AMD Catalyst 15.7 WHQL drivers adds cross-generation Crossfire support

In spite of the release of their latest and greatest, the R9 Fury X and R9 390X, AMD has been falling behind lately, particularly with their WHQL drivers.

Beta drivers have been released every few months, but a certified WHQL driver took over 200 days to be released. That is just too long for many, and understandably so.

So just what has kept AMD occupied for so long. They’re certainly not bogged down with Mantle optimsations, having dropped support for the in-house API.

Let’s Crossfire baby! Image courtesy of eTeknix.

Having had the drivers to test, it appears that AMD have opened up cross-generation Crossfire again.

At VideoCardz.com, Crossfire has been tested between the new R9 390X and the older R9 290X.

The cards used in the tests from VideoCardz didn’t even match one another’s VRAM. The R9 390X 8GB was the only available variation, and was tested with a R9 290X 4GB.

In these tests, the R9 390X is limited to just 4GB as Crossfire makes use of the lowest VRAM quantity, but there was little performance impact for using the previous generation.

All those stats! Image courtesy of eTeknix.

eTeknix said they will be testing this new feature by testing the R9 390 with the R9 290, and the R9 380 with an R9 285.

If this features works across the new generation of cards, it could be nice upgrade and just the thing AMD needs to gain an advantage over NVIDIA.

Should you be using one of AMD’s older cards, instead of simply tossing out or selling the older card for a newer one, slot the second one in alongside the old card and watch them perform as a unit.

Check out those test scores! Image courtesy of eTeknix.

With all of these Crossfire options opened up, what do you would be the best options?

What we’re most curious about is whether these new drivers will allow you to Crossfire cards like the R9 Fury X and R9 Fury, or the R9 Nano and either of the Fury cards.