F.E.A.R.

The low efficiency of CrossFire is what you can see immediately in this test. As opposed to SLI, the performance gain from ATI’s multi-GPU technology is a mere 10-20%. Although the single RADEON X1800 XT is far ahead of the single GeForce 7800 GTX, two such cards in the CrossFire system are slower than the two SLI-linked GeForce 7800 GTX in all resolutions in the 4x FSAA + 16x AF mode.

And as it has happened in the earlier tests, the RADEON X1800 XT CrossFire takes the lead as soon as we switch to more resource-consuming antialiasing modes, available only on multi-GPU platforms. However, F.E.A.R. is such a heavy application that 8x Super AA only makes sense if turned on at 1024x768 resolution because in higher resolutions the frame rate bottoms out to below 25fps and the game doesn’t run smoothly on the screen anymore.

Although SLI AA 16x and Super AA 16x modes are not practically applicable in F.E.A.R. , we should note that the RADEON X1800 XT CrossFire is much better than the GeForce 7800 GTX SLI in this comparison, too. The gap between the two multi-GPU platforms is as big as 300% in 1600x1200 resolution!