ATI vs. nVidia - Round 2096

So, this past week ATI comes out with its Crossfire solution (HardOCP Preview) to go up against nVidia's current SLI (Scalable Link Interface) configuration. The big draw here is that unlike nVidia's SLI setup, the ATI Crossfire will be able to be used on more games than the SLI because ATI has given 3 processes to go through whereas nVidia has to write the profile into the driver.

Then nVidia announces that they will be showing off their next generation GPU (the G70, supposedly what the PS3 graphics card will be based on) on June 21st (same day Battlefield 2 comes out. According to Gamespot there will be Battlefield 2 LAN play with the cards).

Early indicators for specs are:

0.11 micron process TSMC
430Mhz core / 1.2GHz 256MB GDDR3 memory
256-bit memory interface
38.4GB/s memory bandwidth
24 pixels per clock
10.32Bps Fill Rate
8 Vertex Pipes
860M vertices/second
400MHz RAMDACs
NVIDIA CineFX 4.0 engine
Intellisample 4.0 technology
64-bit FP texture filtering & blending
NVIDIA SLI Ready (7800 GTX only)
DX 9.0 / SM 3.0 & OpenGL 2.0 supported
G70 comes with 3 models; GTX, GT and Standard
Single Slot solution
Single card requires min. 400W PSU with 12V rating of 26A
SLI configuration requires min. 500W PSU with 12V rating of 34A

Pretty impressive (and thanks to VR-Zone for the info). Now we shall wait for ATI's unveiling of the R520, the graphics chip that will be powering the Xbox 360. PC and console game graphics cards are starting to meld together.

ATI vs. nVidia is always a fun and expensive hobby. nVidia will be first out of the gate, but can ATI match them?