2x3870's in CF slower than 8800gtx?

So is the nvidia 8800GTX in pcie x16 faster than 2x 3870’s in CF on pcie 2.0? This is assuming I’m running at 1680x1050 rez. What I am thinking about doing is buying a cheap motherboard and running the 8800gtx on it until I need to upgrade, where I will then buy another 8800gtx and a new motherboard probably the 780i or something whenever it comes out so I can run them in SLI. Is this wise? I’m afraid of the 2 8800’s hogging each others bandwidth and therefore creating a bottleneck, could this bottleneck be solved by a pcie 2.0 board even though the 8800GTX’s are pcie 1?

or could anyone post a link to a topic explaining graphic card bandwidth? I'm still not 100% sure what’s going on in that department.

As far as bandwidth, at 16x10 I don't think dual 8800's would chew up 8x/8x like on the 650i mobos'. From what I have seen, It seems it takes high res and/or AA levels to make the 16x/16x 680i mobos beat the 650i mobos in SLI. Here is a review I looked at when deciding what mobo I wanted for dual 8800GT's. I went with a MSI P6N SLI platinum (650i) mobo for $120.
http://www.techspot.com/review/45- [...] page4.html

Personally i would take the single card over the two in crossfire as there is less chance of problems like compatability and as has been said some games dont support it that well if at all.
Heres another review to look at.
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/for [...] eview.html
Mactronix

http://en.expreview.com/?p=53&page=5

Yes I agree. 3870 CF is more efficient than 8800GT SLI. Less heat, less power consumption, more overclockability, and Quad CF ready. As to the GTX :

Believe it or not, but a pair of these $179 Radeon HD 3850s actually gives you the same performance as a single GeForce 8800 GTX.
reference: http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] =3151&p=10

So your assumption that 3870CF cannot compete a single GTX might be wrong, when two 3850 is as fast what more on 3870 CF.

But crossfire is not stable or 100% working on most games as of now. Some issues needs to be fixed maybe next year will do.

You may take the PowerColor ATI HD3850 Xtreme 512MB $200 tag as an alternative solution
http://itembargain.com/forumn/index.php?topic=38.0

Agreed hatman.
It's safe to say 2 3870's beat a GTX, in all cases where drivers are not severely bugged. And since multi GPU setups will become more important for both AMD and nvidia, drivers to support these setups will improve.
Didn't 2* 3850 allready beat a GTX in some cases?

Talking about CF without performance boost

That statement belongs to the bug/current limitation of CF drivers at the moment. If patch from game maker or from ATI will be released CF will have obviously effect on these games. Since the game was already made before 3870 appears and the ATI havent tested its video card to all games so such limitation may arise. It is just a software problem not a hardware.

It is very clear 2 Cards is better than 1.

With lots of benchmarks i am telling u that 2 cards arent always better than 1, and u insist on your words, then bother myself and telling u, when u dont listen to anything?

This man is telling you the truth ! And don't ever expect twice the power from 2 cards . It won't happen .... it usually increases the res output and does improve the video to an extent and some framerates but make sure the extra cost and pain in the rear is what you want to use 2 .... check out all the tests with that setup first before wasting alot of money . Like stated before there are still alot of bugs in both dual card setup drivers ..... especially Crysis .... which I am totally disapointed with " CRYSIS " ... great video effects but to me lousey gameplay really . Did'nt impress me at all . Man was this game over-rated ! Oh well all those bucks I spent just to play it ..... looking for something better already ..... any suggestions ? ---- ----