AMD has released the new Catalyst 15.7 drivers for Radeon graphics cards, and without making a song and dance about it they add an important new feature to Catalyst: the ability to support CrossFire between the old R200 generation of GPUs and the newer R300.
The shared hardware between the R200 and R300 cards means they actually play together quite nicely. It also means that new technology designed for the R300 is actually compatible with the R200, and Catalyst 15.7 brings features like Frame Rate Target Control and Virtual Super Resolution that were previously R300 exclusive to R200 graphics cards.
The big news though is that CrossFire support, as it now means you can throw a newer R300 into your rig alongside your old R200 for a good power jump. AMD have a legacy of backwards compatibility, with the HD 7900 series being able to crossfire with the R9 280 series, so it’s nice to see this practice carrying over to more modern hardware.
To run cross-generation in CrossFire, you’ll need to pair compatible cards. These are:
- Radeon R9 290X = R9 390X
- Radeon R9 290 = R9 300
- Radeon R9 285 = R9 380
- Radeon R7 265 = R9 370
- Radeon R7 260 – R9 360
Thanks, PC World.