ATI's CrossFireX now offered on Alienware Area-51 gaming PC
By Darren Murph 
posted Apr 28th 2008 10:03AM
posted Apr 28th 2008 10:03AM
HEATING THINGS UP – CROSSFIREX NOW OFFERED ON THE ALIENWARE AREA-51
For the first time, users can choose between the industry's two dominant multi-GPU solutions on the same platform
Miami – April 28, 2008 – Alienware – the leading manufacturer of desktop, notebook and entertainment systems – now offers ATI CrossFireX™ on the Area-51® desktop computer. Alienware recently retooled and re-launched the Area-51, its flagship system, with NVIDIA® Quad SLI® graphics.
With four GPUs across dual graphics cards, CrossFireX cranks out not only intense, lifelike graphics but also the raw processing power necessary to manipulate and navigate real-time 3D environments for a never-before-seen gaming experience.
"This is huge," says Marc Diana, Product Marketing Manager for Alienware. "One of the biggest reasons our customers choose Alienware is unmatched graphics performance. Adding a CrossFireX option to the award-winning Area-51 reaffirms its status as the world's best gaming desktop."
"...Sorry honey, we cant goto Hawaii, I have to refinance my video card"
So, if we are already at 4x graphics cards at $1000+ whats next 6x, 8x at $2000? These expectations and prices are ridiculous. (...and stop blocking my slots)
4 GPU's across 2 video cards...but, you'd need 4 empty PCI slots just to be able to use em.
Erm, it's just two x dual slot PCI-E x16.
Nah, 3780X2 has two GPUs on one card, so you only need two PCI-E slots to use CrossFire X... or maybe I'm wrong, been some time since I've read up about Crossfire X
You take up 2 PCI-Express slots as far as the connections go, but you take up 4 slots inside the case. They have dual slot coolers- whats your point Flash?
You often make one or two PCI-e slot useless when dealing with full length, huge heatsink / fan video cards like these. They just take up a shitload of space.
This looks like being capable of producing enough heat to keep the average games freak warm through the coldest winter!
Gonna be a bitch of a load on the Air-Con in the summer though!
You WHAT Derk?
2 x 2 = 4 (where dual =2, which it did where I went to school!)
...meanwhile, on the other side of the over-priced home computer market
Looks like two PCIe slots to me...
Of course depending on your motherboard design you might be blocking an extra one or two slots with those beasts :)
I'm so sick of these dual slot cards... instead of manufacturers working on producing efficient cards (in terms of both physical space and electrical consumption)), they throw together this crap and end up overtaking the entire motherboard...
I mean, they might as well NOT place those extra PCI/PCIe 1x slots on there...
The least they can do if they unable to control the heat emittance is produce fanless single slot versions so people can water cool the cards...
Hopefully stuff like this will help out the AMD/ATI family.
This seems to be getting a bit out of hand. Disregarding the fact that you would actually need four PCI slots, as Idlemind said, there would still be an enormous amount of power consumption from the cards alone.
The real crappy part is how you gain less and less for every card you add. In most cases, with early nvidia quad-card solutions, you'd actually have worse performance from using four cards at once as opposed to two.
I still think multi-gpu is crap, since most of the performance benefit is reliant on software to get it to work.
Re: Lein
I have SLI and let me tell you, it's not crap--unless you think a 50-80 performance boost is crap. For SLI, Quad, or Crossfire to work properly, you have to pair it with a top-end CPU, otherwise you will bottleneck yourself.
And by the way, performance of ANY application is going to be reliant on software. Usually the drivers play the biggest role.
Silverfrog:
Oh no, I'm not saying that it doesn't work--if I set my 7950GX2 to single-card mode, I can definitely feel FPS drop--but IF you stack up cards in a tri- or quad-card setup, you certainly don't see a framerate increase that would make it worth the cost.
But the fact that it IS so software-bound is what makes me reluctant to invest in a true dual-card setup (I, along with many credible review houses such as tom's hardware, consider the GX2 to be a single-card solution that just happens to be two cards sandwiched together.) The problem, as you mentioned, is drivers, and it seems that nvidia has been genuinely sucking at them lately given their Vista crash results.
Sorry, I meant Flashpoint
"...With four GPUs across dual graphics cards, CrossFireX cranks out not only intense, lifelike graphics but also the raw processing power necessary to manipulate and navigate real-time 3D environments for a never-before-seen gaming experience."
...So we couldn't do this before?
It's two processors on one card therefore it doesn't need additional PCIe slots. 2 slots, like a standard crossfire rig. Think dual core processor, but for your graphics card, but different.
Yeh right...
anyone for 2 x geforce 9800 gx2?
Yes please. Geforce are still leading Radeon.
"Yes please. Geforce are still leading Radeon."
Well that depends (like anything else) on whay you are doing..
If you are into 3D-models etc ATI rules supreme, while most antialised games run better on Nvidia..
Still, I like ATI for their driver handling
"Enhanced beyond your imagination"?
Luke: Well, more wealth than you can imagine!
Han Solo: I don't know, I can imagine quite a bit.
Enhanced beyond your imagination is indeed true....
BECAUSE THE ENHANCEMENT IS SO SMALL YOU CAN'T IMAGINE IT!!
you failed
How is it that consoles with half the processing power still dominate the market?
oh wait, cuz people care more about games being fun then by how good they look.
I care about how good a game looks...
um, no. people are cheap and don't want to spend the money to play games on the computer. The console is a much better value for the average gamer, ie the majority of the people out there.
You know, you can buy four 3870 cards cheaper than two 3870X2s.... so long as you don't waste cash on the MOBO, a board with 4 PCIe X16 slots or better (some 2.0 goodness) makes more sense than two 3870X2s.
Alienware, definently got the latest in tech! :)!