"Judging by what Aleks said he seems to be a Nvidia fanboi talking total nonsense. Seems to me we should wait for the final product before speculating any longer."

Erhm.. I myself own an ATi card. Actually ATi CARDS, and I am quite happy with what my 9800 can do. I hardly consider myself an nVidia fanboy. I was merely stating my opinions on the crossfire.

As for the speculation... I think we are passed that stage aren't we? I doubt the crossfire is going to change much in the upcoming month of it's release.

Just try not to label people, when you don't know anythinabout them

Sander-
I would say this reduction of warranty length is the outcome of the following:
1. In order to compete with the 7800 series with any modicum of legitimacy ATI has had to raise the clock speed on the R520 GPU's to the present room heating, system baking levels thus decreasing the lifespan of said GPU by a significant amount. In other words, if you plan on amortizing the $150 more this card costs over a 7800GTX by using it for two or three years then forget about it. They expect the GPU to crap out fairly early.
2. Given the loss of capital they have experienced recently there is no way they can support an extended warranty period, especially when they know their latest product will be dying enmasse at the 1.5 year mark.
3. I'd bet that the 1800 ships with a BIG red sticker on the box stating DO NOT OVERCLOCK THIS CARD, SERIOUS INJURY MAY OCCUR. SEVERE BURN HAZARD, HANDLE WITH CARE

Well after two years of reading Sanders articles I have come to know that I can depend on him to bash ATI and stroke NVidia, no matter what the facts are. This is great for selling advertising space.as this is called preaching to the converted. Tell people what they want to hear and they will keep coming back for more keeping those site counters clicking away.

The thing that really get's me is that you basically do tell the truth but you color it in such a way that ATI is damned if it does or damned if it don't.

First of all I think this whole dual card scam is typical NVidia profiteering to begin with and I am really sorry that ATI eventually felt forced to join in. Had NVidia been a team player and looking out for the consumer to begin with they could have easily licensed SLI technology so they would get what is due them and still colaberate with others to improve the standard. Instead they horde the standard so that board makers are forced to use NForce to stay competative and shutting out other chipset designers. This is not a healthy "pro consumer" market. I end up with very slim pickings if I want a non-SLI motherboard that has all the other features I might want. Imagine what AGP would have been like if NVidia had gotten ahold of it.

Because of NVidia's proprietary SLI I have a second PCIExpress video slot that I paid for but I will never use.

Now we have NVidia pushing magazine's to do video card articles comparing the 7800 to the X800 series of cards. It took two 6800s to beat one X800 and now they have a single card that can do it so I guess they want to make sure everyone hears about it.

I originally bought ATI because they had a much cleaner signal and truer colors when compard to the old GForce 2 and GForce 3 series of cards, even though NVidia had a clear edge back then in FPS. That dramatic difference in display quality isn't there now, instead I now buy ATI because I sense a clear edge for ATI when it comes to integrity and trust.

I see SLI as NVidias way of bamboozling the public into buying twice as many video cards while at the same time monopolizing the chipset market. Say what you will about how great NForce supposedly is but I had a much much smoother running machine with my Intel, VIA and MSI chipsets over the years.

It's way too early to judge Cross Fire but it does seem that Cross Fire will run with most of the X800 series cards and that it will in fact run with any game, not just SLI ready games, and those were the two primary differences between Cross Fire and SLI that ATI pointed out in the beginning.

It will be interesting to see how Cross Fire does once it get's tested in the field.

EB

As an addendum: I have a 19" CRT that I use for gaming and I never play games at 1600x1200 as it is just a bit edgy that high up on a 19" monitor. I do use 1200x1024 all the time though at which resolution you get 85Hz which is fine. Plus as these games get more and more photo realistic flicker becomes less of a problem at 60Hz. I play games all day long on my console at 60Hz or even 30Hz on my regular TV and it's just fine. Movies are all running at 24fps and I don't get a headache from that.

EB

You know what the worst scenario would be??? If one of these companies
bought out the other!

