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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7Enigma - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
Derek,Please keep the new way. I was one of the proponents of the zero rating after the last article and it shows nicely what can and can't handle a given resolution. Sure you can turn down the eye candy, but that's not the point of the article...especially when you are talking about 3-way.
We could just turn all the settings down to medium and a single 4850 would be the value king! (/sarcasm)
Antman56 - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
I think demonstrating crossfire using 4850s with 1 GB of ram each would have created a "sweet" price/performance result.These 4850s show us what happens when there isn't enough memory to compliment a video card's processing potential.
Spivonious - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
I find it interesting that the 4870 512MB leads the value charts at "normal" resolutions (still way higher than I run).I think as a follow-up to this series you should look at playability statistics and see if getting anything more than the 4870 512MB is worth it at 1920x1200 and below.
fixxxer0 - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
only if both girls are hotStraightPipe - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
only one of the girls needs to be hot, the other will be so busy licking your balls it wont make a difference.Jansen - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
And if it is not a "Devil's 3-way"...That's with two guys.