NVIDIA Single Card, Multi-GPU: GeForce 7950 GX2
by Derek Wilson on June 5, 2006 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Quake 4 Performance
With Quake 4, low resolutions are very CPU limited, but we can start to see the advantage of 7950 GX2 when AA is enabled. Quake 4 scales very well on multi-GPU solutions, so its expected that the 7950 GX2 should come out on top in this benchmark.
Moving on, our theories are confirmed: the 7950 GX2 continues to remain that the top of the list in terms of average frame rate under Quake 4. Enabling AA is still necessary for the advantage to become significant, but the gap between the new fastest single card and the rest of the pack is definitely increasing.
At 2048x1536, even without AA the 7950 GX2 shows an 18% advantage over the next fastest single PCIe slot solution. Enabling 4xAA instantly boosts that lead to over 43%. In fact, running at 2048x1536 with 4xAA rather than one of the CPU limited resolutions on a 7950 GX2 will only cost you about 28% in performance over all.
With Quake 4, low resolutions are very CPU limited, but we can start to see the advantage of 7950 GX2 when AA is enabled. Quake 4 scales very well on multi-GPU solutions, so its expected that the 7950 GX2 should come out on top in this benchmark.
Moving on, our theories are confirmed: the 7950 GX2 continues to remain that the top of the list in terms of average frame rate under Quake 4. Enabling AA is still necessary for the advantage to become significant, but the gap between the new fastest single card and the rest of the pack is definitely increasing.
At 2048x1536, even without AA the 7950 GX2 shows an 18% advantage over the next fastest single PCIe slot solution. Enabling 4xAA instantly boosts that lead to over 43%. In fact, running at 2048x1536 with 4xAA rather than one of the CPU limited resolutions on a 7950 GX2 will only cost you about 28% in performance over all.
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JarredWalton - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
Yes, SLI profiles are used for full utilization of the GX2 card. (AFAIK - Derek can correct me if I'm wrong.)DerekWilson - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
SLI profiles are used if availalbe, but SLI profiles are never required to enable multi-GPU support on NVIDIA hardware.there are some advanced options for enabling multi-GPU or single-GPU rendering in the control panel -- even down to the AFR or SFR mode type (and SLIAA modes as a fallback if nothing else will work for you).
in short -- required: no, used: yes.
araczynski - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
haven't read the article yet as I didn't see reference to Oblivion benchmarks, and lets be honest, that's the only game out these days that's worth benchmarking (in terms of actually giving the high end cards an actual workout).DigitalFreak - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
It's amazing all the cool stuff you can do with PCI Express.Sniderhouse - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
The Voodoo5 5500 had two GPUs on a single card which did true SLI, not to mention the Voodoo5 6000 which had four GPUs, but never really made it to market.
shabby - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
The x24 was also a dual pcb video card, thats what he meant. Not dual chip or whatever.timmiser - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
Exactly what I was thinking!DerekWilson - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
Perhaps I should have said successful products ... or products that were availble in any real quantity :-)photoguy99 - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
From page 1, what limitations are being referred to?Ryan Smith - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
DX9 itself has a good deal of overhead in some situations, something Microsoft is changing for DX10. We'll have more on that in our upcomming Vista article later this week.