I7 and multi card setup a myth?

well, they will eventually have control of the whole platform to them selves, doing something like this wouldn't be out of imagination.

having linked up drivers for GPU, mobo, and eventually some cpu specialized driver deal would mean they can control everything from start to end, thus be able to optimize it far more than intel can.

where are these said hints?

...pretty big difference between a "myth" and one company taking advantage of their internal R&D to get a performance advantage. If indeed the advantage is even real and/or the rumor turns out to be true.

/snore @ usage of Hyperbole to precipitate an artificial argument

Its your argument to make. Im just looking forwards to advancement is all.
If you choose to argue, thats fine

You mean me disagreeing with you on your claims that nVidias Physx is a standard?
Id also point out, there were many here who didnt think a chipset could improve a cpus ability that much as well, until the 780s arrived, as well as the 790s

Notice that this may not just include ATI gpus only. No where have I seen this claim. This claim is seen as cpu based only, and fine tuning your cpu/gpu communications/abilities is seen as normal when having a complete platform, or, like optimizing compilers

well that would be interesting and all since i run a complete AMD system (Dragon anyone)

so if the enhancements are CF only, then we'd be talking at over 100% scaling, is that even possible?

I saw that neoseeker article too jaydeejohn.This would drastically change some gaming benchmarks.
Now I don't feel so bad about getting the Phenom II 955 (well I did get it for $130 with a motherboard combo deal).I might even pick up another one for my last years 790FX system.
By the way the inquirer had a lot of links to reviews about the Phenom II 965 .
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquire [...] -ii-x4-965
The updated driver news sounds much more encouraging though.

Yep, I remember that driver cheat, forget who did it however. Caused quite a backlash too at the time, IIRC. Let's hope ATI is not so stupid as to have done something similar, or to have purposefully cripped Intel systems, since as pointed out above, Intel has 4/5ths of the market, and I should mention nVidia is already gaining ground as of last quarter.

If ATI is doing something like this, then they are the "evil empire" and Intel would be within it's rights to sue ATI in, say, the EU for say $1.45B

Im thinking this has more to do with DX11 and such, where it helps globally eliminate the MT usage in gfx communication, where i7, offering a faster approach, the advantage is eliminated by using a wider approach thru DX11, plus drivers to take this advantage.
Itll all come out in the wash. Im certain AMD wont cheat, they have too much hanging in the balance here, and they havnt gone anything like that for a long long time, whereas Intel can be accused of that with their compilers, but thats more on the dev side of things, or nVidia, which has done it alot, and is currently doing it again with Batman Arkhum Asylum.
Lets hope this works, cause moah is betteh

As it stands without any software tricks to dog performance without matched hardware, they cant do it. I see this as testimonial that their intentions are to constrain their video cards to give the illusion of more power with their CPU. They are no better than any of these "evil" companies they compete against if they do this. Thanks for the heads up though. Pure shenanigans from AMD here.

Well, there is always nvidia, if they play this game more and more, then Intel + nvidia would become the only serious contender for enthusiasts, whereas AMD would offer good enough gaming performance for everyone else.

Lets face it, you don't need quadfire or quad sli or even CF (in most cases) for a POPULAR modern game to run, I mean look at what we are offered, MMOs play on even the oldest of machines, FPS demand more, but them most popular (well minus cry engine based stuff) will run on my old ass 7900GS at 1280*1024, and if you go up to the 1600 range, you will most likely only need a 8000 series or 3000 series good card to run them.

I expect this to not change for quite a while, look at what is upcoming:

MW2 CoD5 WAW level + some, most good gfx setup can do near 80 fps now so lets say 70.
Starcraft 2, look at superme commander and then add in some more gfx and you got it, not to mention starcraft's success is that any pos can play it, so hopefully blizzard realizes this and the min requirement is low.
crysis 2, they should have learned their mistake of releasing a game that was so badly optimized, look at warhead, where the same hardware would be able to run the similar game under much better frame rates.
Diablo 3, don't make me laugh, this thing won't need as much power any any of the above.
WoW expansions, can play on some PIV with GMA

looking at this, I think we can safe to say that maybe AMD's strategy to capture the just lower end of the I care for performance market, and their whole platform approach that cares for gaming power, may work.

But for us whom are in the know, whom look at benchmarks and under the hood specs to see which is best, AMD may not be a viable option in the future.

so what they are doing with these drivers is to make their whole platform into a whole contained and convenient deal, where they can lure you with platform wide optimization that brings performance to current gen and released things, and may break when the next wave comes because of the lack of raw horse power in the HW.

If a game is GPU-limited, then, _BY DEFINITION_ it's GPU-limited and the CPU makes precisely zero difference. If the CPU makes a difference, then the game is not GPU-limited. Certainly it could be limited more by the host chipset on one architecture than the other, but then it's host chipset limited and not GPU-limited.

If it's not a host chipset issue, and they're getting better performance from a slower CPU, then they're presumably enabling optimisations for the slower CPU that they aren't enabling for the faster CPU: in which case, Nvidia will eat their lunch.

No, a P4 can limit todays 295 by that reasoning, right?

OK, so, if these changes bring P2 up to i7 ability, which currently with current cards, the cards are maxxed out, but not currently with P2, the i7 wont go faster, as it cant, but the P2 can up until it hits the gpu wall also, so thus means therell be more improvement seen on P2 overall than i7, but other games where the gpu is not limited, both will gain.
Or, as I said, maybe not, maybe theyve found a way to wring out more power out of P2. Time will tell

Im thinking its just an overall improvement, using a new approach. Funny thing is, no ones really seen DX11 on a DX10 capable card yet. Is this whats doing it? Is it a driver breakthru? A cheat?
Ill take the former as most likely, tho it could be any. Theyre out by the way, available for download at QuakeCom, at the ATI booth, have to be there to get them, and only from their booth

i7 is the future, if they dont code to play well, they wont be here for the future.

