With dual-GPU graphics cards now common, someone was bound to try slapping three GPUs onto a single card. We first learned about the EAH3850 Trinity in March, when Asus revealed it had built a single-slot AMD Radeon HD 3850 CrossFire X config out of a trio of notebook graphics modules. Asus used a water-cooling system to cool the contraption.
The EAH3850 Trinity was and remains a proof of concept, but HotHardware got a chance to test and benchmark it. Their verdict? Performance isn't as high as it could be: going from a single Radeon HD 3850 to the three-way, single-slot device only raised Company of Heroes frame rates from 37 to 55 FPS at 1280x1024 with 4X antialiasing enabled. That's a 49% increase in performance from a 200% increase in GPU horsepower—not exactly jaw-dropping.
HotHardware attributes the EAH3850 Trinity's lackluster showing to PCI Express bandwidth shortages and a dearth of driver optimizations. Whatever the problem, you're probably better off grabbing a Radeon HD 4870.
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