I would like to see Crysis benchmarks on "Very High" no AA and 1284 x1024 resolution

The enthusiast market must die! Thank you.

Does it look like pictures get blurier and blurier the more AA is added to them to the point where it looks like they're actually bluring it, as is the recent trend in games?

*cough* switch back to XP Scott, Vista is a sinking ship even with DX10 on board.

I always assumed DX10 would be an upgrade from DX9, as it seemed in the past that DXN+1>DXN, universally. However, now it sounds much worse from the perspective of driver and video card developers, and Vista just exacerbates the situation (ATI's claim, not mine).

Considering, as well, that neither I nor any gamer I know in real life would ever install Vista, I'd really like to see an updated comparison that includes XP/DX9 benches... with CrossFire-3, at least, no need to rerun everything.

And furthermore, I would very much like to know how much subjective and (ideally) objective latency is experienced when playing... as a graph, scaling from 1 to 4 cores for ATI and 1 to 3 for nVidia. This (input latency) is almost universally ignored in reviews and yet it was the deciding factor of my recent monitor purchase (not for me), which was unfortunately but necessarily based heavily on hearsay from the HardOCP forums, just because no actual monitor review roundup - even those at the most technically diligent places like Xbit - decided to include the information. And yet a monitor with 45ms of input latency is garbage for gaming even if it has a measured (after RTC) gtg response time of under 10 ms.

So, this was a very nice review that yielded a lot of useful information. But I'm not sure that any of it is useful to me, personally, except as a technical curiousity! What I really want to know is:

1) How does Crossfire-X affect people like me, running XP and DX9?
2) Will running Crossfire-4, combined with an LCD using RTC, actually create so much input lag that it would be a downgrade from my current Geforce 6200 and and 19" CRT in terms of playability?
3) Can Crossfire-X do high levels of AA without making a blurry mess? ATI's AA never looked so terrible before.

Wow, to think I'd live to see the day when Crossfire outperforms(or at least is more efficient than) SLI.

OTOH, AMD Marketing, you think there might have been a more efficient way to show the information on the page 1 chart? :-)

And are those GPU temperatures really correct??? 92 C? Didn't P4's auto-shutdown at 72 C?

Applause for page 2 Mr. Wasson. Unadulterated detail. Whew. Sounds like Vista shut a few doors and DX10 shut a few more. Pitty, damn pitty. Honestly, what the hell was MS thinking by not multithreading DX10? It seems like a common sense thing.

Please stop calling the 3870X2 a dual core card. it's got TWO GPU's onboard, not a dualcore GPU.

BTW, did you leave out the P35 by accident? I realize that the P35 and G35 are basically the same thing, except for integrated graphics, but more people will be putting a graphics card on a P35 than a G35.

"955, 965, 975, G35, X38, and X48."

I have a Mac Pro with an ATI X1900XT and a PC with an 8800GTS (640).

I have to say that the IQ on the ATI card is without a doubt better. On games that don't need the horsepower of the 8800GT, I prefer playing them on the Mac (under Windows, of course).

To me, the best deal available is the 3870X2. You get the IQ of ATI and speed that beats the 8800GTS (512) for only a bit more money. I doubt I would ever put two of these puppies in my computer, but it's nice to know that I could go quad core GPU with only two cards.

I'm pretty sure this is the way I am going to go when the gubmint sends me my free money.

Great article, especially the first two pages. Lots more detail than I've seen in any other CrossfireX discussion.

Is there any product that can use 3 screens for 1 high-perf 3D viewport? (Like NVidia's span mode.) ...other than the Matrox2go stuff which is limited to 3x 1024x1280.

It's a shame that the one game really needing more performance (Crysis), didn't get much help.

First post. Gotta go to class! Read later!

Edit: Right outside class. Crap, people are entering class! Wish me luck on that math test!

Also, I liked how the Narrow Tent AA mode looked best. The Wide and Super 32 are too washed out.

Multimonitor = ATI ftw. Nvidia ftl here. I gave up my 8800 gtx sli setup for a single 3870x2. Haven't regretted it since.

Now, with so much GPUs in the box while matching a wide flavours of them, it's the right time to unleash a decent F@H accelerated client along the pure gaming. ;)

I'd like to point out that CrossfireX's vaunted multi-monitor support is, at least on my system, the same multi-monitor support we got with Catalyst 8.1: up to two monitors connected to your main card.

I was really hoping it'd changed in Catalyst 8.3, because I have a third screen and when I game I wind up having to manually enable Crossfire and lose that screen.

I swear, the first time I skimmed the title I thought it's "Crossfire X exploded".

I would take the look of the 4xMSAA over the cartoonish feel of the rest of the AA modes anyday.

That review was up fast. I was just reading on here looking for new info.. I went to the rest room and BOOM... Phenom B3 info and CrossFire-X. I was waiting for this review to determine weather or not to buy that diamond 3870x2 on newegg to go with my Diamond 3870. looks good. Might wait tho.. I hear prices are dropping soon.

Yknow, this actually makes for some slim justification to the over-mem'd video cards.

The fact that Crossfire X works well with Intel's X38 chipset while SLI does not makes it easier to recommend a Radeon than a GeForce for multi-GPU configurations.

I thought the 4xMSAA looked the best of the bunch too - everything else looked like vasoline had been smeared over my monitor (ahem).

I can't help but think multi GPU set ups are a bit of an irrelevancy - at lower resolutions they're generally not needed and at higher resolutions they rarely provide playable framerates where they are needed. All that for more money, more noise and higher electricity bills. Hmm.