AMD Radeon R9 290X switches to Crossfire via PCI Express

A few days ago, AMD announced a new generation of graphics cards in the Radeon series at a live press conference from Hawaii in the USA. In connection with this, pictures were released of the new flagships Radeon R9 290X and 290X, where it appears that the newcomers mysteriously lack pins for the traditional Crossfire bridge.

Turkish Donanimhaber reports that AMD is introducing a new solution in the flagship Hawaii. Instead of the traditional Crossfire bridge, the graphics cards will be connected directly over the PCI Express bus, which means that no extra cabling is needed to pair several graphics cards in one and the same computer system.

According to a leaked image from the presentation of the technology, the new Crossfire solution will work with frame pacing, which is there to provide smoother rendering times, and not cause any loss of performance compared to the traditional bridge.

However, it is unclear whether the new Crossfire can be used with all versions of the PCI Express bus or whether the solution requires or works better with the newer and faster PCI Express 3.0. AMD currently has no control circuits with the later version of the interface, although there are one or two models from partner manufacturers that can handle PCI Express 3.0.

The first platform from AMD with official support for PCI Express 3.0 is FM2 +. However, this requires a new processor from the AMD A-series “Kaveri”, which will not appear until the beginning of next year.