I understand that with Nvidia's SLI technology, one cannot run two monitors while running SLI. If the two cards are in SLI mode, they can only run a single monitor. The SLI may be turned off, and the computer restarted, and then dual monitors can be enabled. This however, destroys the goal of SLI.

I am curious to know if this is true with Crossfire as well. Does Crossfire allow one to run two monitors off of two Crossfire'd graphics card?

Essentially, I want to purchase two Radeon HD 3870s and Crossfire them (because the 3870 X2 will be too expensive for my budget) and I want to Crossfire them, but I also want to be able to run dual monitors while gaming. Can I do this?

No. Neither solution allows the use of dual monitors.

From what I've heard, CF handles it a bit better then SLI. When you load a game, it will break the dual monitors and enable CF. When your done, it will break CF, and load your dual screens back. Not a good solution if you need your second monitor up, but slightly better then SLI.

Crossfire can do two (only two afaik) monitors at a time with crossfire enabled. It was added awhile ago (catalyst 8.3 i think?). 4745454b is clueless.
And what would an answer be without a link? http://techreport.com/articles.x/13967/3 -- and -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_CrossFire

Not clueless, just a few months behind on drivers....