Posted 11/18/2009 at 10:50:41pm

That is going to depend on some other factors.  If ATI is still using the PCI express switch chip like they used on their older x2 cards, then the card will still have full bandwidth availble.  On ATI's 3870x2 card, the chip (PLX 8547) sat between the two GPUs and offered 32 lanes worth of bandwidth for the chips to talk to each other and 16 lanes for the PCI bus.

Posted 11/18/2009 at 04:07:07pm

PCIe 2.0 with 8 lanes would allow for 4 GB/s

Posted 11/18/2009 at 03:54:10pm

Weather you can use x16 or x8 lanes when doubling up on videocards is dependent on the motherboard and chipset.  Both Intel's x48 and x58 support dual PCIe 2.0 lanes running at x16.  PCIe 2.0 can address up to 500 MB/s per lane.  In an 8x configuration, there aren't any graphics cards out that are hamstringed by that much available bandwidth. 

The reason you don't see 1:1 gains when using multiple cards in gaming isn't because of restrained bandwidth, but because SLI/Crossfire have poor scaling.  Games aren't writtin to run on a spacific set of cards, but on as wide a range of hardware setups as possible.  

Posted 11/18/2009 at 12:27:53am

I think your are assuming that a 5970 is saturating the bandwidth of PCI x8, and it's not.  The difference between cards in Crossfire/SLI in x8 vs x16 configurations typically show little or no difference.  However, from a pure performance standpoint it would have been nice if they tested crossfire with dual x16 PCI slots.

Posted 11/16/2009 at 11:03:01pm

It's fine if you like AMD, but your performance numbers are WAY off.  AMD's current top end chip is the 965.  It's a quad that comes clocked at 3.4GHz.  That's 600MHz faster than the Intel part choosen in the artical.  Even thoght the AMD part is clocked higher, it still loses to the lower clocked Intel part in almost every benchmark (stock).  If you want to get into overclocking the i7 860 has FAR more headroom to play with. 

About the only thing AMD can compete with is price.  Which the company does very well.  There is a 100 dollar difference between the two.  In my opinnion that's a fair number as AMD's part are inferior chips right now.  If your building a budget system, AMD makes sense.  But with 1500 to play with why would you build an AMD based system? 

Posted 10/27/2009 at 09:27:37am

That's not a bad idea, but you have to ask.  Is it worth the added cost that customers will be paying?  More importantly, is a Intel Atom 420 going to be fast enough to benifit from dual channel memory?  Just look at trichannel memory in the home market.  It barely has any effect on performance.

Posted 10/10/2009 at 12:49:33am

While I can't imagine paying more than $50 for one, many others have and will take the plunge.  I'd like to see Amazon offer their readers at subsidized pricing.  You buy the reader for say $50 and pay a monthly fee for (X) number of years (2 maybe) and you have unlimited access to all e-books in the store while you are paying the fee.  I'd be like a Zune Pass for books!!!

Posted 09/25/2009 at 09:33:55pm

Sir, your comment is sig worthy. :)

Posted 09/23/2009 at 01:51:48pm

I'd just like to add that 240Hz TVs and monitors are now on the market.

Posted 09/21/2009 at 07:01:20pm

Using it that way makes more sense.