Final Words & Conclusion
I have to admit I was a little surprised by the excellent performance scaling we see on the R6950. Where the single card is a little so-so to position, we can surely recommend going the CrossfireX route. Granted, two cards will set you back a chunk load of money at roughly 550 EUR, but the performance gained here is truly amazing.
ATI's, or I should say AMDs driver team has done a tremendous job ever since the series 5000 release to get games supported in multi-GPU mode. Last week they announced that every week a new Application Profile Patch will be released, so if a new game is out, within a week you'll have support for it (at least according to AMD). It's that kind of dedication we like to see very much.
Now make no mistake, once you pass a single GPU configuration there's bound to be some sort of issue at one frame in time. A game that is not properly multi-GPU supported or some weird anomalies. This happens period, it's the choice you make with multi-GPU setups. Stretching it even further with 3 or 4 GPUs and things typically get way more complicated than fun. keep that in mind, always.
That said, we have had no issues whatsoever with the titles tested today. And sure, AMD makes sure to check up on sites like Guru3D to make sure our test-suite is well supported in their drivers. But the overall experience was pretty darn good. In fact ever since the 6800 releases a while ago we feel that AMD is making tremendous steps with their multi-GPU support, and today's article is a testimony to that.
Radeon HD 6850 CrossfireX
What you gain with a setup like this is truly massive gaming performance, any game at any resolution at up-to 8xAA will runs smooth as heck, it's that simple. Where this setup might really help though is of course Eyefinity. Multiple monitor setups can be a huge strain on the GPU as they need to poop out more pixels of course.
Overall we very much liked what we tested. The performance is really good, the R6950 in CrossfireX for whatever reason just seems to make so more sense then the one single card. Two cards close to each other in your chassis under heavy stress produce a lot, seriously a lot of noise, keep that in mind.
Massive thanks go out to Gigabyte for shipping out the 2nd R6950. The Gigabyte card is tagged under SKU code GV-R695D5-2GD and can be spotted in the stores at roughly 269 EUR. An excellent product which we had no issues with whatsoever.
That said, what you have seen in terms of performance today will likely also be very similar to the upcoming Antilles release from AMD, a card that for now we'll name Radeon HD 6990, and that surly promises a lot.
