To Wait, or Not To Wait for Crossfire

[Torsoboy]

Hello everyone! I'm kind of in a struggle right now... I want to make a PC to take to college with me that will last me for a long time. The thing is, if I want to build it at my house, I have to have it finished by Aug. 12th. Otherwise, if I waited until I was already settled in at my apartment, I wouldn't really have a computer to use until I ordered it.

Now, with that out of the way: I am really looking forward to ATi's Crossfire technology. When SLI came out, I was really interested, but it seemed to have some week points... Like needing profiles to take advantage of dual cards, and having to do different jumper settings, and that you need two identical cards. Crossfire proclaims to do everything better (of course they wouldn't say theirs is worse... but anyways) and sounds like a good solution.

My plan was to wait for Crossfire motherboards to come out, and then buy one with a regular Radeon X800 XL and later when the Crossfire enabled X800 comes out, I could simply upgrade to Crossfire. However it doesn't appear that the motherboards will be out until early August.

The big question:

1. Do I wait until Crossfire comes out and possibly go without my own pc for a month or so?
2. Do I forget Crossfire entirely and go with an SLI system with hopes that drivers will fix it's current shortcomings?
3. A combination? Wait until Aug. 5th or so for Crossfire, and if it's not out by then go with SLI?
4. Do you think Crossfire will live up to it's claims?
5. Should I just forget dual cards and pop for an nVidia 7800GTX?

Note: My video card budget would be around ~$500, maybe a tad more. So were talking maybe SLIed 6800GT's or Crossfired x800 xl's. Ati has an offer for $100 off the crossfire edition card when it comes out if you buy a regular x8-- card now, which would help my budget.

Sorry about the lengthy post. Any input is appreciated! Thanks for reading!

[Yuanji]

i would probably scrap both ideas and just get a 7800GTX instead since crossfire will most definately require a few driver revisions to get it right and SLi'ed 6series don't make much sense anymore with the arrival of the 7series Geforce. I would either get it or wait for R520 and get that

[Torsoboy]

Thanks for the reply. I tend to get wrapped up in the new technology heh.

Last time I check the release for the R520, would be around September. I might be able to survive a month without a computer, because my roommate will have one, but still.

Or better yet, should I get an SLI board and get only one 7800gtx and get another sometime in the future should I need it (though I've heard it's hard to get the exact model needed sometimes in the future for SLI)... Or I could wait until the R520 and get a Crossfire Ready board and get an R520 single and wait until I need an upgrade .

Anyways, more opinions would be great!

[Yuanji]

ATI is currently having some problems getting the R520 out. Last I heard, TMSC was having problems with their yields so the R520 isn't ready for sales yet. I heard that they were going to push it back to Q4, just to give you an idea of how long you'd be waiting for. IMO, the best course of action would be to get a single 7800GTX right now. When you do decide to SLi it, you're going to need an amazing CPU to keep up with it.

[Torsoboy]

Okay, thanks for the input, I think I know what I'm going to do. My friend just got a new PC with a 7800gtx, and I don't really want to copy off him completely (don't ask me why, just some strange reason)... So, I'll wait until Crossfire comes out, and when it does I'll check out the reviews and prices, and if it doesn't seem like something I want, I might go with the 7800gtx build or just get a x850xt or something a bit less expensive.