Ok, ATi might have done poorly with the crossfire but they were under the gun. However, given time - and a few revisions - im sure ATi will come out with a CrossFire II that will be the equivalent of, say, Windows XP sp2 as opposed to WinXP w/o sp 1 or 2. I feel sad for ATi cause theyre in a hard position, but what do you expect from canadians? (im sorry that was a joke and i by no means intend it to be offensive or rude) And I do indeed believe that the best system would involve a special Mobo which bassically has a highspeed integrated link which, rather than using a cable or jumper, would provide a larger number of simultaneous tX and rX hmm, im saying HTT for GPUs like dualcore/ cpu rigs that have very little loss of overall speed. Im talking Dual Channel ram type b/w increase. AMD could do that... its not a very complicated idea and they could either partner with one or the other gpu giants or go with both... just a thought lol

I want GDDR3 instead of my dumb DDR!!! (for ram)

Karl
"Because of NVidia's proprietary SLI I have a second PCIExpress video slot that I paid for but I will never use"

Why didnt you just buy a non-SLI board?? Strange....

Anyway, I wouldnt strike ATI off the list just yet, they have a whole slew of cards ready for launch, or so we're lead to believe.

I do however feel that not many people are gonna go switching their SLI board and 2 nVidia cards for a CrossFire setup. It would be a pointless excercise in wasting money.

The one year warranty is definitely something that should be inspected a little closer though, there must be good reason for it.

Maybe its something honest like 99% of their warranty claims fall within the first year of purchase or something, and most people do not hang onto their cards for much longer than a year anyway.

just speculation, they are a money orientated corporation, so it probably isnt all that honest anyway.

"Because of NVidia's proprietary SLI I have a second PCIExpress video slot that I paid for but I will never use."

++++Dufus

Karl, I also like how you act like being able to use dual GPU's is a dumb idea on Nvidia's part, but ATI is somehow a victim that was forced to do it. ROFL Poor poor ATI. If that is the case, then it's funny that they are at such a loss for leadership that they followed the competition's lead just to have a sense of direction.

Dang, I didn't know I had to buy and SLi mobo. My wife will be p**sed when she hears i have to spen and extra $50. I guess all those other non-SLi mobo's on Newegg are no good.

The warranty reduction should be a major tip-off. Something is seriously wrong...

Crossfire is new. Give it time and it will expand widely, it will get better, I don't believe it is 'too late'. ATi has a HUGE fan base and all these people will be endeavoured to set up crossfire. With this it will get better and better. I am neither a nVidia or Ati fan, but both have strengths. It may be new and it may of come out a long time after SLI but with time I think, it will get better, and will, eventually, be on par with SLI technology. I am lookign forward to future benchmarks between SLI and Crossfire. It is going to expand gaming and the intenisty and development of games as we know it. Ati has made fantastic cards, my old 9800PRO @ XT was the most reliable piece of computer hardware I have owned. My 6800LE is great don't get me wrong, but the continuous amount of drivers that keep coming out by nVidia is annoying. Crossfire will get better and I can not wait to see nVidia and Ati go head to head in the future with SLI and Crossfire.

SADLY, I think the shorter warranties show that ATi has less confidence in their hardware, which is not good for the consumer, if the company can't back its product, why should we?

"...I see SLI as NVidias way of bamboozling the public into buying twice as many video cards while at the same time monopolizing the chipset market..."

Finally. Someone has brains.

SLI is NOT a technological advancement, this was Nvidia's reply to ATI's superior cards. Since ATI cards were generally beating Nvidia cards in a price to performance equation, Nvidia needed a quick solution that the G70 was not going to provide in time. So, they went for it -- dual GPU.

People, this isn't technological progress, it's retarded. I frankly view SLI as one of the worst things to have ever happened to computers. Nvidia has doubled the necessary power requirement for graphics, doubled the necessary mainboard real estate, and has doubled the necessary CPU-GPU control functions. In fact, just about the only thing they HAVEN'T doubled is performance. Sure, SLI comes in handy, but there are times when SLI shows NO performance increase over a single card.

