The NVIDIA SLI platform easily won the battle of the low-end systems. With SLI, all of the games received a performance boost giving the platform a significant edge in performance over CrossFire.

ATI states that "CrossFire works with all 3D games and that the end user is able to take advantage of the additional graphics hardware for all games, all the time." However, they should also mention that adding a second graphics card may not improve performance at all. Determining the playable settings for the low-end CrossFire system was frustrating and time consuming.

The glitches:

• Brothers in Arms performance was extremely poor. I was concerned with the results, but was able to verify them based on a review at X-bit labs.
• Disabling adaptive antialiasing in Painkiller improved performance by as much as 40%. However, there were no differences in image quality with and without adaptive antialiasing.
• The ten second average response time it took to bring up the Catalyst Control Center is unacceptable.

If you are a gamer with a limited budget and plan to invest in a multi-GPU system, go with the SLI platform. Especially if you intend on playing the classic games. Gaming on the low-end SLI platform was a pleasure and exceeded my expectations.

The glitches:

• The fan on the GeForce 7600 GS spun faster than expected.
• Painkiller shut down once after changing the resolution to 1920x1440.

Morrowind

Morrowind Performance

Brothers in Arms

Brothers in Arms Performance

Dungeon Siege 2

Dungeon Siege 2 Performance

Neverwinter Nights

Neverwinter Nights Performance

Painkiller

Painkiller Performance

Next Page: Mid-Range System Performance