MultiGPU Update: Does 3-way Make Sense?
by Derek Wilson on February 25, 2009 2:45 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Crysis Warhead Analysis
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Like in CoD, we are seeing NVIDIA dominated performance. AMD's 3-way solutions can hold their own against the rest of the hardarwe out there, but NVIDIA sets the bar here in terms of raw performance.
While other tests don't show any real need for 3-way graphics, Crysis isn't playable at 2560x1600 with single GPU options under these settings. Even at lower resolutions Crysis just seems to absorb what's thrown at it. The 512MB parts do take a bigger hit at the highest resolution than the higher memory hardware out there also.
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Scaling is decent, but we would prefer it to be higher even so considering that to get closer to getting what you pay for we would need to see 200% scaling with 3 cards. NVIDIA hardware seems to scale much better than AMD hardware in this test.
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Looking at how the hardware scales from 2 to 3 GPUs, we can see that AMD's 4870 1GB shows good improvement despite the fact that it trails in the 1 to 3 GPU scaling chart. 512MB hardware struggles a lot in this as well. The other hardware does scale really well up at 2560x1600 where it counts.
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Because this game is very graphically intense even when not set to the maximum settings, not all the cards can score any "value" even at the lowest resolution. The ATI Radeon HD 4850 fails to break the 25fps barrier in any test, so it gets a value of zero across the board. The 9800 GTX+ 2-way option isn't that shabby until 2560x1600, and the 4850 X2 posts some good value. We still have single cards at the top of the value chart until we hit 2560x1600 where single cards fail to offer any value (as well as some 2-way solutions). At that point 2-way solutions that offer some level of passable performance give more for the money with the GTX 260 3-way option leading the pack of our recently added tests.
This game shows the most casualties in terms of our value threshold, but hopefully it will help show which cards are actually worth comparing here.
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Snarks - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
hmm, i find my self questioning these articles more and more..but anyway carry on.
DerekWilson - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
what's the question ... seriously, any criticism is helpful. this is the first time we've really done a series like this, and it's a complicated situation with lots of data and lots of analysis ... there's no one way to look at it, and all the feedback i get will help me down the road.i don't see the need for this type of article or series very frequently, but we'll have to do it every once in a while just in case something changes. knowing what you guys think is important and what you guys want to read about is key to us getting things done right.
Flyboy27 - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
Sell you an extra card that you don't really need.Flyboy27 - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
oh yeah... and a more expensive motherboard, power supply, and case.Burrich - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
Would the recently release Catalyst 9.2 drivers improve any compatibility or fps issues? Their release date was 2/20.7Enigma - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
Check out xbitlabs' review of the 9.2 drivers. If you have a 4870 X2 then yes it appears to be a nice upgrade for several games with minimal losses in the games it doesn't benefit. But if you are sporting a single 4870 1gig it actually degrades performance more than it improves!On the flipside they claim stability is better with the 9.2's so it depends on what you want/need. If you are comfortable with the framerates in the games you currently play then jump on the 9.2's for stability reasons. If you are on the edge of playable performance I would stick with the previous drivers...
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/cat...">http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/cat...
DerekWilson - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
That article compares 9.2 to 9.1 ... the 8.12 hotfix would show similar performance improvements over the 9.1 drivers. 9.2 does benefit more games, but these are games that have been more recently released than the ones we tested.if they compared the 8.12 hotfix to 9.2, we would expect to see more parity, especially with the games we tested in this article.
DerekWilson - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
The recently released 9.2 catalyst drivers are basically the 8.12 hotfix drivers with some additions to support performance and scaling in recently released titles. So not really.smartalco - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
I don't like that you use 0 for those that score under 25 FPS, specifically because that is under 25 at the res/settings you use. If a card scores 24 FPS at 1680*1050 with maxed settings, what that really tells you is that if you were to drop to half the AA, or turn down some other setting, is that you could still have a perfectly playable game. It seems to me, that giving them a value rating of 0 is acting like everyone has to play on max settings, and if it doesn't meet the standard, its useless.IDK, just me talking, I'm going to be happy with my 4850 for quite some time.
Still an excellent article.
DerekWilson - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
i've actually got the graphs without the 0 scores in the article front to back -- just commented out at the moment ... i wasn't sure which one to go with until the last minute, and i thought about putting both in (but that wouldbe really redundant for games that no card had trouble with)i could do some more complex web programming, but i'm not a web developer and i hate javascript ...
thanks for the feedback. i'll be taking it into account in the final article on 4-way.
also, if you wanna see the value numbers for the single and dual cards that scored less than 25 fps, you can still look at the first article and see them.