Nvidia has done the computing community a grave disservice under the guise of a "gaming triumph." SLI has become wildly popular. For the first time in a very loooong time, you are now forced to choose motherboards not ONLY for CPU, but for GPU as well. Nvidia's actions have incurred a number of new standards for dual PCIe that both ATI and Nvidia will have to conform to.

For mobile customers, SLI has totally alienated those who wish to have so-called, "desktop replacement" laptops. Even IF Nvidia and ATI somehow manage to incorporate a dual PCIe solution into a notebook form factor, it will completely undermine the recent push for lower power consumption, especially on-the-go.

The AGEIA PhysX card, the PPU that is said to be the most profound gaming hardware advancement SINCE the GPU, will now be forced onto what, a THIRD PCIe slot? It will, much like a GPU, require a sort of CPU-control scenario as well, forcing the CPU to feed not two but three bandwidth hungry devices?

Ingenious, if you ask me. Nvidia has truly screwed up the graphics world, and in my opinion, ATI has no choice as a business but to follow in order to stay competitive. I will never subscribe to dual PCIe.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
And in reply, no, I'm not going to stop posting. It's under my impression that these forums are here for the very purpose of commenting on your articles, which, in my opinion, have been slanted ever since the "Pentium 4 @ 5.2 GHz" article. I give you credit in that you know your hardware far, far, far beyond what I will ever hope to, but frankly, I don't find a veritable shred of "professional journalism" here.

If you wish me to stop posting, it is well within your administrative powers to ban me, despite the fact that I have not nor do I have the intention of violating the forum rules.

"Ingenious, if you ask me. Nvidia has truly screwed up the graphics world, and in my opinion, ATI has no choice as a business but to follow in order to stay competitive. I will never subscribe to dual PCIe."

Nvidia has not truely screwed the graphics world. Firstly, PCIe IS an adance in graphic technology, if it wasn't Nvidia would not of brought it out. Sure, they are making more money off it, but Nvidia and Ati are in competition to be the best, and I can guarantee if you were in their shoes you would be the same, bringing our SLi and Crossfire is a smart thing to do if your trying to make money. If they can get the best results in benchmarking, more people are going to buy their products. SLI and Crossfire technology is going to expand, as CPUS get faster SLi and Crossfire are going to be incredibly beneficial. You are going on the assumption CPU's power is not going to get faster, there is only so much power you can get outm of a single card, havign 2 is faster and as CPUS get faster the benefits will reep from having SLi and Crossfire. Right now, maybe it isn't as fast as it should be, but so what? If you are in the competitive world of benchmarking, and you have the money, get SLI or Crossfire, if your not, then simply don't. The options of not havign crossfire and SLI will be around for a LONG time to come, I mean, look at XP processors, they are still around, AGp is still around. The choice doesn't have to be SLi or Crossfire and I can guarantee, MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte etc are going to keep boards pumping out that don't have SLi/Crossfire technology for a long time, because a hell of a lot of HUGE corporation businesses (lawyer firms etc) are purchasing computers that are designed solely for word processing/accouting etc and will continue to only buy middle grade PC's, and these HUGE companies are MSI's, Gigabytes and ASUS's biggest market, not young men who are into gaming and benchmarking.

Wow... just wow. I can't believe some of the comments I'm reading here. Nvidia bamboozled the public? Screwed the graphics industry? Come on... you guys are talking about this like Nvidia is some 10th grade bully beating up on some poor b*tch 13 year old named ATi who can't fend for themselves. If anyone did any screwing, ATi screwed themselves. They chose not to implement the newest technologies first, ie hardware HDR and SM 3.0. Now that games are using these features, they are playing catchup with their latest hardware, which isn't out yet. Nvidia did well for the industry but not only pushing new technology but also with the industry's first non-paper launch in a very long time. Nvidia has taken its lumps in the past and now its ATi's turn. For what its worth, I truly hope R520 is a competitive product to keep healthy competition in the industry. Crossfire as it stands today is a half-assed approach. It may get better, and I hope it does. If not, ATi has no one to blame but themselves.

