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For NVIDIA its a clearcut set of options when choosing an SLI motherboard; you need an NVIDIA NFORCE motherboard with at least two PCI-e slots. To get the benefit of two x16 slots, you'll need a 780 or 790 board, while the lower level 650/750 chipsets will limit your bandwidth to eight PCI lanes on the second card. That's fine for pairing up a couple of mid-range cards, but will hold back Ultras or GTXs in a more powerful rig.

All cards in a GeForce SLI set-up also have to match - not necessarily by brand name, but by chip class. So GeForce 8800GT will only work with another GeForce 8800GT and so on. AMD on the other hand, has a far more flexible platform. Which is just as well, because if you were restricted to using the firm's Phenom chips there'd be no point in considering CrossFire at all. In our most recent tests with a Phenom 9600, games were hitting the CPU threshold even on a Radeon HD4850 card. Adding more graphics cards made no difference to in game performance whatsoever, because the CPU couldn't keep up.

In what seems like a surprising quirk of nature, though, you can put two or more AMD cards into the current generation of Intel motherboard chipsets, and they'll work just fine. And unlike NVIDIA, you don't need to match cards of the same type, just the same generation. So an HD3850 will work with an HD3870 and so on. So you can, in theory, craft a system exactly to your price point.

Perhaps more significantly, in our extensive testing, pairing a Radeon HD4870 with a HD4850 was just about as fast as a 'true' HD4870 CrossFire arrangement. If this state of affairs holds true as drivers mature then you could end up saving yourself $l50 on a dual card set-up.

And that's the rub. Whatever test scores we get today, there will be improvements tomorrow: because getting multi-GPU rendering right is a fine art. For which reason alone, we're confident in saying that most people will be better off with a single card.

It's quite common for two cards to actually be slower than one. Once the CPU cap is hit, the extra latency the second card introduces with its additional processing steps takes a toll. At higher resolutions, there's a stronger argument, but you're essentially talking about framerate improvements of less than 20 per cent in real terms, especially once a bit of image quality is turned on.

So which would we recommend? SLI or CrossFire? Of the new cards, CrossFire scales better in some games than SLI, and vice versa. Where combining GeForce GTX 260s is the better option, the performance gains overall seem to be bigger too - so from a technological point of view we'd probably go down this route. However, two GTX 260s are very noisy and $200 to $300 more expensive than buying two HD3870s, too, so from a practical standpoint that would be where our money would end up going.

Given the enormous number of shader units involved, two HD4850s seems like a bargain powerhouse on paper, but in truth it's not a lot quicker than a single HD4870, and all the arguments for a single chip over two sway us in favor of the latter.

In fact, across the board we'd say hold off on building an SLI or CrossFire rig for the time being. For one thing the forthcoming X2 and GX2 versions of the HD4870 and GTX 280 respectively will be better value for money, and for another, the performance gains just aren't worth it yet. A single GTX 280 will cost less than any dual-GPU set-up barring two HD3850s, and will still outperform them.

Give it time, though. There is one group of people who definitely should be looking to go SLI in the near future, and that's the many, many people who bought a GeForce 8800GT.

It's the marketing story the manufacturers aren't bragging about, because if word got out it could really hurt sales of the new cards. Thanks to driver maturity the gains from pairing two of these are enormous: put simply, in some cases two 8800GTs are cheaper and faster than a GTX 260, and faster than an HD4870. Plus, if you own one, a second card will only cost you the same as a single HD4850 right now - but be quick. It's likely to start vanishing from shop shelves soon.

It's likely that the current generation of cards will begin to scale as well as the 8800GT in the not too distant, but why take the gamble? For the first time in graphics history having the latest and greatest may not be the best - and we have SLI and CrossFire for all their flaws to thank for that.

It's recess time on the elementary school playground. A group of third graders is playing kick ball in teams on the grass. Suddenly, there's a big argument over whether the last point goes to the girls' team or the boys' team.

The argument rages on for what seems like forever almost a whole minute of precious recess time has been wasted! In third grade, wasting recess is a crime! And it must be stopped before time runs out.

One of the girls realizes, stops arguing, looks around and declares, "Do-over". The boys accept this proposal, the last play is forgotten, and the game starts again.

The slate is wiped clean, but the play has to be repeated

When you were young, do-overs were an easy way to resolve an argument, fix unfairness or quickly change history.

Why wouldn't you want to be able to do this with your business website? Unlike the playground game, designing a website takes a lot of time, work and money it's just not a task that you're going to want to start over from scratch again!

And, once you've launched one website, it's harder to get a do-over from your prospects and clients than it is to get the other team to agree to one in elementary school.

Avoiding a do-over sometimes leads to project paralysis

At this point, a lot of entrepreneurs get scared they don't want to create a do-over, but they don't know where to start down the right path. So, they put their project off, and instead stress out about getting everything ready. Plus, avoiding starting means they won't make any mistakes. That works itself up into procrastination and full-scale project paralysis and the website project winds up never getting completed.

The reason that people get paralyzed is because they don't know how to plan and create a website in a way that minimizes the chance that they'll have to re-do it. But, there are a few ways to ensure that your site will be as permanent as possible, without driving yourself crazy with all the considerations. Five Steps to Creating a Site That Will Stick

1. Decide what you want your website to do for your business. A website should be more than just something you have to create for your business. What's your site's purpose? What are its jobs? Who will be coming to the site? What do you most want them to do once they get there? What do your visitors most want to know?

If you create the site with the end goal in mind, then your site will be more successful. This is because you can create every piece of the site to encourage the viewer to take a certain path through the site or a particular action. Planning the experience that a visitor will have on your site can help get more visitors to meet your goal on the site.

2. The function of your website will determine the types of content you'll need. Look at the job you want your site to perform, and who the site is for. That will start to give you hints about the types of content you should include on it.

In planning your basic content, consider the pages you'll need to include on the site. Also think about any subscribe forms, shopping carts, audio, etc. that would help you communicate with your target audience. Lastly, think about which of these pieces you need immediately and which you can add in later. This will help ensure your website project won't take forever to complete.

3. Don't get hung up on writing the text. The next step is to gather your samples and write your text for the website. A lot of entrepreneurs get stuck in this phase of the project. This is because they're not comfortable writing, they don't have the time to write their text, or they find that it takes a while to get the testimonials they need.

This is the one part of your site that's easy to revise later on so don't stress out about getting the text "just perfect" just get the text put together and then plan on revising it shortly after the site is launched.

4. Design the site to look timeless. There's no way to know what design trends are coming next, and what effects would make your site look like it was designed in a particular year. Sites full of cutting-edge effects and technology this year may look pass?next year.

How do you design a site to look timeless? If you create your design based on your own logo and Visual Vocabulary and keep the design generally clean, the likelihood that it will look dated is lessened. Stick close to your own brand designs and you'll have a website that you can keep for the long haul.

5. Code the site cleanly. In order to make sure that your site will work across multiple browsers and systems and will work on future versions of those browsers, make sure that your code is clean. To maximize your search engine optimization results, you'll want to code the site in HTML instead of in Flash so that Google and the other engines will be able to read it. Coding in HTML also makes your site easier to update in the future you'll want to add to your site's text and make edits to what's already there.

Recreating your website isn't as easy as a do-over on the playground. By following the 5 steps here, you'll create a website that will serve your business well for a long while. And you'll be able to avoid having to start the site all over again!