Performance: Far Cry and Quake 4
Far Cry
Throughout our testing the HIS X1900 GT single card and CrossFire results will have a slightly thicker border so they're easy to spot, although they'll be in the same position throughout anyway.
As a single card, the X1900 GT will give you a very nice framerate at 1600x1200, beating NVIDIA's GeForce 7900 GT. It can't keep up with the X1950 XTX, but with 2/3 the memory bandwidth, we wouldn't expect it to.
In CrossFire, on our Core 2 i975X platform, the boost to performance isn't as good as the gain seen for 7900 GT SLI on nForce 590 SLI. In fact, SLI nearly doubles performance, whilst CrossFire only gives less than a 40% boost. Not so peachy.
At the higher resolution of 1920x1200, CrossFire provides a greater boost, but it still doesn't compare to 7900 GT SLI. NVIDIA's single card dual-GPU solution stays out in front, the X1950 XTX not far behind, while a single X1900 GT is still capable of providing playable framerates - as far as most of us are concerned.
Quake 4
On i975X with CrossFire, the X1900 GT performs poorly. NVIDIA's dual-GPU solutions on nForce 590 SLI, single and dual board, both demonstrate how it should be done.
As a single card, the X1900 GT drops behind its green competitor, but not by much. It still delivers a good framerate.
Upping the resolution doesn't do CrossFire any good. There's still little benefit to be had from it, SLI absolutely trouncing it. Single card performance is still good, the order of play remaining the same, and just as close.
