NVIDIA 8800GTS 640 SLI vs. ATI HD 2900XT CrossFire
Author: Luka Rakamaric
Date: 26 Jul 2007

In a recent article we covered the overclocking potentials of two of the closest competitors (pricewise) in the high end market segment. The results were much in favor of the NVIDIA's card, which scored quite a bit higher, especially when it was overclocked. Today we will take a look at the dual setups of both cards. We used two GeCube HD2900XT cards and two ASUS EN8800GTS 640 MB cards.
Few years since dual graphics card setups became available; the market situation has become pretty clear. NVIDIA has taken a vast majority of such setups, primarily because of the simplicity of its SLI system, unlike the first CrossFire systems that had to use pass-through cables and Master cards that were able to integrate the signals from the two cards. With the latest models from the X1000 series and the newest HD2000 series, ATI took the NVIDIA road and introduced internal connectors similar to the SLI bridge used by NVIDIA. The new system is much easier to assemble, and it eliminates the need for a Master card, which were almost impossible to get during early CrossFire days. We can finally say that ATI has come to NVIDIA?s level when it comes to the physical aspect of multi GPU setups. How it all works in practice, we will see later in the article.