Average performance
To make our data a little easier to digest, we've rolled numbers from Call of Duty 4, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, and Unreal Tournament 3 into a single, "average" set of results. Since CrossFire X doesn't yet support OpenGL games like Quake Wars, we've left the three- and four-way Radeon configs out of this comparison. We've also omitted Crysis since we didn't test all cards at a single resolution in it.

Boiling down our previous results into one graph and one plot clarifies things for us nicely. As we've been saying all along, the GeForce 9600 GT and the GeForce 8800 GT are the best-positioned single-GPU offerings, and the GeForce 9600 GT SLI setup is the next best step up—even with its lackluster numbers from our Quake Wars test lowering its average slightly. Among the Radeons, the HD 3850 CrossFire solution deserves particular distinction; its performance nearly matches than of the Radeon HD 3870 X2, at a much lower price.

Overall, the almost linear relationship we initially noted between price and performance remains largely intact, with some notable exceptions at the high end of the market. Any config involving a GeForce 8800 Ultra is a relatively poor value with the advent of newer G92-based cards. Things are a little rosier for the GeForce 9800 GTX-based three-way SLI, whose outstanding performance almost (well, kinda) tracks with its outrageous price. Meanwhile, the 9800 GX2-based quad SLI setup has unique one-two combo of being slower than the 9800 GTX three-way rig while costing considerably more.