Oxymoron of the day: Business Ethics
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Crossfire X slowly exploding
CROSSFIRE X IS nearing its launch date - video cards and motherboards are dropping in the middle of November - and that means that we're seeing little drips and drabs of information hitting the web just as we've been deluged with 8800 leaks in the last few days.
A new slide apparently nicked from a Gigabyte presentation shows four-card Crossfire in action - although dodges the question of just how well this works by addressing monitor support rather than gaming performance. However, the slide is worth a glmpse if only to check our four ATI cards lined up next to each other on a board. Bizarre, and also noisy, we suspect. Here is said slide.
However, the performance issue is addressed in this 'no attribution' graphic . Quad Crossfire X is quoted as upwards of 3x performance, whilst triple Crossfire is quoted at about 2.5x. If we were being snarky, we'd point out to you that you can get 2.5x Crossfire performance simply by loading up with 8800s rather than 2900s. Rimshot please.
Meanwhile, the info-mavens at VR-Zone seem to have gotten their hands on data that suggests that Hybrid crossfire is going to give a 1.5x performance increase when pairing a 2400 discrete card with a 2300 IGP. This great for anyone with a 2400 that cares about Crossfire i.e. no one. Based on this data, and some hunches, we suspect that Hybrid Crossfire is going to do next to nothing for high-end owners, which is a shame.
Lastly, don't miss more slides from Gigabyte detailing their new AMD platform, which is pretty much Crossfire X by the numbers. But with a gaudy colour scheme. µ
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First rule of thumb when considering a multi-card graphics setup : you don't use anything less than high-end components.

No use putting 4 GPUs on a 2Ghz CPU, now is there ? Of course not.
So you go high-end. 

Aside from the motherboard with 4 PCI-16 slots (must not be all that cheap, eh ?), you'll need at least one dual-core CPU (we're not talking Core 2 Quad, since this is AMD, right ?), or a motherboard with two sockets.

Then you need the 4 cards themselves. Which can be had for the measly price of €330 to €450 each.

Best case is you're looking at around €2000 just for the graphics. Then you'll need a kilowatt PSU to run all that, plus a nuclear power station nearby with a dedicated line just for you.

What nonsense. Just wait a generation or two and you'll get the same power in those 4 cards today as you'll get in the single card you'll need to buy.

Unless you've won the lottery. In that case, by all means go and throw your money out the window. It's your right after all.
2 Nvidia 8800s give you 2.5x Crossfire ?!
How would you do that ? :D

Except if you meant the times yourself gets into the crossfire of the AMD/ATI fanbois.

Besides, if you read the specs on the board you would notice, that only two of them offer PCIe 2.0, making the others too slow to give much of a boost.

Not to mention the driver issue.

Also all those slots are not primary for any 3D purpose, but rather multi monitor and physics.

Also the world is not all about the highend cards. Put four HD2600XTs in and you have quite a nice system which lets you hack passwords in just a day :D

...also, the author should fix his mail adress, got an error there :D
Well I guess we know which side you prefer, don't we? Tsk, You should have marked your story as "commentary", or perhaps "fanboy explodes".
4 Cores Rule Today, thats 3 channels with 3?slots per with entire channel in preperation? you know all those strange latency timings going on at once. 

So 4 cores compliments idea of 3, like pci e 16X slots IN THREE,as well. How about 3 sets of 3 sata II? maybe to odd, yet 3 SETS of 4 OK. power in controller, even 2x2 sata channel, slots is better for ULTIE_TOM, As I have 13 partitons, 9 Ultimate, it is stickier by each added partition, yet only slightly. heck one hd is missing entirely. so theres lots of options & channel additions to tame ultimate, I believe 8 core, even if 2 processor is fertile ground for 4 sli slots/CrossfireX & mix well with 3 pcie 16x slot for immediate developement along with another channel/slot thruout entire system seems natural growth, for each step up.This augs' well to get more total bandwidth with preset standards limitations.

Signed:PHYSICIAN THOMAS STEWART VON DRASHEK M.D..
One graphics card is two too many