Their set of three GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics cards seems to yield a significant performance improvement over a standard two-way 8800 Ultra SLI setup, as well. In Crysis, for example, the three-way SLI doubles minimum frame rates from 7 FPS to 14 FPS...

Let me get this straight. It take three ~$600 video cards to increase the minimum frame rate from seven FPS to fourteen?!

I'm sorry but I just can't chalk that up to demanding graphics alone. I realize that that is only the minimum frame rate, but even the average frame rate at high settings doesn't break 40 FPS. There has got to be some bad programming at work here for Crysis to run so poorly...

14fps with THREE 8800 ultras... what were crytek thinking...

the benchmarks just reiterate my previous statements. a new nv series should have hit the market in the summer. 20fps on a single card that is really the top of the line and still costs a fortune is just plain pathetic. If it cant do HD gaming, why is it still on the market? I guess the milking factor just went up another notch. I also am guessing that's why SLI was invented. Why improve performance on a single card when you can add more video cards? NV and ATMD are pushing people out of the pc gaming arena and into the hands of consoles. I know that I am getting tempted.

You guys are all wrong! Its not Cryteks fault. Instead of nvidia/ati improving their crossfire and sli drivers to get more performance out of 2 cards they decided to throw in more cards... none of those cards are being used to their full potential.

The returns just don't seem to justify all the costs involved.

The next-gen from nVidia is likely to fully address GPU and/or GPGPU needs with the same silicon. Full double-precision data paths etc. So expect the ultimate bleeding-edge gaming machine to contain two 99xx(?) in SLI and the third x16 slot to be devoted to a 99xx(?) devoted to (GPGPU) physics and other peripheral-math processing. nVidia is already working on merging their CUDA driver with their current GPU driver offerings. Note the PCIe2.0 bus-compatibility of the nv780i chipset which will help to handle the bus bandwidths required. And the GPU performance of the next-gen nV silicon is very likely to exceed x2 of any of the current G8x or G9x offerings.

As it just came out, Crysis may be more aimed at future cards than current ones. Maybe Crytek knows something about the performance of the upcoming nvidia series (9000?) that the rest of us do not know. I recall the single 8800GTX cards outperforming SLI setups when it first came out. So maybe something similar will be happening with the new NVidia series.

it might not be bad with 3x 8800GTs when the price comes down, that would probably kick the pants of any 2 card SLI setup.

3 8800Ultra got 38 fps at 1920x1200 on very high setting when playing crysis

This is not bad at all

The 14 fps was the min fps, not average fps.

I wonder what this would look like with the new G92 cards, when they come out with a 3-way capable GTX.

How small was 2 way SLI market? 3 way's will be even smaller.

diminishing returns for such a high price. Just like how Oblivion made most systems crawl two years ago any high end card today will handle it fine. I'll just wait.