6:04 PM - ATI Crossfire with 2 4550s
I purchased two ATI Radeon HD 4550s recently. These cards are designed at the segment between gamers and non-gamers. The cards feature low energy consumption (20 watts max) and do not require pciE power connectors (from the power supply).
My system uses an Asus motherboard that supports CrossfireX with a x16 and x4 pci express 2.0 slot configuration. I have a 380 watt 80 plus certified Antec power supply and a quad core AMD Phenom 2.3Ghz (9600) with 3GB of RAM.
My hope was that the new crossfire configuration would be at least as fast as my previous X1900 card that no longer gets driver updates. WIth Windows 7 just around the corner, I needed a card that would be supported. I also wanted to experiment with CrossfireX.
Crossfire is the technology to take two graphics cards and use them together to display an image on one (or two) monitors. Each graphics card individual could run two displays.
Now for the performance characteristics.
Enemy Territory: 1280 x 1024
x1900: 90fps ~
4550 (crossfireX on): 30-60 FPS
World of Warcraft:
x1900: (custom settiings similar to high) 30-60fps
4550(2): 15fps .. at medium settings 27fps
Quakewars:
x1900: ~30 fps at 1680 x 1050
4550(2): 15-30 (4x AA works though.. frame rate doesnt' change with it on or off)
The amazing part is that the system uses less power by a few watts with the new crossfirex configuration. It's using about 120.7 watts while playing world of warcraft with the new setup in Vista Ultimate 32bit with power management software (from asus) enabled.