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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JClimbs - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
A few things glossed over in the 'upgrade path' argument:costly up-front mobo purchase. These boards will go down in price, but unless they're a total flop they won't drop nearly as much as a non-SLI board's price slope.
power supply. Lets face it, when you get around to running two cards, you will need to purchase a more robust PS than those sold with most cases. If you've already spent the cash on a high-quality PS, fine; but upgrade paths are generally not pointed at folks who spend big bucks on a PS.
Fans. Two GPUs under the hood will almost certainly want more cooling. Admittedly, they're cheap. Good thing...
Electric Bill. The power draw of today's Graphics Cards is already breathtaking. With two of 'em chugging away under the hood, that drain looks absolutely scary.
Ecmaster76 - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
Anyone want to bet that the two GPU's are using a hypertransport or derived interconnect. The bandwidth quoted is in the same neighborhood as an Athlon's, but probably a little faster since the trace lengths are short and straight.ChronoReverse - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
Pretty nice speed bumps, but the 6600GT sli is disappointing in how it seems to always lag behind even the 6800GT with high-resolutions and AA+AF enabled.ariafrost - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
SLI has a lot of potential, that's for sure... :D