ATI X1900 CrossFire Edition

Features of the ATI X1900 CrossFire Edition

VHDCI Connector

The first and most obvious difference externally when you compare the X1900 Crossfire edition to the standard X1900 XT and X1900 XTX is that one of the DVI ports is replaced by an odd looking connector called the VHDCI connector. VHDCI allows the CrossFire edition X1900 to process the graphics data from the x1900 XT or XTX standard graphics card. I also want to note at this point that when you choose to run CrossFire with the X1900 series of graphics cards, it doesn't matter performance wise if you use the X1900 XT or the X1900 XTX for your second card, performance is the same.

External Connections

Unlike Nvidia's SLI technology that uses an internal connection to allow the dual cards to work together, CrossFire uses and external dongle. Sure the external dongle isn't as slick as the internal SLI bridge, but really who cares. It's behind your computer anyway, most of us won't be looking at it and it works. You can't run dual displays with CrossFire and only one of the slave card's DVI ports will support the external CrossFire dongle.

Clock Speeds

Internally the clock speeds of the ATI X1900 CrossFire Edition are identical to those of the X1900 XT and are as follows:

• Core Speed: 625 MHz
• Memory Speed: 1.45 GHz
• Pixel shaders: 48
• Vertex Shaders: 8

ATI X1900 CrossFire Edition in Use

Test System

I benchmarked the ATI X1900 CrossFire Edition on the following test machine:

• CPU: AMD FX-57
• Hard Drive: Samsung 250GB
• RAM:OCZ PC4000 DDR Gold Edition GX XTC 3-4-3-8, 2GB (2x 1 GB)
• Power supply: NZXT 600W
• Mainboard: ECS Elitegroup KA1 MVP Extreme
• OS: Windows XP Pro SP2
• Display: Samsung SyncMaster 244T 24" LCD
• Video Drivers: ATI Catalyst 6.7

Testing

Benchmarking for the ATI X1900 CrossFire Edition consisted of Fear, 3DMark06, and Quake 4. All benchmarks were performed at default settings unless otherwise noted.

3DMark06

The first test series is 3DMark06 synthetic gaming series. I ran the test at default 3DMark06 settings and again at a higher resolution of 1920 x 1200 to match my displays native resolution. At the default resolution for 3DMark06 the ATI X1900 CrossFire Edition scored 7175 3DMarks and the details broke down like this:

• Return to Proxycon: 30.828
• Firefly forest: 32.184
• Canyon Flight: 42.646
• Deep Freeze: 41.842
• CPU1: 0.347
• CPU2: 0.560

• Return to Proxycon: 26.501
• Firefly Forest: 29.145
• Canyon Flight: 32.333
• Deep Freeze: 33.066
• CPU1: 0.347
• CPU2: 0.560

Fear

The next test series I ran was my ever favorite FPS game Fear. I allowed the game to choose what settings it believed to be the best for the CrossFire rig and ended up with these settings:

• Single player physics: Max
• Multiplayer physics: Max
• Software sounds: Med
• Particle bouncing: Max
• Shell casings: On
• World detail: Max
• Corpse detail: Max
• Effects details: Max
• Model decals: Max
• Water resolution: Max
• Reflections & displays: Max
• Volumetric lights: On
• Volumetric light density: Med
• FSAA: Off
• Light detail: Max
• Enable shadows: On
• Soft shadow: Off
• Texture filter: AF 4x
• Texture resolution: Max
• Video resolution: Max
• Resolution: 1024 x 768
• Shader: Max

The minimum frame rate maxed out was 25 FPS, average frame rate was 65 FPS and the maximum frame rate was 166 FPS. Frame rates never dipped below 25 FPS, only 17% of the time were frame rates between 25-40 FPS and a whopping 83% of the time frame rates were above 40 FPS.