“Crossfire is not a significant priority for AMD”

For several years, it was popular to pair graphics cards to squeeze out the last bit of performance. It was often cheaper to buy two mid-range cards and run them together than to buy a twice as expensive but poorer-performing single graphics card. However, the technology has drawbacks such as uneven rendering times, and is not supported by the currently common edge smoothing technology TAA.

At the same time, the DirectX and Vulkan interfaces introduced support for pairing graphics cards via software, which also opens up for pairing between Nvidia and AMD graphics cards. Thus, proprietary solutions for multiple graphics cards have declined in popularity, and during the Hot Chips trade show, AMD’s CEO Lisa Su reveals that the technology is not in focus for the company.

To be honest, the software is going faster than the hardware, I would say that CrossFire isn’t a significant focus.

AMD’s solution for several graphics cards was called Crossfire, and has been included in several versions since 2005. Recently, the company launched the graphics family Navi, which is based on a hybrid solution between the new architecture RDNA and older GCN. Two graphics cards were launched with the architecture, where both the Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT completely scrapped the support for Crossfire.

The brand and name Crossfire were also retired by AMD in 2017, but the company has continued to support the technology. In the future, the support thus looks to fall further, and will be completely phased out unless the more high-performance graphics cards in the Navi series are again supported for pairing.

The competitor Nvidia only supports SLI for the enthusiast cards Geforce RTX 2070 Super and upwards, after which it remains to be seen whether AMD chooses a similar strategy.

Source: Tweaktown

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