As expected, ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, demonstrated its new ATI Radeon HD 3800 X2 graphics card at Consumer Electronics Show 2008. The new graphics card looks bulky, but it promises to demonstrate rather high performance.

ATI Radeon HD 3800 X2 graphics card is the first dual-chip graphics board from AMD’s graphics product group (former ATI Technologies) in many years. The first and the last time when ATI offered dual-chip ATI Rage Fury Maxx graphics card for gamers was back in 1999. That product was not a success, but AMD believes that its new Radeon HD 3800 X2 will face demand from enthusiasts.

The ATI Radeon HD 3800 X2 is based on two ATI Radeon HD 3870 (ATI RV670) graphics processors that work in multi-GPU ATI CrossFireX mode and carries 1GB of memory onboard. The solution has 640 stream processors in total and will fight against Nvidia’s GeForce 8800 Ultra and its successor. Each ATI Radeon HD 3800 X2 graphics accelerators have one ATI CrossFire connector, hence, can work in pairs, enabling 4-way ATI CrossFireX configuration, when four processors work in company to enable rapid rendering speed.

Check out ATI Radeon HD 3800 X2 at Consumer Electronics Show 2008 Gallery

Since all multi-GPU technologies rely on drivers to boost their performance, not all gaming applications will get performance advantage out of two or four chips. Only in the best case scenario all four graphics processing units (GPUs) will work efficiently, whereas in the worst case scenarios only one graphics chip will render the images.

Graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices yet has to determine the final pricing of its dual-chip solution as well as exact clock-speeds before launching the solutions sometimes in February.