NVIDIA Single Card, Multi-GPU: GeForce 7950 GX2
by Derek Wilson on June 5, 2006 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
F.E.A.R. Performance
These benchmarks stand to show that F.E.A.R. is in no way a CPU limited game. Even at 1280x1024, the 7950 GX2 shows about a 28% performance lead over the 7900 GTX. Enabling AA pushes that performance lead up over 46%. The point proved here is that there will come a time when more games will demand 7950 GX2 level power at even common desktop resolutions. F.E.A.R. is currently one of the exceptions to the rule, so we still don't recommend that gamers who commonly play at resolutions below 1600x1200 invest in this level of hardware.
The multi-GPU solutions continue to excel under F.E.A.R. as resolution in creases. While the 7900 GT and X1900 GT start to become borderline playable at 1600x1200 with 4xAA, there 7900 GT SLI and 7950 GX2 are still butter smooth.
Even at 2048x1536 with 4xAA, NVIDIA's new high end flagship sails on at an enjoyable 45 fps. The gap between the X1900 XT starts to close at this resolution, dropping back down to only about a 30% lead, but this is understandable considering the volume of data that needs to be sent from one GPU to another. Added stress on memory bandwidth could also be the reason we see the 7900 GT SLI closing the performance gap between itself and the 7950 GX2 (which has a 120Mhz lower effective data rate off of each GPU).
These benchmarks stand to show that F.E.A.R. is in no way a CPU limited game. Even at 1280x1024, the 7950 GX2 shows about a 28% performance lead over the 7900 GTX. Enabling AA pushes that performance lead up over 46%. The point proved here is that there will come a time when more games will demand 7950 GX2 level power at even common desktop resolutions. F.E.A.R. is currently one of the exceptions to the rule, so we still don't recommend that gamers who commonly play at resolutions below 1600x1200 invest in this level of hardware.
The multi-GPU solutions continue to excel under F.E.A.R. as resolution in creases. While the 7900 GT and X1900 GT start to become borderline playable at 1600x1200 with 4xAA, there 7900 GT SLI and 7950 GX2 are still butter smooth.
Even at 2048x1536 with 4xAA, NVIDIA's new high end flagship sails on at an enjoyable 45 fps. The gap between the X1900 XT starts to close at this resolution, dropping back down to only about a 30% lead, but this is understandable considering the volume of data that needs to be sent from one GPU to another. Added stress on memory bandwidth could also be the reason we see the 7900 GT SLI closing the performance gap between itself and the 7950 GX2 (which has a 120Mhz lower effective data rate off of each GPU).
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
60 Comments
View All Comments
JarredWalton - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
Yes, SLI profiles are used for full utilization of the GX2 card. (AFAIK - Derek can correct me if I'm wrong.)DerekWilson - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
SLI profiles are used if availalbe, but SLI profiles are never required to enable multi-GPU support on NVIDIA hardware.there are some advanced options for enabling multi-GPU or single-GPU rendering in the control panel -- even down to the AFR or SFR mode type (and SLIAA modes as a fallback if nothing else will work for you).
in short -- required: no, used: yes.
araczynski - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
haven't read the article yet as I didn't see reference to Oblivion benchmarks, and lets be honest, that's the only game out these days that's worth benchmarking (in terms of actually giving the high end cards an actual workout).DigitalFreak - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
It's amazing all the cool stuff you can do with PCI Express.Sniderhouse - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
The Voodoo5 5500 had two GPUs on a single card which did true SLI, not to mention the Voodoo5 6000 which had four GPUs, but never really made it to market.
shabby - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
The x24 was also a dual pcb video card, thats what he meant. Not dual chip or whatever.timmiser - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
Exactly what I was thinking!DerekWilson - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
Perhaps I should have said successful products ... or products that were availble in any real quantity :-)photoguy99 - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
From page 1, what limitations are being referred to?Ryan Smith - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
DX9 itself has a good deal of overhead in some situations, something Microsoft is changing for DX10. We'll have more on that in our upcomming Vista article later this week.