NVIDIA's GeForce 6 SLI: Demolishing Performance Barriers
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 23, 2004 10:23 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Far Cry Performance
Once again, no surprise that at 1024 x 768 there’s no real performance gains from SLI – having two of the fastest GPUs around means that even an Athlon 64 4000+ isn’t fast enough to extract the full performance of two GPUs at 1024 x 768. The difference between Far Cry and a game like Doom 3 is that even at 1280 x 1024, SLI doesn’t help out much either. For the 6800 Ultra the performance gain due to SLI is barely 6% and only 10% on the 6800GT; while we would normally be happy with these types of performance gains, remember that they are at the expense of purchasing two cards. The 6600GT gains a reasonable 19% boost in SLI mode, but that’s not enough to make it faster than a single 6800GT or Ultra.
We start to see some performance gains at 1600 x 1200, 23% for the 6800 Ultra, 31% for the 6800GT and 43% for the 6600GT. Once again, only the 6600GT really gets an appreciable performance gain here, but it’s still not enough to outperform a single 6800GT – although it comes extremely close.
The real performance gains for the 6800 Ultra and 6800GT happen at 1600 x 1200 with 4X AA and 8X AF enabled, improving performance by close to 60% for the 6800 Ultra and by almost 70% for the 6800GT. Once again, SLI makes higher resolution AA/AF modes playable where they weren’t before. For the 6600GT, SLI brings the performance levels up to that of a single 6800GT, but no faster.
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bob661 - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
#18The hardcore gamers would just buy new video cards.
reboos - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
"Nvidia bought the patents, pending patent applications, trademarks, brand names, and chip inventory related to the graphics business of 3dfx."http://slashdot.org/articles/00/12/15/2244256.shtm...
fuzzynavel - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
I think 3DFX were bought by nvidia...or at least the rights to the technology....so it is technically the same company...I remember the days of 3DFX scan line interleave....fantastic!bob661 - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
#17Two Opterons would be downright scary if they were limited too. But a 4000 is no slouch. :-) It's still amazing. I happen to agree with #12 but the real test of that theory would be to test slower CPU's and see how the performance scales.
reboos - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
Odd as it may sound, should we be thanking 3DFX for this?http://slashdot.org/articles/00/12/15/2244256.shtm...
Gnoad - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
Although SLI is exciting, I found myself wanting more info on the Asus board...haris - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
I just had some more thoughts about why SLI/Multi rendering might not be such a great move by Nvidia/ATI.When they launch their next generation cards they are expecting to rake in some extra money from the extreme gamers, right? What happens to that same card when they start purchasing relatively cheap last gen cards instead. This might then lead to something like this: In order for them to get that additional $ during the begining of the next gen card's life cycle they might have to slow down the production cycle of cards to give them more time in the high-end position.
Jeff7181 - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
#14... why? You have TWO GPU's here... and ONE CPU. Why is it so amazing that two GPU's can put the squeenze on one CPU? Now... stick a 6800U SLI setup with a couple Opteron 250's with an application that's multi-threaded and THEN I'd be amazed if it was still CPU limited.Aquila76 - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
Or was that 330 Watts the total system usage? (doubtful)Aquila76 - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
What power supply was used in your testbed? If the SLI setup requires at load ~ 330 Watts, I would think you'd need around a 550W unit for your setup.