CrossFire: The Biggest Vaporware of the Year?

Author: Gabriel Torres Date: October 4, 2005 - 9:12 AM PST Kyle Bennett, from HardOCP, posted this today: ATI CrossFire MIA (click to read the full story and understand what we are talking about) Kyle doesn't think twice before slamming any company (ATI is Kyle’s company du jour). I’d write the same thing using different words, but in the end the feeling Kyle mentioned is right. Check this out: The first SLI motherboard to reach the market was ASUS A8N SLI on November 17th, 2004. ATI contacted us while we were in Taiwan before Computex to introduce us to CrossFire, so we could publish something about it on next day’s morning, when the NDA would expire. As you can see on our article, CrossFire’s official launch date was May 30th, 2005. It’s been four months and so far CrossFire didn’t arrive at the market. Really disappointing having to rush to write a detailed article about a product that so far didn’t reach the market. nVidia launched their new 7 series on June 22nd, 2005, as you can see on our launch coverage. At this very same day GeForce 7800 GTX boards could be found on US market. To counter-strike, ATI said that they were working on a new graphics chip generation, to be also released in June. This new chip generation will be launched tomorrow using the generic name Radeon X1000, but the new products won’t be found on the market. Accordingly to ATI official information, ATI’s new high-end VGA, Radeon X1800 XT (codenamed R520) – which is GeForce 7800 GTX competitor – will only hit the market in November, if we can trust on dates set by ATI. So, Radeon X1800 XT will reach the market at least five months behind nVidia’s GeForce 7800 GTX. The worst is not that. Tomorrow we will post several reviews of the new video cards from ATI, and some of them won’t be found on the market until december! Updated: click here to our Radeon X1000 series coverage. So, is ATI using the tech press or not to talk about them without having real products on the shelves? By the way, this has just been published on Legit Reviews: "ATI silently lowered its warranty from three years down to a single year on the majority of their desktop graphics cards, which has created some upset and confused consumers". We need to say more? Well, these are the facts. And how about CrossFire? When will "master" cards arrive? Nobody knows for sure. Kyle says November. If is that so, ATI will be one year delayed to the party. With nVidia having 90% of AMD discrete motherboard market share, ATI will face a really hard time to stand up and gain market share after being burned that way. Frankly, for me ATI today is like a flying saucer: there are people that say that have seen one, but at the end it is a matter of believing it or not. My badge reads “skeptic”. I only believe on CrossFire after it really arrives at the stores. Print Version | Send to Friend | Bookmark This Entry | Permalink | Comments (0) top