x1950's and VGA Chart Oddities

[Satricus]

So, I noticed some weird results on the VGA charts today. I looked around here and found some other posts about similar issues, but they were all about various NVidia vs. ATI. The issue I'm talking about is the single x1950XTX vs. crossfired x1950XTX. Some of the results I'm looking at just seem all wrong, EX:

HL2, lowest settings: CF beats XTX 169.9 to 148.5
HL2, highest settings: XTX beats CF 78.3 to 72.8

Oblivion, Indoor Low: CF beats XTX 123.1 to 109.7
Oblivion, Indoor High: XTX beats CF 81.6 to 74.1
Oblivion, Outdoor Low: CF beats XTX 58.4 to 33.0
Oblivion, Outdoor High: XTX beats CF 17.0 to 12.3

I would expect little to no gain at low settings, with the extra power starting to show when you crank up the resolution and bells/whistles.

Unless I'm reading these all wrong, going from a single card to crossfire will actually hinder my performance when I need it the most?

I know there's some game compatibility issues with crossfire setups (hopefully working better with the new 6.11 cats), but from what I've read it either works or it doesn't, and these results are showing that it works when the demand is low, but not when it's high.

So, I've got the XTX, I've got the crossfire mobo, I've got the 1920x1200 24" monitor, and of course, Oblivion. And to top it off I've got little to no interest in switching to Vista until I absolutely have to.

So I figured dual 1950's was the perfect answer to my situation, but not if it's gonna screw with my performance like that. Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

My System

Along with XP Home SP 2, 2 IDE hard drives, 1 DVD burner, and the trusty old 3.5" floppy.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Well for the second part THG did not use the ChuckPatch at that time, which was the only way to enable CF in Oblivion, since Bethesda themselves disabled it (it's in the readme file, look for yourself) there is no performance gain, and instead a drop off by enabling CF.

Expect a change in the update as the new drivers now incorporate the Chuck patch.

 

[Satricus]

I thought the Chuck patch was just for enabling HDR+AA in Oblivion. But even if it was also the only way to enable CF, the chart results still don't make any sense to me.

You say there is no performance gain, and instead a drop off by enabling CF. But, on Tom's charts there is a gain. The gains are at low settings, and the drop offs are at high settings.

If CF isn't actually enabled, the CF setup should tie or lose to it's single card counterpart every time, right?

I'm mostly just wondering if there was a data error on the charts, or if CF support was so bad at the time that it was working backwards, i.e. CF working well when demand is low, but slowing everything down when demand is high.