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ATI Technologies has kept the PC World Test Center hopping over the last few weeks. We finally have in hand our first CrossFire test boards, the company's long-delayed dual-card answer to NVidia's year-old SLI. And we recently received a handful of next-generation cards, including ATI's Radeon X1800 XT--the overdue high-end challenger to NVidia's undisputed performance leader, the GeForce 7800 GTX.

For a geek like me, having all this new technology around is very exciting. One minor issue is putting a damper on my enthusiasm, though: You can't actually buy most of it yet. I find that frustrating; so much so, in fact, that I'm going to rant about it a little bit before I tell you our test results.

Chronic Delays

Basically, ATI "launched" its CrossFire dual-card solution at the end of September (I guess back in May the company had just "announced it). For nearly two weeks the product was missing in action, until ATI finally put it up for sale on its own site October 7. However, you won't find ATI-based CrossFire-ready motherboards for weeks to come; they'll be offered by third-party vendors.

Then ATI "launched" its X1000 line on October 5. But as of this writing you'd be hard pressed to find a store selling the three cards (the X1800 XL, the X1300 Pro, and the X1300) the company said would be on sale that week. ATI said it will ship three more boards in the line by the end of November--the high-end X1800 XT by November 5, and the mainstream X1600 XT and X1600 Pro by November 30. But at this point, do you believe it?

To be fair, ATI is hardly the first tech company to launch a product line with no products. But the fact is, these products are already quite late according to ATI's own announcements: CrossFire was due months ago, and the X1800 XT was first scheduled to ship back in June. Plus, ATI's recent track record for launching products has been pretty bad. For example, the X850 XT PE was so scarce after launch that frustrated techies dubbed it the Phantom Edition.

In the meantime, NVidia has gone on to release the benchmark-busting 7800 GTX and 7800 GT, and the company has made sure that cards based on those chips were in stores the day they launched them. That's just good business.

I certainly understand that ATI wants to keep its products in the minds of savvy buyers. And we're all looking forward to a little competition at the high end of the graphics food chain. But it seems to me the company would be better off announcing a later date, and hitting that launch date, rather than continually disappointing their customers.

Worth the Wait?

Alas, ATI loyalists who've been patiently awaiting the dual-card CrossFire are likely to be disappointed by this first iteration of the technology, which comes off more like a practice run than an actual high-end product. Our initial test results weren't particularly impressive, and despite the numerous delays, the hardware still feels a bit jury-rigged.

Like NVidia's SLI, CrossFire requires a special chip set and motherboard. In this case it's ATI's Radeon XPress 200 chip set (or, alternately, Intel's i955X) on a dual-slot motherboard. ATI sent me an XPress 200 reference board for testing, but as of this writing no vendor-produced version of the board is available to buy.

As with SLI, you need two graphics cards. However, SLI lets you pair any two matching GeForce 6600 or higher NVidia cards (new drivers eliminate the previous vendor restrictions); while ATI's technology requires buying a special CrossFire Edition graphics board. The CrossFire Edition board includes extra hardware that lets you match your CrossFire card with any X800-level or higher card; if you pair it with a lower-performing board, the faster card will slow down to match it. ATI sent us the high-end Radeon X850 CrossFire Edition ($399) along with a Radeon X850 XT ($345). I built the test PC; Senior Performance Analyst Elliott Kirschling installed and ran the graphics tests.

After installing the two gnarly, double-wide cards I connected them--outside of the case--via ATI's three-headed adapter. SLI utilizes a small in-case connector to link its SLI cards; frankly, it's a far superior design. ATI's hardware has at least one other major weakness: It limits you to a maximum display resolution of 1600 by 1200 at a headache-inducing refresh rate of 60 Hz. (ATI says future CrossFire boards will eliminate this restriction.)

Some gamers might be able to overlook such issues, if CrossFire's performance was sufficiently rockin'--but it's not. We pitted the CrossFire setup against a single card with NVidia's top-end GeForce 7800 GTX graphics chip, and the 7800 GTX won nearly every match up. True, at about $480 each, 7800 GTX cards aren't exactly cheap; but even if you already own an X850 XT card, by the time you buy the CrossFire Edition card and a future CrossFire-compatible motherboard you'll already be past the purchase price of the 7800 GTX.

Plus, you have to look at that silly ATI dongle. My advice, if you run across one of these first CrossFire cards: Stay away.

ATI's Big Shooter

CrossFire was a bit of a disappointment, but I was fairly sure that ATI's X1800 XT board would put up a better fight against NVidia's 7800 GTX. And I was mostly right. The two cards were pretty much neck and neck throughout our tests.

For example, looking at tests in Doom 3 run at 1600 by 1200 with antialiasing turned on, ATI's X1800 XT posted 42 frames per second compared to 49 fps for NVidia's 7800 GTX. Our Far Cry test, run at the same settings, saw the X1800 XT post 64 fps to the 7800 GTX's 51 fps. And in our Unreal Tournament 2004 test at the same settings, the 7800 GTX posted 72 fps while the X1800 XT hit 69 fps.

In the big picture, those scores are pretty close. There's no clear winner, to my mind. It's worth pointing out, though, that the ATI card included twice as much RAM (512MB) and has a list price of $549 versus the NVidia card's actual $480 street price. Rumor has it NVidia and its partners will eventually roll out a 512MB version of the 7800 GTX, which would make for a more even playing field.

ATI's X1800 XT is certainly a good graphics board, and it brings ATI's line up to speed in many ways beyond pure performance numbers; it adds support for Shader Model 3.0, for example. Would I buy the X1800 XT over NVidia's GTX 7800? That's a tough call. I suppose that would depend, in part, on whether I could actually find one.

Tom Mainelli has never purchased a $500 graphics card for himself, but he's thinking about buying one for his wife. Drop him a line.