Quad Battle - Quad SLI vs Quad CrossfireX - Conclusion
Author: Luka Rakamaric
Date: 15 Apr 2008

QuadGPU certainly doesn't seem like the future of gaming in its present configuration, although the next-gen cards should be multi-core and therefor a bit similar to these configurations we have today. It is just too expensive, and not just the cards, but the accompanying system and the screen that will be able to use it. On ‘normal’ displays, going anything more than a normal SLI or CF is just overkill, except maybe for Crysis which is way ahead of its time when we look at the hardware demands. A few weeks after the launch the drivers seem to be quite polished, although the increase in performance is not as great as when you go from one to two GPUs. The spending these cards bring on your electricity bill is also not negligible. With a big LCD eating as much as 150 Watts you are coming dangerously close to 1KW of used power, which is again very close to some heaters people use. With this kind of GPU configuration in your room, you will certainly be able to turn down your heating system. And not to mention that summer is coming.

If you want to make your PC future proof, go for these cards. The drivers will be better with each revision, so that shouldn’t be a problem as well. The only thing is that by the time you will actually need this kind of processing power, you will be able to get it for just a fraction of the price.

We will add results for a Triple SLI configuration of 9800GTX cards as soon as possible, just to see how they scale, since they are basically the same cards.

A big, nice "Thank you" to MSI for providing us with cards (9800GX2 and 3870X2) to do this article.