So Now I have sold both my ASUS and my Powercolor HD4850's on eBay and I got $100 for both. This piled up with some money I had saved up got me just enough for my next attempt to finally get Crossfire to function; If two separate 4850's won't do the job, then my other option is the 4850X2. Having read a couple of reviews of the card and Tom's Hardware is claiming this was even better than a GTX 280, I couldn't back out. So I order the card on the Egg and waited patiently.

This has been epic... really epic, I got my card and I was really exited when I saw the box in front of my door. grabbed it and pulled it inside and couldn't get a knife fast enough to open the thing. I made sure I got my Packaging slip and paper work out first to file, and then came the beast (or so i believed), the humongus box of the 4850X2 by Sapphire. I set the 4850X2 box on the dinning room table and opened it to reveal the monster itself. First impression was wow... what a humongous card. No matter how many online pictures of the card you have seen online could of preped you for the sheer volume this card took up. However, this sheer volume lead to issues. 

I opened the side of my case and take out the temporary 8600GT I had in there and made a little comparison.

After the short comparison, I attempted to put the new card into my NZXT Nemesis case and I ran into the first problem. The card did not fit in my case. What pissed me of was not really the fact that it didn't fit but the fact that it didn't fit by like 1/8 of an inch. So now im stuck with a $250 card that doesn't fit in my case, what do I do? Well, my obvious choise is to cut part of the hard drive bay in order for th card to fit. When my dad comes home I inqure him so, he laughts and the agrees to help. Before he began though, I took the intestines of my best out of its skeleton and laid them on my floor. The card fit now in its new air case and now at least I was able to install drivers and benchmark. 

Unexpectedly, My real prblems began here. I was paticularly happy because around this date was when the Catalyst 9.1 Drivers released from ATI and they were pretty much added support for the 4850X2 since it wasn't a refference card. So tinking this was all going to fit together like a puzzle was a nice dream. The Drivers did install and all and Catalyst did come up. I was finally able to see both GPU's and Enable CrossfireX! Yay!!! Near twice the performance here I come! 

This wansn't the case however, it completely baffled me when I ran the Valve Stress test and I got 112fps. Yes, this is a fairly high number but I am shocked because with my Powercolor single 4850 I got 210fps. Realizing this I go back to Catalyst and disable Crossfire, I got back to the Stress test and yep. 211fps. To twist the knife even more, I did a 3Dmark06 test, and just to put it in comparison, my OC'ed system with a single 4850 got a 14142. this system with Crossfire enabled got 11218. Vastly less performance... how could this be? How is it that I get better performance when I disable Crossfire? I though I was suppose to be ther other way around, at it is but I guess there is something else, Something else I don't really care right now to find.

So all in all I RMA the card back to Newegg. It is on its way there right now and Im waiting for my refund. So im still attempting to finalize Mass Effect with my 8600GT, which by the way is not doing a bad job at all. 

So what exactly is going on here? well like i said in the bigining, its really hard for me not to rule out my Motherboard now...because it is highly unlikely that 2 cards have not worked consecutively in Crossfire. I have looked up and down my BIOS for any options to add PCIe lanes or enable Crossfire but I fail to find any, I have also scouted the internet for my issue and nothing.  Even if my motherboard is bad I can't really afford to replace it right now because of one thing that really doesn't impeed it from functioning, so I kind of have to make do with what i have.

So what is the next step to my dilema you ask? well 1/2 of that step is to sit down and ralize that Multi-GPU technology is not as solid as it is portrayed to be and it is in some cases (like mine) is hit or miss. The other 1/2 of this step is to find the best single GPU solution out there for the same price as the 4850X2, and I have. I have done countless hours of research and looked at at least 20 websites and reviews and have come to the conclusion that the best graphics card for my price range right now is the XFX GTX 260 Black Edtion. Overclocked at 666Mhz, a 15.6% overclock is in most test able to put it even above a GTX280!

Right now I am waiting for my refund and as soon as I get it I will order it from Newegg.