NVIDIA SLI Performance Preview with MSI's nForce4 SLI Motherboard
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 29, 2004 5:06 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Far Cry Performance
For our final set of tests we've got Far Cry 1.1.
At 1024 x 768 the performance gains are still under 50% as the game is still CPU limited at such a "low" resolution. As expected, the GeForce 6600GT gets more of a performance boost from SLI as it is the slower card.
As we increase in resolution the performance benefits the 6800GT see are significantly higher, reaching a healthy 70.7% at 1280 x 1024.
What is truly impressive is the 105.9% performance improvement at 1600 x 1200 for the GeForce 6800GT in SLI mode - and we thought Doom 3 saw some impressive performance gains. At 1600 x 1200 with 4X AA Far Cry goes from mostly smooth with some stuttering to silky smooth performance thanks to SLI with the 6800GTs. The 6600GT doesn't fare as well, averaging at under 40 fps.
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Sokaku - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
#12 I'm with that on that one, however we did see how it went with 3dfx's SLI solution.
I had a voodoo2 and when it came to the point where I wanted more power, I could have bought another voodoo2, however the graphics card available at that point, out performed a dual voodoo2 configuration considerably, so as an upgrade path, it was never feasable to do so.
I'm afraid that if I should buy an 6800Ultra, when the time comes, I would not buy another one, because at that point, we have one 8600Ultra way outperforming dual 6800ultras...
#13 by lebe0024: I assumed that you've been banned 23 times from this forum and I sure hope you'll be banned for the 24th time.
lebe0024 - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
Shut your pie hole #11xsilver - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
#11 .... how bout this -- "if they could they would"nvidia is here to may money after all..... a single card solution should certainly be cheaper to produce than a dual one, but I don't think that's feasable right now so that's why its not made
Sokaku - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
I find it horrible that NVIDIA is taking up SLI again. "Why?" you probably wonder... Well, in order to be able to gain anything from SLI, NVIDIA has to overpower the GPU considerably when it comes to geometry handling. Infact, the geometry engine must be able to outperform the pixel rendere by a factor 2, should the customer happen to use this card in a SLI configuration. This means that people who do NOT want a SLI configuration will have to pay for a geometry engine that is way more powerful than needed.Think of the additional cost of making a SLI configuration, you need a motherboard prepared for it, you need dual graphics card, gpu and all.. And what problem does this solve?
Well, basicly all it does is giving you twice the memory bandwidth and pixel render capacity.
This could be solved way more cost effective by doubling the data bus width and keeping the solution on one card. Also, this way the geometry engine would be dimmensioned to exactly match the capacity of the rendere.
This is a step back in innovation and not a step forward.
smn198 - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
...meaning different RAM manufacturers/speeds on the graphics cards.smn198 - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
Any one heard if you can get differing versions of the same board. e.g. one 6600GT from Asus and the other from MSI? Anyone heard of any tests with this and different RAM?(I think the dual 6600GT upgrade path makes up for the lack of SoundStorm. Hope they hurry up and make their add in SS boards tho!)
TimTheEnchanter25 - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
Any word on when PCI-E versions of the 6800 GT will start showing up in stores? I'm not waiting for SLI boards, but I'm getting worried that the 6800GTs won't be out by time Nforce4 boards are in stores.ballero - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
How about testing the last patch by crytek with hdr enabled?ballero - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
Pete84 - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
#4 Why would you want SLI for the 6200? It is the lowest end card - think 9200. No real use, other than Civ III and Firefox.