CrossFire-on-a-Stick

Other Observations

Upon further inspection of the card one will notice a few interesting items. The first is a large microchip located above to the PCIe connection. It is a RoHS compliant (lead free) ExpressLane 32-lane, 8-port PCIe switch from PLX Technologies. This device allow the graphics processors to exchange information between each other without running across the PCIe switch on the motherboard. It acts very much like a pair of CrossFire bridges or dongle on older versions.

The second feature we can see are two locations at the edge of the board where two additional graphics out ports should be.

Based on the number of holes it appears that these would have been for D-sub (analog VGA) connectors. After talking to Sapphire, the retail boards will have an additional plate with the missing ports. Additionally from the picture above, you can see that a pair of CrossFire connections. Theoretically two of these cards could be set up for a 4-way CrossFire setup. Sapphire stated that a driver is not currently available for this form of CrossFire and after speaking with Catalyst Product Manager Terry Makedon, AMD does not officially support a card of this nature. That means that a driver for this card for 2-way or 4-way CrossFire would have to come from Sapphire.