As for you morons who moan and wail about how Nvidia did this or that to whomever or whatever, get a grip and suck it up. No one is holding a gun to your head to buy Nvidia's products. Thanks to them (for the most part) PCIe has really taken off, SLi has become a viable and stable technology, their drivers are some of the first to be threaded for dual core CPUs, etc. Nvidia is pushing the envelope this time around. All is fair in love and competition...

"...Come on... you guys are talking about this like Nvidia is some 10th grade bully beating up on some poor b*tch 13 year old named ATi who can't fend for themselves..."

Since Doom 3 and Battlefield 2 were fair business tactics?

No, thank you, I have NO respect for Nvidia nor to the millions of developers and companies smarming up to its demands. Ridiculous, if you ask me.

What in God's name are you talking about, pickle? ATi has its game partners as well. Half-Life 2 anyone? All OpenGL games favor Nvidia based on architecture. I suppose you're going to tell us now that OpenGL was designed specifically for Nvidia now... Battlefield 2 runs great on ATi hardware. It doesn't even see much of a boost from SLi. So not only are they developed by companies that have nothing to do with Nvidia (other than joint marketing programs), but your reference holds no water.

Nvidia isn't a monopoly. "Fair business practices" have no bearing in the real world. ATi dropped the ball and now they are paying the price. Nvidia dropped the ball on their FX series and they paid the price. Now the opposite is happening and you're crying foul? I think you're seriously delusional, buddy. I notice you have a Dell - is it fair that they are doing so well when Gateway is having such financial troubles? Maybe Dell should raise their prices or stop shipping PCs for awhile so the little guys can catch up.

Take a look at Half-Life 2 and it's performance on both cards. It runs just fine on Nvidia cards. Now, I'll grant you that it likes Radeons ten times better, but the Nvidia cards don't do outright badly.

Now take a look a Doom 3. According to this very "unbiased" site, the Radeon X850 XT PE gets a mere 18.2 frames per second. From a less controversial source, TechReport, the 6800 GT is right behind the X850 XT PE. That's not optimizing for Nvidia, that's under-optimizing for ATI.

Then have a look at Battlefield 2. Interesting to note the "Nvidia driver" button right on the splash screen of Battlefield 2. Would that seem to indicate preference to Nvidia? Possibly.

I have a Dell, but Dell doesn't compete with Gateway by paying Microsoft to "under-optimize" certain copies of Windows for Gateway machines. In addition, Dell hasn't paid any software companies anything to "over-optimize" for Dells. This probably has to do with the fact that most PC makers are x86 platformed, and Macintosh is merely a weaker product, hands down.

This isn't the case with ATI. Once again, the X800 XL across numerous benchmark sites generally beats the more expensive 6800 GT, and according to TechReport.com, "nips at the heels of the 6800 Ultra." It took Nvidia a brand new GPU architecture to come out and beat the X850 XT PE, and even then, AGP customers know that card is the fastest AGP one around.

I never accused Nvidia of being a monopoly, either. If ATI weren't there, I would. I'm simply saying Nvidia has gotten their grimy little fingers in every little niche of game development with this SLI "technology" paving the "way of the future." Nvidia's "future scheme" seems to think that it can go around telling Intel and AMD that dual-core processors will hurt gaming.

Once again, I ask you how and when will we see SLI'd mobile laptops?

How the hell are we going to get an AGEIA PhysX card on motherboards now? Will we now need a THIRD dual PCIe motherboard that begs the question, "For my second PCIe slot... should I get a GPU... or a PPU?"

Hi All,

I think a lot of the folk who have posted are letting their emotions get in the way of fairly evaluating this situation. nVidia not to long ago was sucking ATI fumes when they launched their 9700 & 9800 series cards. Those cards were great & nVidia had nothing to really combat them.nVidia went back to the drawing board & came up with a world class product in their 6800 & 7800 series cards. They also aggressively promoted their SLI technology.

