NVIDIA SLI Performance Preview with MSI's nForce4 SLI Motherboard
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 29, 2004 5:06 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Doom 3 Performance
This benchmark requires no introduction - currently the most stressful game on today's GPUs, Doom 3 performance is the perfect area to look at the benefits of SLI.
Starting at 1024 x 768 we see that despite the low resolution, the GeForce 6800GT got a nice 46% performance boost from SLI. The performance improvement is much greater on the slower 6600GT as it is more GPU limited at 1024 x 768 than the 6800GT, weighing in at just under 72%.
Here the performance of two 6600GTs is equivalent of a single GeForce 6800GT.
As the resolution goes up so does the performance benefit from SLI. The 6800GT moved up to a 68% performance improvement, while the 6600GT only inched up to a 78.2% gain. The 6800GTs in SLI configuration actually make 1280 x 1024 with 4X AA smooth as butter under Doom 3.
At 1600 x 1200 we see some huge performance gains from SLI: 75.3% and 85% from the 6800GT and the 6600GT respectively. It's clear that SLI makes even the highest resolutions with AA enabled quite playable.
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Sokaku - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
#12 I'm with that on that one, however we did see how it went with 3dfx's SLI solution.
I had a voodoo2 and when it came to the point where I wanted more power, I could have bought another voodoo2, however the graphics card available at that point, out performed a dual voodoo2 configuration considerably, so as an upgrade path, it was never feasable to do so.
I'm afraid that if I should buy an 6800Ultra, when the time comes, I would not buy another one, because at that point, we have one 8600Ultra way outperforming dual 6800ultras...
#13 by lebe0024: I assumed that you've been banned 23 times from this forum and I sure hope you'll be banned for the 24th time.
lebe0024 - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
Shut your pie hole #11xsilver - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
#11 .... how bout this -- "if they could they would"nvidia is here to may money after all..... a single card solution should certainly be cheaper to produce than a dual one, but I don't think that's feasable right now so that's why its not made
Sokaku - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
I find it horrible that NVIDIA is taking up SLI again. "Why?" you probably wonder... Well, in order to be able to gain anything from SLI, NVIDIA has to overpower the GPU considerably when it comes to geometry handling. Infact, the geometry engine must be able to outperform the pixel rendere by a factor 2, should the customer happen to use this card in a SLI configuration. This means that people who do NOT want a SLI configuration will have to pay for a geometry engine that is way more powerful than needed.Think of the additional cost of making a SLI configuration, you need a motherboard prepared for it, you need dual graphics card, gpu and all.. And what problem does this solve?
Well, basicly all it does is giving you twice the memory bandwidth and pixel render capacity.
This could be solved way more cost effective by doubling the data bus width and keeping the solution on one card. Also, this way the geometry engine would be dimmensioned to exactly match the capacity of the rendere.
This is a step back in innovation and not a step forward.
smn198 - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
...meaning different RAM manufacturers/speeds on the graphics cards.smn198 - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
Any one heard if you can get differing versions of the same board. e.g. one 6600GT from Asus and the other from MSI? Anyone heard of any tests with this and different RAM?(I think the dual 6600GT upgrade path makes up for the lack of SoundStorm. Hope they hurry up and make their add in SS boards tho!)
TimTheEnchanter25 - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
Any word on when PCI-E versions of the 6800 GT will start showing up in stores? I'm not waiting for SLI boards, but I'm getting worried that the 6800GTs won't be out by time Nforce4 boards are in stores.ballero - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
How about testing the last patch by crytek with hdr enabled?ballero - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
Pete84 - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
#4 Why would you want SLI for the 6200? It is the lowest end card - think 9200. No real use, other than Civ III and Firefox.