AMD Radeon HD 5870 1GB CrossFire performance review

With the Radeon HD 5970 hitting the streets later this week, strapping two "Cypress" GPUs together onto a single physical graphics board, now seems like as good a time as any to take a look at an alternative to such a set-up - Two individual Radeon HD 5870 boards in a CrossFire configuration.

Indeed, given the reference clock speed of a Radeon HD 5870 against the expected clock speeds of the Radeon HD 5970, going down the CrossFire route should net you slightly higher performance than said forthcoming flagship part - But is it worth the outlay, and indeed the difficulties of getting hold of two Radeon HD 5870 cards in the first place?  We take a look at exactly what a Radeon HD 5870 CrossFire has to offer buyers with the cash to spare compared to the already stellar performance of a single Radeon HD 5870 card.