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AMD's CrossFireX Will Become Available In March

The actual driver issues prevent quad-GPU links

By Bogdan Botezatu, Hardware Editor

7th of February 2008, 10:56 GMT

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AMD will let its users migrate to larger and more powerful CrossFireX configurations with the advent of the upcoming Catalyst 8.3 driver package, which will be released in March. Although it has been talking about

CrossFireX setups with more than two graphics cards, the company did not release the driver to support such a setup.

Initially, the driver was slated for a January release, but it was delayed to march in the old AMD manner. The next Catalyst release will be version 8.2, and not 8.3. The 8.2 version is rumored to kick in on Wednesday, February 13 (no bad luck at all, hopefully). At the same time, the 8.2 version will be the latest Catalyst build to come with no support for triple and quad-GPU configurations. Multi-GPU configurations will be extremely important for both AMD and Nvidia in their quest for graphics market domination.

The third minor version will arrive in March for sure, but it will be pretty much out of line as compared to the previous versions of Catalyst, since the company has been working on it for some time now. Moreover, the advent of the new Catalyst 8.3 will allow AMD get feedback about how successful tri- or quad-GPU setups really are. Both Nvidia and AMD will be able to see if multiple GPU links are the future in the graphics sector or if they are just a nifty tech toy for a bunch of graphics enthusiasts.

Catalyst 8.3 will also allow AMD to slap its arch-rival company Nvidia. Dual Radeon HD 3870 X2 setups will finally become available to those selected few who can afford buying two units of the most powerful graphics card on the market. If they succeed in scaling, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 will become the undisputed leader on the graphics cards market, as Nvidia's GeForce 9800 GX2 card won't come with Quad-SLI support.

TAGS:

AMD | CrossFireX | Catalyst 8.3 | Radeon HD 3870 X2 | GeForce 9800 GX2

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