We've had ATI CrossFireX running the past couple days and while the drivers are not public yet, things are looking very good from what we have seen. Since we are still waiting on another Radeon HD 3870 X2 to be delivered by FedEx, we slapped together a Radeon HD 3870 X2 with a Radeon HD 3870, which in turn creates a Triple CrossFireX platform with just two 16x PCI Express slots. In March, ATI will be releasing the Catalyst 8.3 drivers, which now offer support for CrossFireX in both DirectX 9.0c and DirectX 10 applications. Down the road, once the drivers are official and out for the public, we will have Quad numbers for you, but for now, let's see what made this possible. - Legit Reviews

ATI Radeon HD 3870 Series Triple CrossFireX Review

For now only the Radeon HD 3800 series of video cards will support 3-Way or 4-Way CrossFire in compatible PC's. ATI has stated in the open that performance still has a ways to go and that over the next few months performance is only going to get better. The driver team at ATI is cranking away on CrossFireX and they are off to a great start. One of the other neat features of Catalyst 8.3 drivers is the ability to run an extended desktop while running with CrossFireX. This is something that NVIDIA has been unable to do since they first showed off Quad SLI years ago with a pair of GeForce 7950 GX2 graphics cards.

If the rumors prove true, this is still something that NVIDIA will be unable to do once the GeForce 9800 GX2 is released. Other than support for CrossFireX and Hybrid CrossFire, the Catalyst 8.3 drivers bring a bunch of new features to the table like DirectX 10.1 support, greater anti-aliasing enhancements for all Unreal 3.0 engine games in DirectX 9.0c mode, HydraVision, digital panel GPU image scaling, new Avivo video controls, support for GPU folding and tessellation has been added for developers to play around with. We will be taking a closer look at the CrossFireX support today which seem to be the sexiest of all the features.

We've been talking about CrossFireX drivers since November 2007 and it's been a long four months of waiting, but it seems like it was worth the wait. The drivers we used for testing are still in development, so once the final Catalyst 8.3 drivers are delivered we will take a closer look at CrossFireX, and by then, we should have another Radeon HD 3870 X2 card in our hands and enough cards on the test bench to run any game and resolution. But CrossFireX looks good and the scaling from two cards to three shows performance gains of 5-50% with the average being right around 33%, which is certainly a very nice boost.

We can't wait to see what Quad CrossFire looks like and what Catalyst 8.4 and higher drivers will bring to the table. The CrossFireX drivers are coming, so if you've been waiting for Triple and Quad CrossFire the time has nearly arrived. The month March will be a very exciting time as we will also see the renewed Quad SLI technology from NVIDIA that will be introduced once again with the GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics accelerator. And this time ATI will have their Quad CrossFire ready to go head to head with the competition.