The old name was no longer representative

Sep 25, 2017 12:38 GMT  ·  By

AMD is dropping the CrossFire name, and it will be using a new one, mGPU or multi-GPU, but don’t be afraid things are changing too much. It’s just a rebranding.

The term CrossFire refers to AMD video card capability to link with another video card, in the same system. It’s been present for a long time in the industry and community, well before AMD bought ATI. Suffice to say that people are now used to it, and it’s likely that it’s going to be a problem in the near future.

The information was provided via Brad Chacos from PCWorld, who noticed that the term CrossFire wasn’t being used in the latest Radeon drivers (17.9.2.). He contacted AMD, and they answered back with a surprising reply.

CrossFire is no longer sufficient

The name CrossFire takes user’s imagination to a very particular image, that of two video cards linked, but that’s no longer entirely accurate. It’s now possible to link multiple video cards together, in the same system, so the term might not be entirely correct.

According to AMD, “CrossFire isn’t mentioned because it technically refers to DX11 applications. In DirectX 12, we reference multi-GPU as applications must support mGPU, whereas AMD has to create the profiles for DX11. We’ve accordingly moved away from using the CrossFire tag for multi-GPU gaming.”

So there you have it. CrossFire simple becomes mGPU because it actually represents the reality. It’s just a rebranding effort, although it’s quite possible that users might be a little bit upset by this move since the new name is not catchy.

And it’s almost a guarantee that not all AMD fans will learn of this name change, and forums post will pour with the same question. “Does my new Radeon video card support SLI? I can’t find CrossFire mentioned anywhere on the box or in the manual.”