MultiGPU Update: Does 3-way Make Sense?
by Derek Wilson on February 25, 2009 2:45 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
FarCry 2 Analysis
This benchmark pushes the hardware really hard, so it's a good candidate for 3-way SLI. At high resolutions, it's also tough on lower memory graphics options.
1680x1050 1920x1200 2560x1600
The GeForce GTX 280 and 285 do very well, but the 4870 1GB does a good job keeping up with the NVIDIA hardware at lower resolutions and even leads the GTX 260 by a good margin at 2560x1600. While the 512MB 9800 GTX+ and 4850 both drop way off in performance at 1920x1200, the 512MB 4870 holds on to good performance at this resolution. All the 512MB parts tank in 3-way at 2560x1600 though.
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Scaling is really high for high end NVIDIA parts, which contributes to their lead in this benchmark. The GTX 260 falls off a little on scaling at the high end, and none of the 512MB parts scale that well even at lower resolutions.
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Looking deeper at scaling, it's clear that moving from 2 to 3 GPUs really doesn't add much for the Radeon HD 4850 and 512MB 4870. The 9800 GTX+ does well at 1680x1050, but tanks at higher resolutions. The 4870 1GB improves in scaling as resolution increases, and NVIDIA hardware scales fairly consistently in this test from two to three GPUs.
1680x1050 1920x1200 2560x1600
The GTX 260 shows the best value of the 3-way solutions until we hit 2560x1600 where the 4870 1GB takes the lead in 3-way value. The 512MB 3-way options some of the 2 GPU solutions, and slower single GPUs can't post playable framerates at the highest resolution so fall off our value chart.
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Snarks - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
hmm, i find my self questioning these articles more and more..but anyway carry on.
DerekWilson - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
what's the question ... seriously, any criticism is helpful. this is the first time we've really done a series like this, and it's a complicated situation with lots of data and lots of analysis ... there's no one way to look at it, and all the feedback i get will help me down the road.i don't see the need for this type of article or series very frequently, but we'll have to do it every once in a while just in case something changes. knowing what you guys think is important and what you guys want to read about is key to us getting things done right.
Flyboy27 - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
Sell you an extra card that you don't really need.Flyboy27 - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
oh yeah... and a more expensive motherboard, power supply, and case.Burrich - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
Would the recently release Catalyst 9.2 drivers improve any compatibility or fps issues? Their release date was 2/20.7Enigma - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
Check out xbitlabs' review of the 9.2 drivers. If you have a 4870 X2 then yes it appears to be a nice upgrade for several games with minimal losses in the games it doesn't benefit. But if you are sporting a single 4870 1gig it actually degrades performance more than it improves!On the flipside they claim stability is better with the 9.2's so it depends on what you want/need. If you are comfortable with the framerates in the games you currently play then jump on the 9.2's for stability reasons. If you are on the edge of playable performance I would stick with the previous drivers...
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/cat...">http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/cat...
DerekWilson - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
That article compares 9.2 to 9.1 ... the 8.12 hotfix would show similar performance improvements over the 9.1 drivers. 9.2 does benefit more games, but these are games that have been more recently released than the ones we tested.if they compared the 8.12 hotfix to 9.2, we would expect to see more parity, especially with the games we tested in this article.
DerekWilson - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
The recently released 9.2 catalyst drivers are basically the 8.12 hotfix drivers with some additions to support performance and scaling in recently released titles. So not really.smartalco - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
I don't like that you use 0 for those that score under 25 FPS, specifically because that is under 25 at the res/settings you use. If a card scores 24 FPS at 1680*1050 with maxed settings, what that really tells you is that if you were to drop to half the AA, or turn down some other setting, is that you could still have a perfectly playable game. It seems to me, that giving them a value rating of 0 is acting like everyone has to play on max settings, and if it doesn't meet the standard, its useless.IDK, just me talking, I'm going to be happy with my 4850 for quite some time.
Still an excellent article.
DerekWilson - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
i've actually got the graphs without the 0 scores in the article front to back -- just commented out at the moment ... i wasn't sure which one to go with until the last minute, and i thought about putting both in (but that wouldbe really redundant for games that no card had trouble with)i could do some more complex web programming, but i'm not a web developer and i hate javascript ...
thanks for the feedback. i'll be taking it into account in the final article on 4-way.
also, if you wanna see the value numbers for the single and dual cards that scored less than 25 fps, you can still look at the first article and see them.