AnandTech Exclusive: CrossFire Benchmarks Revealed
by Derek Wilson on July 22, 2005 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The System
The GA-K8AMVP Pro is based on the ATI's latest RD480 chipset paired with a ULi south bridge and features CrossFire support. We'll be taking a closer look at this board as well, as Gigabyte tells us that it can even support 2x 3D1 cards. The board looks very similar to Gigabyte's NF4 SLI boards, including the selector paddle for configuring the PCI Express ports. Flipped to single GPU, the first PCI Express slot gets 16 lanes, and flipped to multi GPU mode will run each slot at x8.
The board itself is stable and runs well. We had no problems with the platform while running our tests, and performance seems to be very solid. On this board, the master card had to be plugged into the slot closest to the CPU.
Our CrossFire master card looked very similar to a regular X850 XT. The port furthest from the motherboard connects to the dongle, which plugs into the monitor as well as the port closest to the motherboard on the slave card.
The card really does look a lot like a normal X850 XT, but we can see that the solder points for the Rage Theater chip are missing and there are quite a few components on the board in its place. All this circuitry (along with a couple of surface-mount LEDs) is likely part of the hardware needed to combine the output of both cards for final display. NVIDIA's parts don't need quite as many additional board components, as the GPU has die space committed to multi-chip rendering and all the work is done on the GPU and in the frame buffers.
That's not to say that ATI's solution is less adequate. Since the DVI port is inherently digital, the external dongle does nothing to lower image quality like the old analog dongle that 3dfx used to employ for SLI.
Before we get to the benchmarks, we will note again that with the early hardware and drivers, we had some trouble with some of the games and settings that we wanted to run. We tested most of the games that we ran in our recent 7800 launch article, but we ended up seeing numbers that didn't make sense. We don't have any reason to think that these problems will remain when the product launches, but it does shorten the list of games that we felt gave a good indication of CrossFire's performance.
For our tests, we used numbers from our original 7800 GTX review. The system (except for the motherboard) is the same as the setup used in the 7800 review (FX-55, 1GB 2:2:2 DDR400, 600W PSU, 120GB HD).
And what are our results? Take a look.
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AnnoyedGrunt - Saturday, July 23, 2005 - link
There seems to be something wrong with the Splinter Cell scores.The 6800U gets the same 40.2 FPS for both 1600x1200 and 1600x1200 4XAA.
Yet the 6800U SLI gets 75.9 w/out AA and 53.7 w/AA.
I'm guessing that the 40.2 is incorrect for the single card with AA, and that the actual score is lower, probably around 30-35 (based on the X850 single card score).
Using the 30-35 FPS score as a baseline would mean that SLI has a 53%-79% improvement.
I'm not sure if these estimates are real or not, but I definitely think something is wrong with your numbers and that the ~34% improvemnt in your conclusion is incorrect as well.
Thanks,
D'oh!
michal1980 - Saturday, July 23, 2005 - link
all these crt users need to wake up and join everyone else. 99% of all gamers useing crts? phhf, only gamers that also have record players because they swear they can hear the differance between a record and a cd. that difference is noise. where as almost everything in you pc is digital, you guys choose to live with the noise/cross talk, other anamolies that plague your crts because of the d/a conversion, and the non-error correcting communiation.while i will enjoy my perfect geometery, no need to have all magnets placed miles apart, whinning at res to high. monitor flickering when res changes. and the fact is that 99% of gamers do not spend the big $$$. i mean hell like 70% of the video cards out there are on board. and i'm geussing only like 5% are high end that can go aboce 12x10 res. at 12x10 most people can play perfectly on there lcds.
grow up crt fanboys, and wake up to what is really happening, your crts are dieing, our lcds are getting better. who really wants a 100+ box with a 4 ft footprint on there desk. only gamer snoobs like you.
DerekWilson - Saturday, July 23, 2005 - link
CrystalBay (and anyone else who cares) ... you want the bf2 demo we use? Email me and I'll send it to you.It is difficult to setup bf2 to get repeatable results, and I'd recommend that you spend some time inside EA's demo.cmd for benchmarking the game and reading various forums on the subject.
Just to let everyone know, we have to actually take the csv file bf2 generates with the frametimes for each frame and we average the last 1700 frames. DICE actually records frametimes for the loadscreen, and it's more acurate for us to use their recorded times than to use something like fraps.
That's all the "support" I'll give for the demo file, but if you still want it, feel free to ask.
Derek Wilson
Staples - Saturday, July 23, 2005 - link
I am impressed with the performance gain. Seems to be more than NVIDIA SLI.CrystalBay - Saturday, July 23, 2005 - link
This is bogus why doesn't AT release the AT BF2 time demoElJefe - Saturday, July 23, 2005 - link
My crt cost over a 1000 dollars. 23 inch mitsubishi.there's nothing on the market that beats a crt for gaming. you have to be smoking some seriously badly cut ghetto crack to consider that an lcd is anything besides prettier,thinner and easier on the eyes than a high quality crt. And really, it is only easier on the eyes for doing 2d work, well, except for when the pixels get in the way of the font being perfectly round and clean, then it sux there too.
even a skank level crt beats out 600 dollar lcd's.
Reapsy00 - Friday, July 22, 2005 - link
#17 Your mouth opens and closes and crap pours outReapsy00 - Friday, July 22, 2005 - link
Whats the point of these benchmarks without minimum fps?Zebo - Friday, July 22, 2005 - link
::::YAWN:::::Too little too late.
flatblastard - Friday, July 22, 2005 - link
I have been a skeptic of SLI/Xfire and the like. I guess I just don't see the need for two cards, although I'm sure there is one or two reasons. I bought the 850pe earlier this year and I have to say I still don't regret it, even if it was overpriced. I'm thinking I will just keep using this card until R520 reaches the surface. Then I will be able to decide whether to buy the x850 master, or just do what I've always done and get the next single card in either the mid or high end.