3870 X2 is only an X1 in unrecognized games?

[killerbobjr]

In Hot Hardware's review:

"If a new game hits store shelves and the drivers don’t recognize the executable, the $449-$499 Radeon HD 3870 X2 will perform much like a single-GPU Radeon HD 3870 . . ."

Does anyone have more information about this?

 

[Un4given]

Just because it uses a single PCB, it still uses two 3870 chips. This still makes it a Crossfire solution. That also means that if there isn't a Crossfire profile it will default to the Crossfire mode that splits up rendering like a checkerboard; the name of this method escapes me at the moment. In many cases there is little or no benefit versus that of a single card.

 

[killerbobjr]

Does that means there's no control over how the rendering is done? If I output a DX10 shader that uses a large chunk of memory but can utilize alternating frames (split between the cores) for render passes, am I going to have to have that shader loaded on both cores, sucking up double the memory, while at the same time losing the 2x horsepower, all just because the driver forces a default mode on unrecognized programs? That totally sucks!