4850x2 crossfire with 4850?

is there a significant gain by crossfiring a radeon 4850x2 with a regular 4850?

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts [...] ,1465.html

this seems to show promising results. It also depends if you play at high resolution and with AA/AF, it won't make much of a difference at lower resolutions (also you probably don't need more power at lower resolutions).

Wait for dx11 cards, coming out really soon. Unless you want the very best, you probably don't even need to upgrade. I know i can play most of my games (newer games) at almost max with a single 9800gtx at 1920x1200

No... It's the equivalent of 3 4850s. It's like running 1 4870x2 + 1 4870 = 3 4870s

A 4850x2 is essentially 2 4850s, it's not like a gtx 295 (which isnt 2 graphic cards of 1 chip type ontop of each other). So adding another one is like have 3 4850s, because it's having 3 cards of the same chip type.

Overshock, you are thinking of when you run 1 4890 and one 4870. They are the same chip set so they work in cross fire, but the 4870 downclocks its self to the level of the 4850 to make it work, or if you run a 4870 1 gig and a 4870 512, the lower card cant make its self better and run like the better card, but the better can lower its self then the same level as the lower card. Of course though 1 4870 and 1 4850 is better then a 1 4870, it'll just be a waist of your money.

For the original poster's question, 3 4850s would be useless (no offense), because most games dont scale well for 3-4 way SLi and as a previous poster already said new cards are coming out, though if you want to move to 2 4850s from 1 4850, that would be a good move because 1 4850 can be found as low as 100 USD and would boost your performance substantially for the time being untill you decide to upgrade again.

Tri-Fire is not a better choice with HD4850. There won't be much difference in performance.

http://ati.amd.com/technology/cros [...] index.html