X-bit labs

There Will Be Speed: The Clash of Modern Multi-GPU Technologies (page 14)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko, Anton Shilov

[ 03/24/2008 | 05:01 PM ]

Half-Life 2: Episode Two

The ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 shows better scalability than the GeForce 9800 GX2 but the latter offers higher performance. For example, the GeForce 9800 GX2 has a lead of 40% at 1920x1200, which justifies the price difference between these two cards. The ATI solution allows playing at 1920x1200 with 4x FSAA comfortably, though.

The 4-way CrossFireX platform is the winner among top-performance systems delivering over 80fps at 2560x1600. The GeForce 9800 GX2 Quad SLI suffers from poor driver optimizations, being slower than the single such card. We should acknowledge that the single GeForce 9800 GX2 is fast enough for normal play even at 2560x1600 with FSAA.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

The game doesn’t support FSAA when you enable the dynamic lighting model, but loses much of its visual appeal with the static model. This is the reason why we benchmarked the cards in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. using anisotropic filtering only.

The single GeForce 9800 GX2 is better than the single ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2, but it comes from a higher price category after all. The ATI solution shows better scalability relative to the single card, though. Unfortunately, it is too slow at 2560x1600.

Nvidia’s 4-way SLI is no good again. There no effect from adding a second GeForce 9800 GX2 into the system and enabling Quad SLI mode. The speed even lowers a little. The 4-way CrossFireX system is, on the contrary, correct. Although it cannot reach the level of the single GeForce 98800 GX2, its performance is quite sufficient for comfortable play at resolutions up to 1920x1200. So, ATI’s multi-GPU support is better in some application than Nvidia’s, although the latter has more experience in that field.