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
Far Cry Performance
For our final set of tests we've got Far Cry 1.1.
At 1024 x 768 the performance gains are still under 50% as the game is still CPU limited at such a "low" resolution. As expected, the GeForce 6600GT gets more of a performance boost from SLI as it is the slower card.
As we increase in resolution the performance benefits the 6800GT see are significantly higher, reaching a healthy 70.7% at 1280 x 1024.
What is truly impressive is the 105.9% performance improvement at 1600 x 1200 for the GeForce 6800GT in SLI mode - and we thought Doom 3 saw some impressive performance gains. At 1600 x 1200 with 4X AA Far Cry goes from mostly smooth with some stuttering to silky smooth performance thanks to SLI with the 6800GTs. The 6600GT doesn't fare as well, averaging at under 40 fps.
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SDA - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
Maybe, maybe not, #3. Modern PSUs have a lot more juice than the systems actually use. I wouldn't be surprised if a 380W Tagan could handle an A64 rig with dual 6800Us.Anyway, yeah, this is decidedly sexy. What I like about it is that it actually has appeal for normal people as well... say you want to buy a midrange system that you can upgrade easily later. Get a dual PCI-E 16x motherboard and a 6600GT, then add in another 6600GT whenever you feel like you want a performance boost! Shame SLI isn't available on the 6200...
ukDave - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
1600x1200 high detail for any current game, that certainly is impressive. I'm an 'ATi Fanboy', but congrats to nVidia, damn fine job.I think even my luberly Tagan might have issues running two on these 6800 Ultras :o
keitaro - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
Here's an interesting idea... take SLI setup, plug in 2 17in to 19in LCD monitors, do some benchmarks and play with that setup for a while. Then tell us about the experience. :)xsilver - Friday, October 29, 2004 - link
Sweet.... Sweet candy ...... drools... wants nowI'm no fanboy but those ATI fanboys will have to give in to the fact that nvidia now has the "fastest" card abeit it will cost 2x more
Finally on the issue of SLI if the exact same card must be used to enable SLI, is there any info on the future availability of these cards.... eg if u buy a 6600gt now in 18 months this card may not be available anymore? eg. will be 6700gt? will these be compatible? Forcing you to upgrade before the product is phased out may not be so good
Also just noticed in the far cry 1600x1200 test SLI is more than 100% faster... how the hell does that work? margin of error?