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CNET Editors' Take
January 24, 2006 3:58 AM PST
ATI's newest high-end 3D cards race to the top of the 3D performance charts. Too bad doubling them up is still a hassle.
Our compatriots over at GameSpot.com did a bang-up job on the reviews of ATI's new Radeon X1900 XTX and Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire Edition cards, so check over there for the hard and fast performance numbers. Our take is that you've got to really want it for the price of $600 for the single Radeon X1900 XTX alone. But considering the card's outstanding benchmark scores and the fact that you can turn on high dynamic range lighting and antialiasing simultaneously in any game, ATI now has the 3D card to beat.
The question remains, though, whether the hardest of the hard-core gamers will embrace ATI's dual-card CrossFire technology, the competitor to Nvidia's successful SLI standard. The Radeon X1800 cards in CrossFire mode were seriously hampered by monitor setting limitations. ATI worked those kinks out with the Radeon X1900 CrossFire cards, but you still need to purchase a separate, more expensive card to double up, and motherboard and other component support is nowhere near as robust as Nvidia's. We hope ATI smoothes out these logistical wrinkles soon, because the core tech has finally caught up.
