ATI’s new X1000-family is the one expected to hold up the manufacturer’s multi-GPU-technology in the same standard as NVIDIA’s SLI-technology. Just like X8xx-CrossFire it will require a special ”Master-videocard” for those who choose to run two videocards in their system, though. It applies to the high performance family and already in our first review we were able to inform you of the fact that Radeon X1300 wouldn’t require a ”Master-card” to support CrossFire. ATI told us that the X1600 and X1800-series would require the Master, otherwise the performance would be left suffering.
Now however, some sources states that neither the X1600 will require the ”Master-card” to work in a CrossFire-configuration. Even if it sounds good to not have to care about a ”Master-card” we doubt that ATI has solved this without performance loss, something which would be really sad.
Source: Anandtech
