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Catalyst 8.3: Better Hardware through Drivers
Introduction
Looking forward to the next driver release usually means looking forward to getting rid of a bug in that game that you just bought that you can't play for more than eleven minutes before hitting that hard crash. Every once in a while it even means new features, or rather, features delivered on promises made when the hardware was released, just now working right or even at all. Because isn't all real innovation hardware-based? I mean, we're dealing with hardware companies in the end, and so much of the software requires that the hardware be made to run it; if it's not a go when you bought the thing, why expect innovation well after the fact? Because AMD loves you and wants you to be happy. (Or they know that they're a features company now, not a performance one. At least they're quick to play to their current strengths.) No, that's not fair. AMD, or ATI if you will, has always been an innovator, and developing their products and directing industry standards has always been their forte. No one can take DirectX 10, the Unified Shader Architecture, or red PCB away from them. AMD wants everyone to call this their Milestone driver, and some of it's legitimate and some of it's true-to-the-marrow marketing. But it's all innovative. CrossFireX Capital F capital X, three- and four-GPU configurations are now possible. Whether borne by the need for performance beyond what current ATI hardware can provide or the enthusiast desire to layer up with video cards, CrossFireX has been an inevitability. Either case is no reason to belittle the technology; this is a good day for Team Red. And they're not making any bones about how difficult this has been; ATI is quick to say that moving on to DX 10 has been a lot of re-learning driver development, and that unlike CPU-based programming, the GPU performance onus rests on ATI and not the games developers. That said, currently, CFX is limited to alternate frame rendering, where each card renders a frame on its own, firing in sequence like a piston-engine. While split-frame rendering is somewhat of a dead-end, ATI is still working on making it as well as super-tiling viable; they're not ruling it out as it might be the key for certain, say, Crysis-like games.   Chipset-specific development is also part of their focus, and while AMD chipsets all support hassle-free CFX, there are limitations when using Intel hardware, case in point with the P35 chipset. Because the PCI-Express x4 slot is run off the Southbridge, there's really no hope for a handful of CrossFire features, and at the moment, no OpenGL support.   Also in the immediate, three GPUs is "the sweet spot"; of course AMD is working on getting more overhead from four, but there are a few exceptions where triple CFX is faster than quad. For the handful of games that fall into this category, the driver just deactivates one GPU. Of course, AMD isn't setting time tables for when the driver will have a fix for these games, they're not going to just accept three GPUs when a fourth is sitting there, cold and lonely. Ironically, these few games are all DX10; their quad CFX DX9 kung-fu is strong, though.   And then there's the gratuitous jab at triple SLI, how three 3870 GPUs are cheaper and faster than three 8800 GTXs. No matter how you slice it, 9800s are just around the corner, which, at the very least, complicates things; there's just no way it won't be competitive, and from early pricing rumors, I doubt that it's going to be because 9800s are cheaper.    As of Catalyst 8.3, a.k.a. "The New Beginning" a.k.a. "The Big One" a.k.a. "The Humptyback Zinglebert," it's clear that CrossFireX has picked up where SLI left off. Right now, it's a better arrangement, with a lot of advantages not limited to performance. It's just that now there's even more reason for NVIDIA to improve SLI, and when they do, they're likely to start with a hardware advantage. When is this going to happen? AMD didn't include a slide on that subject.
Page 1: Introduction & CrossFireX
Page 2: Hybrid Graphics & HydraVision Page 3: Tessellation & Folding@Home Page 4: More Stuff Still... And the Conclusion 
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Add Comment
3 User Comments 1 - Posted by
Jayb
on March 5, 2008 - 10:38 am Except that Nvidia's 9000-series is just the 8000-series with a little fine tuning. There are already cards out there that can be clocked to the speeds (purportedly) being offered on the 9800. The performance of these cards is not a mystery and they will certainly beat AMD's line-up, at least in a card for card match-up. AMD needs to get the 4000's out the door, and soon.
2 - Posted by
aireiq
on March 7, 2008 - 9:56 am > Every once in a while it even means new features, or rather, features delivered on promises made when the hardware was released, just now working right or even at all. "just now working right"? editor, editor, make me an edit. 3 - Posted by
Kurtis
on March 7, 2008 - 11:30 am /SLAP Snap out of it, man! Add Comment To add a comment without being a member, you may omit the password field, but you must enter your name (or nickname) along with your comment. * Denotes required fields. |
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