MSI RD480 Neo2

General Performance:

Playback using a single GPU is generally very good, coming out on average in the very low 30% range, however when using CrossFire we found the colours were completely wrong and playback decoding was broken and unwatchable. The problem only cropped up when CrossFire was enabled in the drivers - there were no problems with two X850XTs running together, or with a single X850XT for that matter. We understand that this problem is fixed in later Catalyst driver releases.

The MSI RD480 Neo2 was two seconds slower than the ABIT AN8-SLI in single card mode, but only a second slower in dual card mode. It performed on a par with the Sapphire PI-A9RX480 motherboard, as expected.

The performance of the MSI CrossFire board is very similar to the nForce4 SLI boards and also the Sapphire PI-A9RX480 with literally a second between the MSI CrossFire and ABIT AN8-SLI with a single GeForce 6800 GT. However, the CrossFire overhead hurts the MSI just a little and it drops 20 seconds over the course of the encoding task. Comparatively, this is better than the SLI overhead on most SLI motherboards - generally, you can add 30 seconds to the single GPU encode time on nForce4 SLI boards.

Due to the problems with HD WMV9 playback in CrossFire mode, we couldn't complete this test in CrossFire mode. However, it performed the tasks just fine with both CrossFire mode disabled and in single GPU mode. The board was faster than any other board we've tested in this particular scenario.

The RD480 Neo2 is as fast as the other motherboards when using a single GeForce 6800 GT, but it's the fastest by nearly a second when CrossFire mode is enabled.