Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 12.18
illustrates a typical SLI hardware configuration. Note the MIO device connecting the
cards.
Figure 12.18. NVIDIA SLI installation using a multipurpose I/O (MIO) bridge device.
AMD CrossFireX
AMD's CrossFireX, an improved version of ATI's CrossFire multi-GPU technology, uses three
methods to speed up display performance: alternate frame rendering, supertiling (which divides the
scene into alternating sections and uses each card to render parts of the scene), and load-balancing
scissor operation (similar to SLI's load-balancing). The AMD Catalyst driver uses alternate frame
rendering for best performance, but it automatically switches to one of the other modes for games that
don't work with alternate frame rendering.
To achieve better image quality than with a single card, CrossFireX offers various SuperAA
(antialiasing) modes, which blend the results of antialiasing by each card. CrossFireX also improves
anisotropic filtering by blending the filtering performed by each card.
To use CrossFireX, you need the following components:
• A PCIe motherboard with a CrossFireX-compatible chipset and two or more PCIe video slots
designed for CrossFireX operation
• A supported combination of ATI CrossFireX-supported cards
• AMD CrossFireX bridge interconnects (when necessary, varies with motherboard and card
combination)
Note
For specific models of motherboards, video cards, power supplies, memory, and cases
designed to support CrossFireX, see