I too, read ATI's response to the introduction of SLI. They said that they would never travel that path. Well we all know what path they're traveling now. As the young folk say "don't player hate". nVidia is to be commended on how they responded to ATI's past dominance. They have come up with some very good products that are readily available to the public.Unlike ATI's 800 & 850 series cards that were difficult to find.

Let us hope that ATI get's their act together & comes up with a product that can challenge nVidias dominance.

I seem to recall another war of sorts between to other companies, I believe their names are AMD & Intel

I read reviews all day every day and I haven't seen any instances where an X800XT PE scores horribly poorly on really any games. In Half-Life 2, even ATi's mid-range cards do as well as a 6800GT. Its well documented that ATi spent millions with Valve to ensure that it 'ran best' on ATi hardware, and people have uncovered where ATi *specifically* wrote their code to force Nvidia's FX series not only to run slower, but also in DX8 mode, when even a small code change could have allowed full DX9 mode without much of a drop in performance. Of course, as an ATi fanboy I'm sure you don't want to acknowledge any of those dark little secrets.

People are not so blind and sheeplike when it comes to hardware as you might think. True enthusiasts will buy the buy the best card for the money, regardless of who makes it. Its only the shortsighted hardcore fanboys such as yourself that will pledge unending devotion to one brand for reasons you yourself can't even explain in logical and coherent terms.

I think the best thing for the graphics industry is for both competitors to be close in price and performance. This will drive the market to better products at lower prices with better performance. Crying foul because your favorite team happened to fumble a few times this time around just shows you to be a poor loser and someone with a very distorted view of reality.

"... True enthusiasts will buy the buy the best card for the money, regardless of who makes it..."

Excellent point. The X800 XL is cheaper than the Nvidia equivalent, the 6800 GT. Oh, gee, I forgot. The X800 XL outperforms the darling Nvidia on a general basis. The X850 XT PE rapes the 6800 Ultra, once again being cheaper. This is essentially the same for every card out there omitting the Nvidia 7xxx-series, which will be cheaper than the X1xxx-series cards initially.

"...Crying foul because your favorite team happened to fumble a few times this time around just shows you to be a poor loser and someone with a very distorted view of reality..."

Despite the fact you still have yet to explain what those laptop people are going to do... or... what all that PPU research is going to do. Well, I like my reality, have fun.

Pickle,

There is a very important and not at all subtle point I think you continually fail to grasp...

NO ONE MADE YOU BUY AN SLI MOBO!!!

Lets go over the major points here:

1. Lets say Nvidia comes out with a mobile SLI part. Who cares? Go buy an ATi based notebook.
2. If you wanted more slots available, why didn't you buy a non-SLI mobo? They make an nforce4 deluxe chipset that doesn't feature SLI but has all the same features and performance as its SLI counterpart.
3. Nvidia thinks dual core CPUs hurt gaming? Funny - they're the first manufacturer to support multithreaded drivers specifically for dual core CPUs, increasing performance considerably (upcoming Rel80 drivrers)
4. No one is making you buy anything. You want ATi? Fine - go buy ATi. You want no SLI? Fine, buy a board without it. Just don't go and bitch when everyone else doesn't do the same thing you do.

CONSUMERS DRIVE THE MARKET! If no one liked Nvidia or their products, they'd go the way of S3, 3dfx, Trident, and all the other display manufacturers that have either failed completely or capture less than 1% of market share. But just as no one can control what you buy, don't go and bitch up a storm because other people want what you don't. SLI is still a small percentage of the overall market and is an expensive solution. Lots of folks buy the SLI boards because they want the freedom to upgrade in the future, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they will. And again - it shouldn't make a lick of difference to you what anyone else runs.

As far as games go - if you don't want to buy games that say "the way its meant to be played," then don't.