NVIDIA's GeForce 6 SLI: Demolishing Performance Barriers
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 23, 2004 10:23 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Unreal Tournament 2004 Performance
In UT2004 we see that even up to 1600 x 1200 we’re basically CPU bound with the higher end GPUs. The 6600GT is the only GPU that shows a performance improvement due to SLI, at 1600 x 1200 the gain is just under 16%.
What’s interesting to note is that SLI is slightly slower at CPU bound resolutions than just a single card configuration; we ran the single card configurations in PCI Express x8 mode (just like the SLI cards run), so the performance difference, although negligible, is completely due to SLI driver and GPU bridge overhead.
It isn’t until we hit 1600 x 1200 with 4X AA and 8X AF that we see a real performance gain from SLI.
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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