CrossFireX Arrives: First Look at 3 and 4 GPUs in 2 Card Setups
by Derek Wilson on March 7, 2008 12:05 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Performance
Version: 1.2.0416 Shivering Isles
Settings: Ultra High Quality settings defaults with Vsync disabled.
Our Oblivion test takes place in the south of the Shivering Isles, running through woods over rolling hills toward a lake. This is a straight-line run that lasts around 20 seconds and uses FRAPS to record framerate. This benchmark is very repeatable, but the first run is the most consistent between cards, so we only run the benchmark once and take that number.
Our tests show that moving beyond two GPUs in a DX9 game that already benefits well from multi-GPU has the potential to make use of three or four GPUs. As resolution goes up, the usefulness of more than two GPUs goes up. Clearly, there is potential for scaling with games that don't make extensive use of features that get in the way of multi-GPU performance. It should also go without saying that this is a technology that should be reserved for the ultra high-end setups. Hopefully illustrating that with resolution scaling will help bring the point home.
| Oblivion Perfomance | ||||
| 1280x1024 | 1600x1200 | 1920x1200 | 2560x1600 | |
| NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT SLI | 89.8 | 70.4 | 59 | 33.7 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra SLI | 113.1 | 96.1 | 84.2 | 57.4 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra | 59.5 | 54.4 | 46 | 31.5 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT | 49 | 37.5 | 30.6 | 19.8 |
| AMD Radeon HD 3870X2 (x 2) | 120.3 | 114 | 104.1 | 82.8 |
| AMD Radeon HD 3870X2 + 3870 | 122.9 | 107.6 | 91.5 | 64.5 |
| AMD Radeon HD 3870X2 | 104.5 | 82 | 71.1 | 48.6 |
| AMD Radeon HD 3870 | 61.8 | 46.8 | 41.5 | 25.4 |
AMD tends to lead in this benchmark normally, and the 8800 Ultra barely leads the Radeon HD 3870, which is normally in competition with the GeForce 9600 GT. In this case, the 8800 Ultra SLI loses to the three GPU AMD setup (3870X2 + 3870), while four GPUs show an even more significant advantage at higher resolutions. 9600 GT SLI, which would normally compete with the 3870X2, doesn't really come through in Oblivion.
Enabling AA and AF reveals one of the major strengths of multi-GPU acceleration: antialiasing comes at less cost. In this case, even at lower resolutions, all four GPUs are able to contribute and performance stays high. While CrossFire and SLI both enable huge levels of AA, at high resolutions a little bit goes a long way.
| Oblivion 4xAA/16xAF Performance | ||||
| 1024x768 | 1280x1024 | 1600x1200 | 1920x1200 | |
| NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT SLI | 72.7 | 55.4 | 45.3 | 26.1 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra SLI | 98.1 | 78.5 | 68.3 | 43.3 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra | 53.8 | 42.4 | 36.1 | 23.1 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT | 36.9 | 29.2 | 25 | 15.6 |
| AMD Radeon HD 3870X2 (x 2) | 106.1 | 93.3 | 78.1 | 54.5 |
| AMD Radeon HD 3870X2 + 3870 | 87.6 | 73.6 | 62.9 | 42.3 |
| AMD Radeon HD 3870X2 | 64.4 | 53.6 | 46.6 | 31.7 |
| AMD Radeon HD 3870 | 36.4 | 30.9 | 24.4 | 16.7 |
While two 3870X2 cards do lead overall, 8800 Ultra SLI does best the three GPU combination of the 3870X2 and the 3870. Oblivion certainly shows that more than two GPUs can contribute to performance, and that AMD was right when they said DX9 games running under Vista would show the most potential for improvement with four GPU systems.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
36 Comments
View All Comments
MAIA - Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - link
"After rebooting a few times to let windows do its thing, we installed the driver and all was well."This sentence is soooooo microsoft windows !!! :))
Sorry .... had to say it.
dash2k8 - Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - link
I'm just wondering: instead of piling on the number of GPU's, why hasn't a manufacturer just come out with ONE monstrous GPU that does away with the need of using multiple video cards? If someone is crazy enough to spend moola on 4 GPU's, I imagine that person would be equally willing to buy ONE card that has the same horsepower. Just saying.punko - Monday, March 10, 2008 - link
Thanks Derek for a good review. As you indicated, this may be the future and its good to see the tech reach a point where it is ready for use and can be improved upon as all tech goes forward.It also sound like you had a lot of help directly from AMD on this one.
gsellis - Monday, March 10, 2008 - link
"but today a WHQL drier is available "Hey Derek, typo in the beginning. Still mirthful about this one. Water cooling and you needed it drier to work with all GPUs?
ltcommanderdata - Sunday, March 9, 2008 - link
I'm just curious as to whether you've checked to see if quad channel memory has any benefit for multiple GPU situations? With 3 or 4 GPUs sucking data, I would presume the additional memory bandwidth provided by quad DDR2-800 would increase performance, especially since dual channel FB-DIMMs are not as efficient as the best dual channel DDR2 or DDR3 setups on desktop boards. It would be interesting to see the results of a 4x1GB setup on Skulltrail vs the 2x2GB setup you used.cerwin13 - Saturday, March 8, 2008 - link
Would it be wise to try this upgrade without SP1 installed with Vista 32? I am currently using 2x Radeon HD3870 x2s and would like to benchmark with these new drivers, but apparently SP1 isn't officially out yet?DerekWilson - Saturday, March 8, 2008 - link
other people had luck without SP1; it's not a requirement, but some of our editors did find that it helped with a lot of stuff ...you'll want to make sure you have hotfixes:
929777-v2
936710
938194
938979
940105
945149
as a minimum
Ananke - Saturday, March 8, 2008 - link
XFX has Forceware 169.32, my guess it was added after 9600GT appear. On Nvidia official download site the highest ver is 169.28Ananke - Saturday, March 8, 2008 - link
XFX has Forceware 169.32, my guess it was added after 9600GT appear. On Nvidia official download site the highest ver is 169.28Incisal flyer - Saturday, March 8, 2008 - link
Derek, thanks for the very timely and detailed review. I'm going to be building a system for Flight Simulator X and have been trying to figure out the best graphics card(s) for that application. Have you considered benchmarking that sim? A lot of discussion right now on AVSIM etc on what to do in terms of GPUs for people building new systmes. There is a lot of back and forth on advantages and disadvantages of different configs. I realize FSX is a bit of a niche product. Would FSX use multiple GPUs like 2 3870 x2s and are the potential headaches of that configurtation worth it if you are a not a computer geek? Or am I better off just getting a couple of Nvidia 8800s in SLI or a single 3870 x2 and not hassling with the 4 GPU solution? Any help or advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for your time.Incisal Flyer