Fudzilla Tests 'Hybrid CrossFire', Gets Powerful Results

[zekrahminator]

The current drivers available from ATI (Catalyst 8.1) support an interesting new mode: interoperability between an HD3870 and an HD3850 in CrossFire mode. Fudzilla had both the time and resources to test this out, so they did. Before the test results are considered, please remember that these are just initial drivers. Both Catalyst 8.2 and 8.3 will offer more impressive CrossFire results. To make a long story short, and to sum up a lot of bar charts, AMD is well on their way to making Hybrid CrossFire a feasible solution for a lot of people, especially once more graphics cards can be mixed-and-matched. Please check out Fudzilla for all the benchmarks.

The most notable increase was 50% in Half Life 2. NVIDIA does not have anything comparable to Hybrid CrossFire.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[OnBoard]

That's nice, buy the best bang for buck card to crossfire with the previous best BfB card. Something like 2400+2600 could be interesting or X1950PRO+HD2600XT

 

[KainXS]

looks just as good as normal crossfire, I'm thinking 3850+2900GT

the 2900GT's bus would kill the standalone performance but in crossfire with its R600 the results should be very good

 

[happita]

I think that AMD got tired of Nvidia whooping their ass in the multi-gpu segment of the game and stepped it up a notch with their CrossfireX. Happy I'm getting a 3870, lets pair that up with the next generation ati card

 

[AddSub]

Impressive. It seems SLI is lagging behind Crossfire as of late, in terms of versatility at least.

 

[Mussels]

this is good, pity it doesnt work on older cards too.

I wonder if it needs the bridge connected? (so that only generations with bridges that line up will work)

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

Impressive. It seems SLI is lagging behind Crossfire as of late, in terms of versatility at least.

and lets not forget fps gain per card added

 

[W1zzard]

why is that hybrid crossfire ? both cards use the rv670 gpu, when you enable cf the cards will match speeds and memory size to the lowest common denominator making the setup essentially two 3850s

 

[Mussels]

why is that hybrid crossfire ? both cards use the rv670 gpu, when you enable cf the cards will match speeds and memory size to the lowest common denominator making the setup essentially two 3850s

you uhh... should email them.

 

[WarEagleAU]

Who cares, its fantastic.

 

[Grings]

The most interesting part of that article was seeing a 1gb 3850 (why havent i seen these on sale yet?), i want one, surely with a voltmod (to hit 800+mhz core) this would be THE best ati solution available for hi-res use, imagine running 4 of the buggers!

 

[devguy]

why is that hybrid crossfire ? both cards use the rv670 gpu, when you enable cf the cards will match speeds and memory size to the lowest common denominator making the setup essentially two 3850s

That's what I was thinking. This is just Crossfire X. I thought Hybrid Crossfire is combining a discrete card with AMDs 780G/740G chipsets. Speaking of which, anyone know when those chipsets'll be released?

 

[ShadowFold]

I wanna see some HD 3850 + HD 3450 benchies