ATI users can prepare for a new Catalyst driver tomorrow, mix and match your cards in CrossFireX

CrossFireX is right around the corner tomorrow. The new Catalyst driver 8.3 features support for 3-4 multi GPU configurations allowing for the mixing and matching of HD3850s, HD3870s, and HD3870×2s. The new driver is expected to also give a sizeable increase in performance.

ATI is touting the “first quad-GPU” experience on Windows Vista and of course the ability to use various cards in CrossFire is a key selling point. Whether or not people make all that much use of such a feature is yet to be seen.

Also on the way tomorrow is ATI’s Hybrid Graphics support for Windows Vista:

“An industry first that is unique to AMD processor-based platforms, ATI Hybrid CrossFire delivers a significant 3D performance boost. Up to 70 percent increases in performance are possible in some gaming scenarios3 based on PCs comprised of an AMD 780G motherboard and ATI Radeon HD 3400 Series graphics product in Windows Vista.”

I don’t know if this any kind of NVIDIA killer. But if recent speculation and rumors are accurate it seems a couple of 3870×2 cards could perform quite well at the price vs. NVIDIA’s dual GPU card the 9800GX2. More performance from better drivers is the best ATI can hope to do right now until their next generation is ready mid year or so.

Source: NOGOHQ

*UPDATE*
We have received confirmation from sources within AMD that graphics driver version 8.471, better known as Catalyst 8.3, will be available to the public tomorrow, March 5th. AMD faithful have been waiting for this release perhaps more impatiently than with any other driver. The reason for this, obviously, is that it will enable CrossFireX, AMD’s answer to 3-way and Quad SLI technology from NVIDIA. CrossFireX is the name given to AMD’s multi-GPU technology. CrossFireX differs from normal CrossFire in that it supports up to four GPUs, rather than two.

We have already proven CrossFireX technology to be pretty well-developed through the use of two different evaluation drivers from AMD. These drivers have been in existence for well over one and half months, and have clearly been getting the royal treatment from AMD’s best software engineers. Catalyst 8.3 is the ultimate revision of the driver we have been using to test CrossFireX technology, and we fully expect it to provide the best scaling performance when utilizing up to 4 AMD graphics cores. Our testing was carried out on two Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics cards, and the percent scaling performance we observed was already quite impressive.

Given AMD’s history of driver updates, the earliest we expect to see the full potential of CrossFireX unleashed is June of this year with Catalyst 8.6. We also expect incremental performance jumps with each subsequent driver update from this point forward. Unfortunately the test bed we borrowed for our CrossFireX tests in the past is currently unavailable to us, so we will have to wait a bit longer to test the full-fledged Catalyst 8.3 for performance. Considering the number of forum dwellers on the net that have been complaining over the lack of CrossFireX-enabling drivers for their dual Radeon HD3870X2 setups, we doubt you’ll have to wait too long to see some early performance numbers.

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