Actually you couldnt be any more wrong.

The motherboard was never designed to handle crossfire, and with crossfire in its amazingly stable state (read: joke), it was bound to fail.

Toss in two GTX's and you have amazing stability.
Or, if you want crossfire, use an Intel board. Its HP's fault for being stupid.

Vista's video card driver problems have been fixed. Stop speaking out your ass.

diabolusunknown

abigsmurf

marm0lade

Leaderz0rz

Abnormal

64 bit Vista used by a "non-idiot" who turns off all of the unneeded services and Aero features = FASTER THAN MY XP INSTALL WAS! (Using the same exact hardware.)

Get to work you lazy bastards! There are hundreds of Vista optimization guides out there. Stop being lazy and laying the blame at MS feet. You had to optimize XP to get it to perform, why is it you are unwilling to optimize Vista?

axiomatic

Kupaka

As far as the animosity goes between ATi and NVidia fanboys, both have had their ups and downs, and will continue to do so. They willeach be better than the other for a month or so until the other releases their new super $600+ card that provides the most minute performance tweak and you sure as hell better rush out and buy not just one but two or three right now for that super ultra performance boost. Suckers.

DashTheHand

SomeoneUKno

It's the same as saying there's no difference between an AMD 5000+ and an Intel Quad Core. Sure, they are both decent processors, but the Quad Core is flat out better. If you want to know why read benchmarks.

The fact that Doom 3 looks the same on both ATI and Nvidia cards is irrelevant (and honestly, does anyone still play Doom??). Try running Crysis on two 8800's or two 2900's. When Nvidia can run it at maximum settings on a 30" screen and ATI can't, that's where you get the difference. If you're not pushing your video card to its limits, then (duh) you won't care.

sorrow24

pete_at_brandeis

PC Gamer's Bottom Line for the Blackbird is as follows:

"How do you get the highest hardware score in PC Gamer History? This is how."

UberJumper

PC Gamer is a sister publication to Maximum PC.

It got higher 3dmarks than the Dell XPS 720 H2C model, higher FPS in Doom 3, and lower in FEAR and Half Life 2:Episode One.

It was only faster than the Falcon Northwest Mach V in 3dmark score, and was slightly slower in Doom 3 and FEAR (7 and 1 FPS respectively) and significantly slower in Half Life 2:Episode 1.

PC Gamer said the highs were:

"The slickest, most accessible case ever designed for gamers; curiously fast."

Lows were:

"Extremely Heavy; mild fan noise; can't turn off LEDs; doesn't cuddle in bed"

MB was Asus Striker Extreme

CPU Core 2 Extreme QX6850 overcloked to 3.67 Ghz

4GB of DDR2 1066 RAM

and 2 ATI HD 2900 XTX in Crossfire mode.

Oh, and they tested it with Vista Ultimate installed.

UberJumper

As many hardware sites have indicated, Vista performance for games is pretty close to that of XP, due to much improved drivers, which was a massive problem early in its release. Nvidia has done a fantastic job. ATI, while stable, always seems to perform poorly with newly released games. After a driver release or two, that performance is up where it should be.

Oh, and in the last 2 hours of using my PC, i have not had to answer that question once.

Enjoy Crysis on the Mac.

diabolusunknown

God only knows why, when there's the Blitz Extreme and now the Maximus Extreme which both utilise Crossfire/Crosslinx anyway and are built on Intel chipsets instead of the dodgy 680i the SE has.
And before you all have a go at me, I have a Striker Extreme and I've seen the support forum littered with the weeping shells of what were once human beings before they bought that motherboard...

Step666

As far as ATI... HP should have stick to Nvidia.

What a way to kill a good hardware....

aec007

erockO

'Allow'

'Graphics card wishes to draw another green line from 0,100 to 100,100. Allow or deny?'

.
.
.

smokinjoefission

Yeah yeah. Bring the flames, ATi fanboys!

SomeoneUKno

Stravos

SomeoneUKno

SchruteBuck