DriverHeaven: Looking purely at the performance of CrossFire it's hard not to be impressed by how well it works when compared to a single card ATI solution. The Doom3 tests for example show double the performance of a single card and in other titles such as Battlefield 2 the gains are just as impressive. When you look at how Crossfire compares to the same generation Nvidia SLI part, the 6800 Ultra, the X850 XT CrossFire almost always outscores the SLI system. The results are less favourable when you compare the X850 XT CrossFire system to the 7800 GT SLI and it is the Nvidia system which comes out on top in all of our tests. The 7800 GT in SLI is quite astounding and shows just how powerful current Nvidia technology really is .... in fact we can only think of one setup faster than a 7800 GT SLI, that being one based on 7800GTX's.

PC Perspective: The ATI CrossFire platform with the X850 XT setup overall performed quite well. In Doom 3, Far Cry and Half Life 2 we saw very noticeable gains in performance that would allow users to up their IQ if they wished or just enjoy the smoother game play. In Battlefield 2, as long as we kept AA turned off, we saw a very nice gain in performance on the CrossFire platform as well. However, EverQuest 2 saw basically no gains, as seems to be common among dual GPU platforms. The other issue of performance is how the CrossFire platform (and 6800 Ultra SLI for that matter) looked against the 7800 GTX single card we threw into the mix. In most cases, the 7800 GTX was overshot by the ATI X850 XT CrossFire cards, though not by very much. Being as we are looking at similar prices for either configuration, you should really think hard about where you plan on going with your system before deciding to go either way.

Hexus: However everything else is pretty much a downer. X8-series Crossfire is limited in resolution and refresh rate on LCD and CRT alike. A maximum of 1600x1200 at 60Hz on a CRT will displease many of the gamers that'd consider a Crossfire setup for high resolution gaming. I'm often remiss at not testing higher resolutions in our reference hardware evaluations here at HEXUS but it turns out that even if I wanted to with Crossfire, I couldn't. The noise and heat given off by a pair of X850 XTs that sport the ATI reference cooler is something I don't think many would tolerate in the long run. I'd be looking to cool them differently immediately, should I run Crossfire myself.

TechReport: For those of you who currently own Radeon X800 or X850 cards and are pondering an upgrade to CrossFire, my advice to you is this: wait for ATI's new graphics cards before making the leap. You will quite likely decide you'd rather upgrade to one nifty, new graphics card than plunk down the cash for a Radeon X800 or X850 master card and motherboard. The first generation of CrossFire is probably too little, too late for most would-be upgraders.