NVIDIA's GeForce 6 SLI: Demolishing Performance Barriers
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 23, 2004 10:23 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Half Life 2: AT_coast_05
In our at_coast_05 benchmark we see a fairly similar situation, with all of the GPUs being CPU bound at resolutions below 1600 x 1200. At 1600 x 1200 the 6600GT begins to drop off, but toss on a second card and it delivers performance slightly faster than that of a single 6800 Ultra.
With AA/AF enabled, the 6600GT actually does a lot better in our second demo, using SLI it manages to offer performance equal to that of a single 6800GT. The 6800GT and Ultra don’t need SLI too badly, even with AA/AF enabled, in this demo, only at 1600 x 1200 with AA/AF enabled does the 6800GT see a real performance gain from SLI.
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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.