Powercolor X1800GTO Review: Cable-less Crossfire Explored

by Marco Chiappetta — Friday, June 30, 2006, 06:00 PM EDT

There is an interesting article posted tonight at NeoSeeker. They bill the article as a review of Powercolor's X1800GTO card, but they test a number of different CrossFire configurations in an attempt to see if there is a difference in performance when using a dongle or not, and when switching from an x8 / x8 to an x16 / x16 PCI Express Lane configuration.

"Our Crossfire testing proves that two X1800 GTO's, even on an older dual 8x board will still provide good performance. Despite the gains that an X1800 Crossfire Master card setup present, that's hardly a viable solution and should not be considered in place of another X1800 GTO. Hopefully ATI can extend the cableless option across most of their range to make their dual-GPU solution truly competitive with SLI as far as usability goes. While bandwidth would likely be a limiter on higher end boards, any solution ATI can work out that doesn't require the cable will be a bonus to them and the user."

Tags: Fire, CrossFire, SSF, cable, Power, Powercolor, color, XP, Red, x1, OS, review, OSS, view, GT, cab, IE, 180

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com