suffer. We did learn that the type of information going across the connectors is all pixel data.
Having two connectors won’t really be an issue because with every video card you purchase you will receive one connector. With NVIDIA’s SLI platform the SLI bridge is shipped with the motherboard. However, with ATI’s CrossFire they have decided to ship one bridge connector with every video card you purchase. So, you purchase two Radeon X1950 Pro’s and you will have two bridge connectors. ATI has done quality testing with motherboards to ensure they provide the length necessary in the bridge connectors. All bridge connectors will be flexible to fit many configurations.
The only downside to this is that some video card manufacturers may offer video card models where they drop the bridge connector from their bundle to save cost on those models. In that case you will have to purchase the bridge connector from ATI.com if you wish to use CrossFire. We will definitely have to keep an eye on which manufacturers offer what type of bundles.
As per usual for dongle CrossFire you still need an ATI Radeon Xpress CrossFire chipset on the AMD platform for socket 939 or AM2. You will also find CrossFire support on Intel platforms with Intel 975X and P965 motherboards. Everything else is the same, the same software is used which enables CrossFire in the same way, the difference now is that the TMDS interface is being bypassed with no annoying dongle at the back of your computer.
If you are wondering about multi-display use the same support is still in place as it was with dongle CrossFire. You can use four displays with CrossFire disabled, but once you enable CrossFire only one display will be active. We do hope that ATI and NVIDIA are listening when we say we’d like to see multi-monitor support with their respective multi-GPU options enabled.
ATI Radeon X1950 Pro Pictures
The Radeon X1950 Pro is a single-slot video card. As you will pick up on very quick the heatsink is rather large, not in height, but in length. The heatsink literally covers the entire front surface of the video card. It extends from the rear of the video card covering the power circuitry to the GPU and memory modules. The heatsink is making contact with all three major components, GPU, RAM and power MOSFETs therefore all are actively cooled. The fan intakes air from inside your case and exhausts it out a top opening on the heatsink shroud. You can see the two CrossFire bridge connectors at the top of each video card.
Here are two CrossFire connectors. Each is flexible so they can operate at closer lengths and each have a tab on the ends to help you remove them when they are connected. Also note that they are just slightly wider than an SLI connector.
In the third picture above you can see how the shroud is open here on this edge to allow air to exhaust. We noticed that most of the air exhausts right there at this corner of the video card, shooting toward the back of your case. Having a fan above the video cards to exhaust air is a good idea; most cases have this kind of setup.
You will notice the PCI-Express power connector is located in the middle of the video card. There isn’t specifically any reason for this, other than they had to put it somewhere.
Installation is a snap, no more worrying about what cards needs to go in which PCI-Express slot, no more master or crossfire edition/slave worries. Simply put both video cards in the system connect the CrossFire bridge connectors, connect all power connections and you are ready to go.