nForce4 SLI Roundup: Painful and Rewarding
by Wesley Fink on February 28, 2005 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Gaming Performance
Wolfenstein-Enemy Territory-Radar
Doom 3
Aquamark 3
Quake 3 Arena
UT2004
Far Cry
Half-Life 2
3DMark03
3DMark05
When it was first reported that nVidia SLI supported FutureMark 3Dmark05 and 03, many gamers considered the support something of a joke. But as you can see in the benchmarks, both 3DMarks are very good at demonstrating the potential impact of SLI on gaming performance. Moving from single video to SLI increases 3DMark05 performance by almost 80%. Similarly, we see a performance increase of over 60% in 3DMark 03 when we compare results with a single video card to SLI. Aquamark 3, another "standardized" 1024 benchmark, also sees improvements with SLI, but they are much smaller than the huge performance gains in the 3DMarks.
Doom 3, Half Life 2, and Far Cry all follow patterns that we have seen in their performance since SLI was first introduced.
We purposely included a few benchmarks that we knew were not supported by current nVidia drivers to show what can happen in these games. SLI results in these non-supported games range from no improvement at all with SLI to small performance losses in Quake 3. The point is that SLI is only worth it if the game you want to play is supported by nVidia drivers. This may get a little more complicated if nVidia turns on SLI by default when the driver sees an unknown, but for now, you need a supported game for SLI to make sense.
Yes, we fully expect the new, exciting, and best-selling games that are on their way to be supported by SLI.
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chucky2 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
Typo on Page 20: I don't think you hit F3, it's F6.Chuck
ajmiles - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
Wesley, would it be possible to get a reply to the comment #6 i wrote? ASUS worked closely with you to resolve the dual 6800 ultra issue, but they just stonewall me and everyone else regarding the overclocking at 1T issue.Perhaps if someone with some "muscle" in the hardware reviewing world were to push them for a response you could get one out of them?
Thanks, Adam Miles
teng029 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
#52 - i don't envy what you have to go through. i've had the misfortune of trying to get tech support from asus sometime ago and it was like pulling teeth.#29 - i agree. while i would love to have two 6800 ultras or GTs in SLI, the fact of the matter is i can't justify the cost. so instead i'm going with two 6600GTs. although this is apparently not a very popular choice, the fact remains that this configuration is still going to be substantially faster than my current setup using a 9700 pro and it costs about the same as my 9700 pro when i bought it.
teng029 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
giz02 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
I just noticed that the MSI board lacks additional PCIe boards, where the DFI board has an additional 1x and 4x slot. Anyones opinion on the importance of this?roostercrows - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
I just have to mention to my fellow anandtech members that I have an ASUS A8N-SLI board and I have been trying to get through to their "tech support" Friday and all Monday morning with absolutely no luck whatsoever! You can't even get through to anyone. So, when considering a motherboard keep this in mind. My experience with their "tech support" has been the worst you can imagine. Well...at least they weren't rude or incompetent.... they just aren't there.drewski - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
too bad the non-sli from MSI doesn't use the SB audiohttp://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/m...
giz02 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
Sorry page 5-11giz02 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
Heinrich,Did you configure the settings as per page 5-12 in the manual to passthrough on the decoder?
THILE - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
How did you make the Gigabyte run 4x dimms at 200mhz?I have this new motherboard GA-K8NXP-SLI and 4x of kingston hyperx pc3200 (KHX3200UlK2).
And running a new AMD athlon64 3500+ 90nm
I use SPD settings for the memmory. T2 is enabled.
Do I then force 200 mhz it just frezes.