Crossfire Performance
Ah, the return of the age old Intel versus AMD argument and which one's better for gaming. I dusted off the HEXUS Intel Extreme Edition 3.73GHz - 266MHz bus P4 with 2MiB of L2 cache - and setup Crossfire on the ECS, comparing it to the performance of the Athlon 64 FX-57 Crossfire platform I used to demonstrate Crossfire at its late last month.Would the ECS - equipped with a rare $1000 gamers CPU that's about as fast as it gets on the LGA775 side of the fence - be able to beat down the Halibut reference board fed by AMD's massively mighty gaming chip?
Errrrrrrrrm. This facet of performance is the only downside of the PA1 MVP Extreme for this reviewer. A flexible mainboard with good stock performance let down in the eyes of the enthusiast with the stark reality that Athlon 64 is just a nicer platform for the gamer. This is a gamer's mainboard and when you're forced to say as such, given the limitations of the current generation of Crossfire, it dampens the good bits that the mainboard has to offer.
And the kicker? It's nothing to do with ECS; the inherent limitations of an Intel mainboard paired with limited first generation Crossfire will be present on any other vendor's product. Ho hum, as they say.
The recent hint that X850 XT Crossfire master boards might be only a smidgen over £200 in time for Christmas doesn't really change anything. Price doesn't overcome a 1600x1200 maximum resolution that two X850 XT graphics boards are quite capable of overcoming in many many games.
