MultiGPU Update: Finding the True Halo with 4-way
by Derek Wilson on February 28, 2009 11:45 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
What We Couldn't Cover
Our tests will include the GeForce GTX 295 Quad SLI, GeForce 9800 GX2 Quad SLI, Radeon HD 4870 1GB Quad CrossFireX, and Radeon HD 4850 Quad CrossFireX. We were unfortunately not able to test the 4850 Quad with 1GB per GPU because we didn't have 2 of the 4850 X2 2GB cards. This would undoubtedly have made the 4850 look a little stronger in Quad at 2560x1600 (where it really counts). While it wouldn't compete for the highest end performance, the higher memory Quad 4850 is certainly of interest to us after seeing the value in two of them. But we really don't expect any Quad option to deliver on bang for buck metrics.
Past that, we also didn't include Race Driver GRID this time around. Due to our continuing issue with FRAPS, we couldn't record performance data for either of our Quad NVIDIA solutions. We didn't feel that presenting the data from the game with just AMD hardware was highly useful, but it is worth mentioning that just looking at the numbers we could tell that the Quad NVIDIA solutions performed slower than the AMD solutions. I do apologize for a lack of quantitative data, but sometimes that's how it goes. We will continue to try and collect this data and we may do something with it down the line if we are successful.
Our first article explored 1 to 2 GPUs. The second looked at 1 to 3 and 2 to 3 GPUs. This one only focuses on the performance improvement from 2 to 4 GPUs. The reason for this is that there are no single GPU versions that exactly match half a GTX 295 or half a 9800 GX2. We can see when things don't scale and how they scale differently from 3 way by looking back at the previous article if people want, so having a lopsided analysis that included some metrics for AMD and not NVIDIA didn't seem quite right.
Just like the diminished returns we saw when moving from 2-way to 3-way, we see more diminishing returns when moving from 3-way to 4-way. The way we can get a feel for that more directly is that we see much less scaling when moving from 2-way to 4-way than when moving from a single GPU to two (even though the theoretical performance improvement is the same).
This time around, we didn't zero the value data when performance didn't meet a threshold. We know some people liked that way of doing it, but value really isn't a focus of a 4-way GPU shootout anyway, so we feel that the data is more academic on its face. This article rounds out our data and has all the performance numbers for all the parts we've looked at, while our analysis focuses on 4-way. We are still actively refining our approach to representing value moving forward, so your feedback is not only welcome, it is greatly appreciated.
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lk7200 - Wednesday, March 11, 2009 - link
Die painfully okay? Prefearbly by getting crushed to death in a
garbage compactor, by getting your face cut to ribbons with a
pocketknife, your head cracked open with a baseball bat, your stomach
sliced open and your entrails spilled out, and your eyeballs ripped
out of their sockets. Fucking bitch
I really hope that you get curb-stomped. It'd be hilarious to see you
begging for help, and then someone stomps on the back of your head,
leaving you to die in horrible, agonizing pain. *beep*
Shut the *beep* up f aggot, before you get your face bashed in and cut
to ribbons, and your throat slit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po0j4ONZRGY">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po0j4ONZRGY
I wish you a truly painful, bloody, gory, and agonizing death, *beep*
vailr - Sunday, March 1, 2009 - link
Any testing of 8x GPU's?4x Radeon 4870 x2 cards?
or:
4x nVidia 295 (dual GPU) cards?
Combined with an Intel Skulltrail board using a pair of quad core CPU's.
LinkedKube - Wednesday, March 4, 2009 - link
I'm running tri sli gtx 295's. My energy bill has gone up 110 usd a month since december. With that to think about, wth would someone test 4 gtx295's. Totally inefficient. This article imo was about price/performance through competitors giving us a new way to look at fps with the 100 usd fps chart.Jorgisven - Sunday, March 1, 2009 - link
That technology does not yet exist. The skulltrail board supports Quad SLI, meaning, 4 total gpu's (the x2 boards count for 2 each). Nothing supports 8x graphics cards. That would create ridiculous overhead, as you can probably tell from the scaling from going from 2-4 gpus.Hrel - Sunday, March 1, 2009 - link
This was a GREAT series of articles and I'm so glad you guys decided to make them. I'm pretty sure I've never heard anyone on a hardware review site actually admit it's a wash between AMD/ATI and Nvidia and it all comes down to brand preference; so props for coming out and saying the truth.One thing I've said many times before in these comments, that I'm still not seeing. "I would really love to see 3D Mark scores for all these cards included with each GPU article." You show the subjective tests of the hardware, the games, please show the objective test for the hardware, 3D Mark.
So yeah, amazing articles, thank you for writing them. And my only, very minor, complaints are that you didn't include hardware down to the 9600GT level(at least)or lower and you didn't include 3D Mark scores.
Yes, I know it's supposed to be a multi-GPU review, but you included enough other single GPU's, I would have really liked to see how the other cards stacked up, kind of a "whole market" GPU comparison.
P.S. Sorry, third complaint, I remembered after mentioning the lower end hardware. Had you included those cards, it would have been nice to see tests at 1440x900 and maybe 1366x768 too; seeing as how that's becoming a standard. And yes, I understand the amount of work that goes into testing that many configurations; and the time required to test at so many resolutions. And... I really truly appreciate all the work put into articles like this; I swear, I recruit more people to come visit this site then a tv ad could.
