Conclusion

It is hard to prefer CrossFireX or SLI on the Core i7 platform when it comes to their efficiency. I must confess I had expected that the GeForce GTX 260 tandem would be superior to the Radeon HD 4870 pair because I had been aware of the constantly arising problems with CrossFireX technology in terms of efficiency and correctness of operation (not in pure speed). However, SLI didn’t prove to be ideal, either. It does not work in X3: Terran Conflict and Left 4 Dead, and has worse scalability in Devil May Cry 4 and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. SLI technology looks better than CrossFireX in World in Conflict, Lost Planet: Colonies and Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason and its operation is free from slowdowns or anything.

I want to note that two Radeon HD 4870 cards even with 1GB of memory each cost cheaper today than two GeForce GTX 260(216SP) 896MB cards, but the latter are quieter, have lower temperatures, consume somewhat less power and have no problems with driver installation (at least with GeForce 181.22). It’s up to you to decide what parameters are the most important. You may even prefer a GTX 285 after all…

The graphics cards from XFX used for this test session are very interesting representatives of their categories despite their using the reference design. The XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition comes with nicely pre-overclocked GPU and memory frequencies, produces little noise and has a rather low temperature. Besides, its box contains a copy of Far Cry 2.

The cheaper XFX Radeon HD 4870 XXX Edition is also a little pre-overclocked (775/3800MHz) and equipped with 1024 megabytes of memory, which is twice as much as on the reference sample. Unfortunately, this card is rather noisy and hot unless you modify its BIOS. Despite that, my sample of it showed good overclockability. Anyway, there is such an abundance of various versions of GeForce GTX and Radeon HD 48xx cards available on the market that you can easily find the card to suit your particular needs.