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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
60 Comments
View All Comments
kilkennycat - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
Just to reinforce another poster's comments. Oblivion is now the yardstick for truly sweating a high-performance PC system. A comparison of a single GX2 vs dual 7900GT in SLI would be very interesting indeed, since Oblivion pushes up against the 256Meg graphics memory limit of the 7900GT (with or without SLI), and will exceed it if some of the 'oblivion.ini' parameters are tweaked for more realistic graphics in outdoor environments, especially in combo with some of the user-created texture-enhancements mods.Crassus - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
That was actually my first thought and the reason I read the article ... "How will it run Oblivion?". I hope you'll find the time to add some graphs for Oblivion. Thanks.TiberiusKane - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
Nice article. Some insanely rich gamers may want to compare the absolute high-end, so they may have wanted to see 1900XT in Crossfire. It'd help with the comparison of value.George Powell - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
Didn't the ATI Rage Fury Maxx post date the Obsidian X24 card?Also on another point its a pity that there are no Oblivion benchmarks for this card.
Spoelie - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
Didn't the voodoo5 post date that one as well? ^^Myrandex - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
For some reason page 1 and 2 worked for me, but when I tried 3 or higher no page would load and I received a "Cannot find server" error message.JarredWalton - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
We had some server issues which are resolved now. The graphs were initially broken on a few charts (all values were 0.0) and so the article was taken down until the problem could be corrected.ncage - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
This is a very cool but what would be a better idea if nvidia would use the socket concept where you can change out the VPU just like you can a cpu. So you could buy a card with only one VPU and then add another one later if you needed it....BlvdKing - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
Isn't that what PCI-Express is? Think of a graphics card like a slot 1 or slot A CPU back in the old days. A graphics card is a GPU with it's own cache on the same PCB. If we were to plug a GPU into the motherboard, then it would have to use system memory (slow) or use memory soldiered onto the motherboard (not updatable). The socket idea for GPUs doesn't make sense.DerekWilson - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
actually this isn't exactly what PCIe is ...but it is exactly what HTX will be with AMD's Torrenza and coherent HT links from the GPU to the processor. The CPU and the GPU will be able to work much more closely together with this technology.