On an article design note: I really like the comparison for value, based off performance per dollar, or per 100 dollars in this case; very good idea. I also REALLY like that I could switch between resolutions just by clicking a link; I like bar graphs WAY more than Line graphs, ever since First Grade. Later guys, great work!
LinkedKube - Monday, March 2, 2009 - link
I agree with the fps per 100 dollar section, very cool. Something new to look at and think about.7Enigma - Sunday, March 1, 2009 - link
I have to agree with you on the 3dMark scores (and any of the other major ones Aquamark or something?) I think anyone crazy enough to purchase 4 cards or 2 dual's are probably doing it more for the competition of benchmarking than actual gaming. Or at the minimum of equal importance and so if the quad AMD/Nvidia decision is a wash based on game performance maybe the synthetic benchmarks would sway the decision.SiliconDoc - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - link
Well you shouldn't. Software, especially benchware, favors this or that method or type of hardware, and given the differences pointed out between the gpu styles of Nvidia and Ati, no test is going to eliminate bias in it's guaging - as should be absolutely obvious to you after seeing massive variance in game scores here for the same two opposing gpu's, and realizing, if you had a scientific mind, that 3dmark also uses a GAME it "created" that will favor one architecture or another, definitively.So, you may "have to agree" - but you may also "change your mind" about that.
Razorbladehaze - Sunday, March 1, 2009 - link
Actually there is no "subjective" tests in this article. Subjective is non-empirical (non data based) testing. Or another aspect of subjective testing is when one would say that subjective is when the outcome reported is not supported by the data because of mitigating other factors (i.e. best card is not ----, because graphical glitches, despite having best FPS) . So FPS in benchmarking as all tests here demonstrate is in fact all objective testing.Furthermore 3d mark scores are really redundant and not practical. I for one am really glad that Anand have left them out, they are a waste of testing time in most cases. I used to really like the 3d mark scores for benchmarking my own stuff, and used to look forward to them in articles. Over time though i have really noticed that although they do provide a comparison between cards, they do not translate to much in terms of real world performance. The comparison between cards is still easily made using a common benchmark from a game, and it allows more differentiation and demonstrates more "across the board" performance when testing multiple games and, as mentioned in the first line of this paragraph, provides practical results.
Hrel - Thursday, March 5, 2009 - link
Yeah... no. You're wrong. Tests based on games are subjective because the results you get from that testing is subjective to that game. Each game is programmed differently and utilizes the GPU hardware differently. You can three cards, have one card be the fastest by a large margin in one test and be the slowest in another test.(Subjective: Characteristic of or belonging to reality as PERCEIVED rather than as independent of mind.) The results show up as PERCEIVED by the game, rather from independent results.
(Subjective: Peculiar to a particular individual.) That individual is the game. -These were taken from Merriam/Websters dictionary online.-
(Objective: Expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations.) Testing using only games causes distortion. That distortion is from "feelings", "prejudices" and "interpretations". Feeling of the programmers who wrote the game, some like to program for Nvidia hardware some prefer AMD. Also, some game studios are paid or given preferential treatment to favor one companies hardware over another's. What I just said has to do with prejudice too. Interpretations, Nvidia and AMD hardware is designed differently, a blatant example of this is that AMD uses 800 SP's where Nvidia uses 128 SP's and they both have similar performance; the code of the game, generally DirectX 9, interprets each set of hardware differently ergo we have a non-objective interpretation of the GPU's performance capability.
Games are meant to be played and perform the way each individual game studio wants them too; there are so many variables across companies, and employees and the games themselves you can't possibly use a small subset of video games to determine the performance differences between a set of GPU's. At least not reliably.
(Objective: Limited to choices of fixed alternatives and reducing subjective factors to a minimum.) Every scientific experiment strives to remove variables from the testing process; video games simply don't do that.
3D Mark and the newer 3DMark Vantage are as objective as software testing hardware can be. One test, programmed one way, programmed to only run one way no matter what GPU it is on. Also, 3D Mark is designed to stress the GPU hardware as much as possible, no matter what card it is, which means it will take full advantage of every card you test using it.
No, 3D mark doesn't equate to real world results in any way. But that doesn't matter, it's the most scientific, least variable test anyone can perform on multiple GPU's to determine the performance differences between them. And isn't that all anandtech is trying to do with this whole series of articles? Yes, yes it is. Of course it is always good to look at the games, to see that subjective measurement and to determine which card works best with the games YOU play. But it is imperative to look at 3D mark as well to get a complete idea of the DIFFERENCE IN PERFORMANCE between the cards. To see whole big picture.
To make it simple for you, if one card outperforms another card by 15% or more in 3D Mark, it's a good bet that card will outperform the other card in the majority of the games on the market; regardless or programming inconsistencies.
On another note, most people will never take a resolution beyond 1920x1080, so I'd really like to see more testing at resolutions lower than that; and the inclusion of lower end cards to see if they can play the latest games... even if I do have to lower the resolution a little.