Game over.

I use ATI exclusive, but I also us Intel exclusive, so it wont be no big deal to switch to Nvidia down the road if need be.

only 100 gamers let in?

that sounds more like they're giving some stuff out for early reviews than giving a demo.

^ knowing AMD they'll have it out either on the same day or by September 17th, maybe the 24th at the latest.

If they do get it out on the 10th though, Nvidia would kinda be screwed if they can't get the GT300 out until Q2/Q3 2010 like some sites are saying. AMD being the only manufacturer to have a certain feature for 3 quarters to a year, at that time unless nvidia had cards doubling the performance of the top ATi card for the same price, they wouldn't have a hope in hell of gaining any serious marketshare.

edit: looks like someone's leaked the 9.8 drivers, I'll test them out tomorrow on my PC, to see if they make any difference in FC2, Crysis etc.

Pssst..... its all just leaked info and probably not even true.

I could see how AMD might do this although the AMD fanbois all talk about Intel paying for software to be optimized for them only but still I can see it being possible.

BUT!!!!! 50% performance gains? Meh. I will believe it when I see it and unless it beats out nVidia it wont matter that much since they hold the lead in most price markets.

So wait.. You think if they fudged a driver set to make the P2 perform x amount better but lock in the Intel platform in its current performance range that this will be a boost for them? I think it would be quite the opposite. Many people that went i7 were attracted to the prospect of being able to do either/or CF/SLI. We already know the money involved as it is beat to death here how "expensive" the entry cost is and you think those guys will run out and buy ATI knowing this? I see it as a detractor but I rarely buy ATI cards so I welcome the stupidity.

Remember, this is a question, thus the ? at the top of the thread.
Im the messenger, so shoot me.
People have asked how can this be, Ive answered with a few possible ways it could be seen, and possibly done.
I hope it happens. More is better. Simple answer, and competition is always welcome, so is even greater competition, and thats what I hope to see, but, it being done the right way

hahaha....saw that P4 bottlenecks a 295...look up crysis laggs.... some troll

With five months of ATI Catalyst driver blogs under our belt, we are seeing a growing engagement from the community via this blog site. Please keep up the great comments and suggestions and we will endeavor to answer as many as we can. So, without further ado – let me introduce the ATI Catalyst 9.8 Driver Release!

Game Optimizations: ATI Catalyst™ 9.8 Driver

Our test system configuration is: AMD Phenom II 940 (3.0GHz) processor Asus M3A79-T(790) motherboard 4GB DDR2-800 5-5-5-18 memory Windows VISTA Ultimate SP1 64bit

This month we are seeing a massive performance increase with a whole host of games as compared to the ATI Catalyst 9.7 driver. Detailed release notes are available for most of the game optimizations; here are the highlights:

* Battleforge DirectX 10/DirectX 10.1 performance improves of up to 50% with the largest gains in configurations using ATI CrossFireX™ technology.
* Company of Heroes DirectX 10 performance improves of up to 77%.
* Crysis DirectX 10 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode improves of up to 10% and quad mode performance improves of up to 34%.
* Crysis Warhead DirectX 10 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode improves of up to 7% and quad mode performance improves of up to 69%.
* Far Cry 2 DirectX 10 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode improves of up to 50% and quad mode performance improves of up to 88%.
* Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. DirectX 10/DirectX 10.1 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode improves of up to 40% and with quad mode performance improving of up to 60%.
* UnigineTropics OpenGL performance improvements of up to 20%.
* UnigineTropics DirectX 10 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in quad mode improvements of up to 20%.
* World in Conflict DirectX 10 performance improvements of up to by 10%.

It’s fitting that last weekend AMD was in attendance at Quakecon 2009 in Dallas,Texas where the world’s most prolific OpenGLsupporters gathered for 4 days of ‘peace, love and rockets,’ that we are announcing support for OpenGL 3.1 and the following details:


This release of the ATI Catalyst driver provides OpenGL 3.1 extension support. The following is a list of OpenGL 3.1 features and extensions added in ATI Catalyst 9.8:

* Support for OpenGL Shading Language 1.30 and 1.40.
* Instanced rendering with a per-instance counter accessible to vertex shaders (GL ARB draw instanced).
* Data copying between buffer objects (GL EXT copy buffer).
* Primitive restart (NV primitive restart). Because client enable/disable no longer exists in OpenGL 3.1, the PRIMITIVE RESTART state has become server state, unlike the Nvidia extension where it is client state. As a result, the numeric values assigned to PRIMITIVE RESTART and PRIMITIVE RESTART INDEX differ from the NV versions of those tokens. o At least 16 texture image units must be accessible to vertex shaders, in addition to the 16 already guaranteed to be accessible to fragment shaders.
* Texture buffer objects (GL ARB texture buffer object).
* Rectangular textures (GL ARB texture rectangle). o Uniform buffer objects (GL ARB uniform buffer object).
* SNORM texture component formats.

And last but surely not least, my favorite community: ATI Catalyst™ 9.8 driver for Linux!

Support for new Linux operating systems
This release of ATI Catalyst driver for Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:

* RHEL 4.8 production support
* Ubuntu 9.04 production support

ATI Catalyst™ Control Center - Linux Edition support for RandR 1.2 This release of the ATI Catalyst driver for Linux introduces ATI Catalyst Control Center - Linux Edition support for the RandR 1.2 extension API. The following new features are now available in the ATI Catalyst Control Center - Linux Edition Display Manager:

* Display rotation
* Multiple display arrangement and desktop sizing