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ATI Radeon HD 3850 256MB Crossfire
Conclusion
Two cards don't add up to the same kind of value. Doubling the cards doesn't make each individual card magically better at anti-aliasing. The heart of the issue is bandwidth, and with only 256MBs of GDDR3 memory, running on a 256-bit bus, the limit is the hardware itself. And even though most of the time the second card added about a 30% FPS boost, there were plenty of times when it didn't improve things at all. In the Catalyst Control Center, it's possible to tweak the settings to open up the dual-GPU features that improve anti-aliasing as well as all-around performance, and get some impressive results. Don't get me wrong, it's not a terribly spent $300, especially if you're looking at any number of passively-cooled HD 3870s, but overall, they don't beat an 8800 GTX--which cost $450--it's just that it takes a little more tweaking to get the full value of two cards together. Which is, to be fair, greater than two-thirds of an 8800 GTX. Pros Played games well at super-high resolutions Near-perfect video playback Still quiet CrossFire! Cons No longer a budget buy Still not that great at anti-aliasing Not nearly as power-efficient
Page 1: Introduction, The Card & Bundle
Page 2: Testing Methodology and Specifications Page 3: Testing - HL2 Episode 1 Page 4: Testing - F.E.A.R. Page 5: Testing - Company of Heroes Page 6: Testing - Prey Page 7: Testing - 3Dmark 06 & HQV Page 8: Performance Summary, Power & Noise, and Overclocking Page 9: Conclusion 
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