CrossFire Xpress 3200: RD580 for AM2
by Wesley Fink on June 1, 2006 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
CrossFire Gaming Performance
Both major players in the Video Market now have flagship Dual X16 solutions. SLI and CrossFire are about gaming, so CrossFire tests were confined to gaming benchmarks, and the test suite is heavily slanted to recent and popular titles where SLI and CrossFire make the biggest difference. All CrossFire testing was at 1600x1200, 4X AA, and 8X AF. Tests were also run with a single X1900 XT at this same resolution. The single video high-res results on the ATI AM2 are in Orange and the CrossFire results are in Red.
You might think you are looking at results from different video cards in CrossFire/SLI performance. Here leads are larger and positions are often switched from results at standard resolution without the eye candy. ATI CrossFire is the clear winner in Serous Sam 2, COD2, and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, while NVIDIA SLI owns Half Life 2 and F.E.A.R. We suspect part of these multi-GPU results revolve around which card has the best optimized drivers available.
We complained about ATI's CrossFire interface in our last two CrossFire reviews, and it still remains clumsy and anything but intuitive. To use CrossFire you MUST install Catalyst Control Center. If CCC is not installed CrossFire will not work. Since many users don't install CCC this is anything but an intuitive solution for CrossFire. Once installed, you must go into CCC, select the CrossFire tab and enable the feature. This is a MANUAL procedure - there is no warning at all that you have a CrossFire capable board or that you have to go into CCC to enable CrossFire. NVIDIA warns you that an SLI-capable system is installed and prompts you to enable SLI. There is no warning at all with ATI. The only clue you will have that CrossFire is NOT turned in is the poor performance results. THEN you start looking for what's wrong. ATI really needs to fix this issue. CrossFire performance is very good, but it would be much nicer if ATI made it easier to turn on CrossFire.
Both major players in the Video Market now have flagship Dual X16 solutions. SLI and CrossFire are about gaming, so CrossFire tests were confined to gaming benchmarks, and the test suite is heavily slanted to recent and popular titles where SLI and CrossFire make the biggest difference. All CrossFire testing was at 1600x1200, 4X AA, and 8X AF. Tests were also run with a single X1900 XT at this same resolution. The single video high-res results on the ATI AM2 are in Orange and the CrossFire results are in Red.
You might think you are looking at results from different video cards in CrossFire/SLI performance. Here leads are larger and positions are often switched from results at standard resolution without the eye candy. ATI CrossFire is the clear winner in Serous Sam 2, COD2, and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, while NVIDIA SLI owns Half Life 2 and F.E.A.R. We suspect part of these multi-GPU results revolve around which card has the best optimized drivers available.
We complained about ATI's CrossFire interface in our last two CrossFire reviews, and it still remains clumsy and anything but intuitive. To use CrossFire you MUST install Catalyst Control Center. If CCC is not installed CrossFire will not work. Since many users don't install CCC this is anything but an intuitive solution for CrossFire. Once installed, you must go into CCC, select the CrossFire tab and enable the feature. This is a MANUAL procedure - there is no warning at all that you have a CrossFire capable board or that you have to go into CCC to enable CrossFire. NVIDIA warns you that an SLI-capable system is installed and prompts you to enable SLI. There is no warning at all with ATI. The only clue you will have that CrossFire is NOT turned in is the poor performance results. THEN you start looking for what's wrong. ATI really needs to fix this issue. CrossFire performance is very good, but it would be much nicer if ATI made it easier to turn on CrossFire.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
71 Comments
View All Comments
Saist - Friday, June 2, 2006 - link
to quote"short life for AM2 dominance before the launch of Conroe"
Um. Anandtech, if you actually do believe that Conroe's performance numbers are going to hold up in multithreaded applications that exceed 4megabytes of cache data, I think you need to redo you're calculations. After intel's showing of Conroe behind closed doors during E3, I think you should also be aware that the performance numbers are not adding up. Intel might finally be competitive, but even when Intel chips have been competitive in the past, AMD chips have won on price. AM2 may not be the only game in town come this fall, but to say it has a short life? Makes me wonder if you actually bothered even asking the game developers what they are getting out of the processors.
JarredWalton - Friday, June 2, 2006 - link
...multithreaded applications that exceed 4megabytes of cache data..."We believe in real world testing. I'm sure there will be applicaitons where AMD still comes out ahead, but synthetic scenarios don't really count. If http://techreport.com/etc/2006q2/woodcrest/index.x...">Intel wins in encoding tests, 3D rendering, gaming, office... and loses in a few specific benchmarks that require lots of memory and low latency RAM access, does it really mean AMD is competitive? I mean, there are still a few specific scenarios where P4 can beat A64, but you don't see us trumpeting those as being representative.
What it comes down to is what most people will get out of each platform, and so far it's looking like a pretty clean sweep for Core Duo 2. Woodcrest vs. Opteron in HPC applications might be a different story (I doubt it), but that's really only relevant if you're running server workloads. As far as pricing, http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/1556_large_conr...">last I saw the $300+ prices of dual core AMD chips are going to have a difficult time competing with $185-$225 Intel chips. Overclocks are also looking promising as well, so a $185 chip running 2.8 GHz will be a force to be reconned with.
R3MF - Friday, June 2, 2006 - link
can you tell me the what and the when of this amzing revelation?Slaimus - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
You can run CrossFire on 975X as well. It should be a competitive platform once the new CPUs come out.
Axbattler - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
Umm, the article made no mention of the Sil3132 performance on the A8R32-MVP, which I believe is bugged.Trisped - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2767&am...">http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2767&am...First chart, #1 is the Silicon Image 3132 SATA2 (ATI) performance rating.
Axbattler - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
I saw that. But if you look at the second graph, the performance of the Sil 3132 in the MSI board is considerably worse than in the ATI reference board.That is still quite usable, but the one from the Asus A8R32-MVP is basically unusable (slower than what modern drives are capable).
Wesley Fink - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
We retested Sil3132 on the ATI and some other controllers for this review, and the other 3132 data should have been deleted. Now corrected. We are not aware of the 3132 issue with the A8R32-MVP. The Sil3132 is one of the best SATA2 controllers on the market, and it is a much better performer than the Sil3114.Axbattler - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
The result does shown in the review does suggest a solid performance from the Sil3132 controller. However, this is what I have been experiencing:- http://img267.imageshack.us/my.php?image=burst4dh....">http://img267.imageshack.us/my.php?image=burst4dh.... (Sil controller)
- http://img71.imageshack.us/my.php?image=burst27ja....">http://img71.imageshack.us/my.php?image=burst27ja.... (ULi controller)
Two motherboard bioses were tested (0311, 0404), as well as all the drivers from 1.0.9.0 (bundled with the motherboard installation CD, to the latest 1.0.16.0
The poor HDTach performance is reflected in real world application too, gaming loading, file copying are all slowed down to horrendous level.
I believe that Gary was able to replicate this issue (not sure if he eventually found a way around it), although I suppose that based on the result of the other board, it is an issue specific Asus board (perhaps the A8R32-MVP). Is there any chance you could run a test to confirm this?
Very few people in forums that I've visited use the Sil controller, perhaps due to the positioning of the SATA socket (which is actually optimal to where my Raptor is installed: on a 5.25" drive bay).
Trisped - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
ATI AM2.jpg is a bit blurry when blown up. You might want to set the camera on the highest quality setting so that doesn’t happen.0X looks like a typo
Why did the Audio Performance charts not have any NVIDIA solutions?