R520 will also need a master card

[Alpine]

ACCORDING to intels we gathered, it seems that ATI won't get rid of the master cards that easily. An external cable is about to stay in upcoming R5xx generation. The R520 won't be a master card from the box - you will again need a special card to provide your Crossfire capability.

We suspect that R520 development was far down the road when Crossfire came in place, so ATI didn't have any choice other than to go for an external cable. An external cable was not a big deal as it provided good quality and as Nvidia told us many moons ago, before you needed to interconnect two cards.

The RV530 should, as well, be Crossfire capable and it transpires that the R520 Fudo is about to come by the end of September. R520 is scheduled for early October now, while RV515 is ready to launch whenever ATI decides. All those cards are Shader Model 3.0 and have 32 bit colour precision and are a real feature match for Nvidia cards. When you get an R520 based card you can be sure that you will need a R520 master card to make it work in Crossfire capable boards. What a mess, ATI, really.

The INQuirer