Conclusions
At the end of the day, ATI has achieved most of its basic goals with CrossFire. The whole scheme works reasonably well within its limitations. CrossFire performance scales nicely from one card to two, so long as you're talking about matched cards, and so long as the application you're using has a profile waiting for it in Catalyst A.I. Also, CrossFire's SuperAA modes offer the best antialiasing quality around, bar none. Unfortunately, the default SuperTiling mode doesn't scale well at all, in our experience, so the prospect of CrossFire "just working" with any application whatsoever seems a little bit far-fetched.

In many respects, the first generation of CrossFire isn't as refined as NVIDIA's current implementation of SLI. Some of CrossFire's problems could be fixed in software given time, including the dearth of user control over load-balancing methods and the lack of any indicator of the load-distribution technique in use. ATI simply needs to decide to do the right thing and open up CrossFire for tweaking. Other CrossFire shortcomings will likely be addressed with the release of new ATI graphics hardware, including the resolution/refresh rate ceiling of 1600x1200 at 60Hz. However, some CrossFire idiosyncracies probably won't be going away any time soon, including the need for a separate CrossFire Edition master card, those pesky external cables, and the relatively pokey PCI and USB performance of the Radeon Xpress 200 south bridge.

Ultimately, these things shake down to a few essential truths. As a whole platform or solution, CrossFire isn't as good as SLI, but it's probably good enough. CrossFire's true fate and desirability will be more than likely determined by ATI's next generation of GPUs and by the master cards that will go with them. If those products are good, CrossFire should succeed. If they're not, folks will probably decide that CrossFire isn't worth the hassle.

For those of you who currently own Radeon X800 or X850 cards and are pondering an upgrade to CrossFire, my advice to you is this: wait for ATI's new graphics cards before making the leap. You will quite likely decide you'd rather upgrade to one nifty, new graphics card than plunk down the cash for a Radeon X800 or X850 master card and motherboard. The first generation of CrossFire is probably too little, too late for most would-be upgraders.

If you just can't bring yourself to heed my advice and wait, I believe Radeon X850 XT CrossFire Edition cards should be available starting today at online vendors, as should Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire Edition motherboards. I suppose the master cards will come with the appropriate video drivers for CrossFire configs, and ATI says to expect the first public release of CrossFire-ready Catalyst drivers during the first week of October. Not long after that, on October 10, Radeon X800 master cards are slated to hit store shelves. If ATI delivers on everything it has promised, October will be a very interesting month indeed in the world of PC graphics.