3-way Crossfire?

Atham

Posts: 454   +0
Hey TechSpotrians,

I was looking on the specifications of the Gigabyte 990FXA UD3, and it said it supports 3 way crossfire/SLI.

My question is, does 3 way crossfire exist?
 
I've never done it, but look here. And that was three years ago. :) Ninja GOOGLE! *POOF*
 
To answer Atham's question fair and square; yes, three-way crossfire configurations exist. And on some chipsets, like the 790FX-based some time ago (2 years+), there were even opportunities for quadruple crossfire configurations (aka. Quadfire - ask Google!).

Problem is though, having 3/4 way crossfire conf. sometimes result in unsupported drivers etc. Many games prior to 2010 also do not support all "scaling" modes of a crossfire conf. - meaning that you do not get all the GPU "juice" from the cards in all games.

Add to that mixture the fact that the timings of common PCIe busses (x16 etc.) go down to low ones when running multiple graphics cards. The 790FX above could oftenmost only deliver 8x ; 8x ; 8x ; 8x when running four cards.

So even if 3+ configurations exist, they have still a long way to go.
 
Add to that mixture the fact that the timings of common PCIe busses (x16 etc.) go down to low ones when running multiple graphics cards. The 790FX above could oftenmost only deliver 8x ; 8x ; 8x ; 8x when running four cards.

No offense Lok, but you have no idea what you are talking about. You lose ZERO performance when running a card in an x8 lane slot, in fact you only lose about 8% when running in a x4 lane slot. It is a myth that x8 PCIE degrades or is a performance inhibitor.
I have a quadfire setup and get scaling to all four cards on a 5760 x 1080 setup. 2+ crossfire is for large resolution and or multiple monitor setups.

Here is a little light reading http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/1.html
They ran this test down to a single lane and got 70% of the performance of a x16 interface.

Problem is though, having 3/4 way crossfire conf. sometimes result in unsupported drivers etc. Many games prior to 2010 also do not support all "scaling" modes of a crossfire conf. - meaning that you do not get all the GPU "juice" from the cards in all games.

even if that were true, big deal, you have the option to run as many or few cards in crossfire as you wish with a single click in CCC. I have no idea what "unsupported drivers" means
So even if 3+ configurations exist, they have still a long way to go.
They do exist, i would not invest in one unless you are running big res setup. If you are going to run say a 1080P setup, 3/4/ crossfire isn't going to be a wise investment.
 
Back