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George Ross, August 29, 2009
| Processor | AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition @ 3.8GHz | ||
| Motherboard | FOXCONN A79A-S | ||
| Memory | G.SKILL 4GB DDR2 1100 (PC2 8800) @ 533MHz (DDR 1066) 5-5-5-15 Dual Channel Mode | ||
| Hard Drive | Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST3250310NS 250GB 7200 RPM 32MB cache SATA 3.0Gb/s | ||
| Video Cards | MSI Radeon HD 4890 @ 880 MHz core 999 MHz (3996 Gb/s) memory Catalyst 9.8 |
MSI Radeon HD 4890 @ 880 MHz core 999 MHz (3996 Gb/s) memory MSI Radeon HD 4890 @ 880 MHz core 999 MHz (3996 Gb/s) memory Catalyst 9.8 |
MSI Radeon HD 4890 @ 880 MHz core 999 MHz (3996 Gb/s) memory MSI Radeon HD 4890 @ 880 MHz core 999 MHz (3996 Gb/s) memory MSI Radeon HD 4890 @ 880 MHz core 999 MHz (3996 Gb/s) memory Catalyst 9.8 |
| Optical Disk Drive | Pioneer DVR-215DBK | ||
| Power Supply | Rosewill Xtreme RX750-S-B 750W | ||
| Operating System | Windows Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 | ||
When you add the second GPU to the mix it improves your 3D Mark 06 score by 18% and the third GPU yields a 22% improvement over the single GPU setup.
CrossFire has started working for Unreal Tournament III allowing for the two GPU setup to best the single GPU setup by 4% and the three GPU setup gives you 5% over the single GPU setup in overall average frame rates.
This is a first for me both CrossFired rigs outperformed the single card setup in overall average frame rates in Crysis. This improvement is a most welcome as Crysis is still very demanding even on high end systems. Good work ATI, but here is were it gets odd the three GPU setup gives you a 9% boost in frames and the two GPU setup gives you a slightly higher 10% boost in overall average frame rates.
Even in World in Conflict CrossFire has started to show signs of working having both the two and three GPU setups have a 2% lead over the single GPU setup in average frame rates.
Every game should react like Devil May Cry 4 does to multi-GPU setups. Going the two GPU route gives you a 86% performance enhancement and the three GPU setup rewards you with a 143% performance gain. Not that the single card setup needed improving upon for this game it is just nice to see CrossFire actually working well.
The two GPU setup had gives a 42% increase over the single GPU setup in overall average frames rates from all the games and the three GPU setup gives you a 68% increase over the single GPU setup. These numbers are better than they were with the Catalyst 9.7 tests.
