A Look At Triple-GPU Performance And Multi-GPU Scaling, Part 1
by Ryan Smith on April 3, 2011 7:00 AM ESTThe Test, Power, Temps, and Noise
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-920 @ 3.33GHz |
| Motherboard: | Asus Rampage II Extreme |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1015 (Intel) |
| Hard Disk: | OCZ Summit (120GB) |
| Memory: | Patriot Viper DDR3-1333 3x2GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon HD 6990 AMD Radeon HD 6970 PowerColor Radeon HD 6970 EVGA GeForce GTX 590 Classified NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 Zotac GeForce GTX 580 |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA ForceWare 266.58 AMD Catalyst 11.4 Preview |
| OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
With that out of the way, let’s start our look at power, temperature, and noise. We did include our jury-rigged triple-CF setup in these results for the sake of a comparison point, but please keep in mind that we’re not using a viable long-term setup, which is why we have starred the results. These results also include the GTX 590 from last week, which has its own handicap under FurMark due to NVIDIA’s OCP. This does not apply to the triple SLI setup, which we can bypass OCP on.
Given NVIDIA’s higher idle TDP, there shouldn’t be any surprises here. Three GTX 580s in SLI makes for a fairly wide gap of 37W – in fact even two GTX 580s in SLI is still 7W more than the triple 6970 setup. Multi-GPU configurations are always going to be a limited market opportunity, but if it were possible to completely power down unused GPUs, it would certainly improve the idle numbers.
With up to three GPUs, power consumption under load gets understandably high. For FurMark in particular we see the triple GTX 580 setup come just shy of 1200W due to our disabling of OCP – it’s an amusingly absurd number. Meanwhile the triple 6970 setup picks up almost nothing over the dual 6970, which is clearly a result of AMD’s drivers not having a 3-way CF profile for FurMark. Thus the greatest power load we can place on the triple 6970 is under HAWX, where it pulls 835W.
With three cards packed tightly together the middle card ends up having the most difficult time, so it’s that card which is setting the highest temperatures here. Even with that, idle temperatures only tick up a couple of degrees in a triple-GPU configuration.
Even when we forcibly wedge the 6970s apart, the triple 6970 setup still ends up being the warmest under Crysis – this being after Crysis temperatures dropped 9C from the separation. Meanwhile the triple GTX 580 gets quite warm on its own, but under Crysis and HAWX it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. FurMark is the only outlier here, where temperatures stabilized at 95C, 2C under GF110’s thermal threshold. It’s safe, but I wouldn’t recommend running FurMark all day just to prove it.
With a 3rd card in the mix idle noise creeps up some, but much like idle temperatures it’s not significantly more. For some perspective though, we’re still looking at idle noise levels equivalent to the GTX 560 Ti running FurMark, so it’s by no means a silent operation.
It turns out adding a 3rd card doesn’t make all that much more noise. Under HAWX the GTX 580 does get 3dB louder, but under FurMark the difference is under a dB. The triple 6970 setup does better under both situations, but that has more to do with our jury-rigging and the fact that FurMark doesn’t scale with a 3rd AMD GPU. Amusingly the triple 580 setup is still quieter under FurMark than the 6990 by nearly 3dB even though we’ve disabled OCP for the GTX 580, and for HAWX the difference is only .2dB in AMD’s favor. It’s simply not possible to do worse than the 6990 without overvolting/overclocking, it seems.
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Castiel - Monday, April 4, 2011 - link
Why didn't you just use a P67 board equipped with a NF200 chip for testing? Using X58 is a step in the wrong direction.UrQuan3 - Monday, April 4, 2011 - link
Mr Smith,When you do the multi-monitor SLI\Crossfire review, could you briefly go over different connection modes? The last time I messed with SLI, it forced all monitors to be connected to the first card. Since the cards in question only had two outputs, I had to turn off SLI to connect three monitors. This caused some strange problems for 3D software.
Would you go over the options currently available in your next review?
Ryan Smith - Monday, April 4, 2011 - link
When was this? That doesn't sound right; you need SLI to drive 3 monitors at the present time.UrQuan3 - Thursday, April 7, 2011 - link
Right this second I'm typing on a PC with 2 GTX 260s (not sure which revision) with two monitors plugged into the first and a third monitor plugged into the second. At the time, SLI would only allow monitors plugged into the first card. Of course, since IT doesn't trust us to do our own upgrades, I'm still running driver version 260.89.Of course, Windows supports multiple dissimilar cards with a monitor or two on each, even different brand cards. However, 3D support in this mode is, er, creative. In this mode most programs (games) can only drive one card's monitors. You can, however, have different programs running 3D on different cards' monitors.
Since you'll have the hardware sitting on your desk, I'd love to see a quick test of the options.
BLHealthy4life - Monday, April 4, 2011 - link
How the heck did you get 11.4 preview to work with crossfire??I have 6970 crossfire and I cannot for the life of me get 11.4p to work. I have used 11.2 and 11.3 with no problems. I removed previous drivers with ATI uninstaller followed by driver sweeper. Then I've installed 11.4 p 3/7 and 3/29 and neither one of them work.
I even went as far as to do TWO fresh installs of W7 x64 Ultimate and then install 11.p and the f*cking driver breaks crossfire....
Ryan Smith - Monday, April 4, 2011 - link
I'm afraid there's not much I can tell you. We did not have any issues with 11.4 and the 6970s whatsoever.quattro_ - Monday, April 4, 2011 - link
did you use DOF when benching METRO ? i find the HD6990's score high! i only get 37fps average : 980x @4.4 and single hd6990 stock clocks and 11.4 preview driver .Ryan Smith - Monday, April 4, 2011 - link
No, we do not. Metro is bad enough; DOF crushes performance.ClagMaster - Monday, April 4, 2011 - link
I will never understand why people will by 2 or 3 graphics cards, require a 1200W power supply, so they can get 10-20 fps or more subtile eye candy.There are some things that are beyond the point of reason and fall into the madness of Captain Ahab. This is just about as crazy as insisting on a 0.50 cal Browning Target rifle than a more sensible 0.308 Win Target rifle for 550m target shooting and white tail deer hunting. The 0.308 Win is less punishing on the body and pocketbook to shoot than the 0.50 Browning.
I always believed in working with one (1) graphics card that takes up 1 slot and requires 65 to 85W of power. A 9600GT plays all my games on a 1600x1200 CRT just fine.
looper - Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - link
Excellent post... well-said.