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Because CrossFire and SLI setups are mutually exclusive, we had to use two different test systems to do our benchmarking. The CPU and memory speeds were standardized in order to reach acceptably comparable performance. As it stands, both of these systems should offer extremely similiar performance.

System 'A' was used for our NVIDIA cards:

  CPU: E6700 Intel Core 2 Duo at 2.67 GHZ (333 * 8) 
  Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 
  Memory: 2 gigabytes of Corsair XMS2-5400UL DDR2 RAM (2 * 1024MB @ 833MHz 4-4-4-12/2T) 
   Power Supply: OCZ 850W GXS
   Video cards: BFG 8800 GTS, BFG 8800 GTS OC2, Asus EN8800 GTX (x2)

System 'B' was used for our ATI cards:

  CPU: E6750 Intel Core 2 Duo at 2.67 GHZ (333 * 8)
  Motherboard: Asus P5W DH Deluxe
  Memory: 2 gigabytes of Corsair DOMINATOR XMS2-8888 DDR2 RAM (2 * 1024MB @ 833MHz 4-4-4-12/2T)
  Power Supply: Corsair HX 620W modular power supply        
  Video Cards: ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT (x2)

Both systems shared this same hardware:

  Hard Drive: 250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA, w/16 MB cache
  Operating System: Microsoft Vista 
  CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U 12

One other factor to mention is that System A has a 16x by 16x PCI-E lane configuration, whereas System B, in CrossFire mode, only runs in 8x by 8x mode. This should not cause anyone major problems for us though. If you'd like to read up on the subject, I'd recommend checking out our Multi-GPU World Tour article.

That's it for the hardware -- now, let's look at the benchmarks we used.