NVIDIA's 3-way SLI: Can we finally play Crysis?
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 17, 2007 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Quad SLI Redux?
With the hardware requirements met, it's time to look at the software requirements. Currently, 3-way SLI is only supported under Windows Vista, not XP. Other than the OS stipulation, 3-way SLI isn't really any different from conventional 2-card SLI. Many of you will remember the ill fated Quad SLI product NVIDIA brought to market just under two years ago.
Quad SLI had three major problems that kept it from being a worthwhile product:
1) It relied on the 7950 GX2, which was a single card, dual GPU solution. The problem is that the each GPU on a 7950 GX2 was slower than a 7900 GTX. So a single 7950 GX2 was slower than a pair of 7900 GTXs. Quad SLI used two of these 7950 GX2s, so the performance improvement over a pair of 7900 GTXs wasn't all that great at its best.
2) The best performing games with Quad SLI used AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering) to divide up the rendering workload, where each GPU was responsible for rendering its own frame. The result is that GPU 1 would render frame 1, while GPU 2 would work on the next frame, GPU 3 would work on the third and GPU 4 would work on the fourth. DirectX 9 unfortunately only allowed for a 3-frame render ahead, meaning that this AFR mode wouldn't work. With the vast majority of games being DX titles, this posed a significant problem to Quad SLI performance.
3) The final issue with Quad SLI was that by the end of the year, G80 was out, and G80 was much faster. A pair of 8800 GTXs demolished a Quad SLI setup, and in some cases even a single card was faster.
Thankfully, 3-way SLI doesn't have these problems. The three-card SLI setup relies on regular 8800 GTX/Ultra cards, which are still among the fastest GPUs that NVIDIA offers today. The 3-frame render ahead limitations of DX9 aren't present in DX10, so we can get good scaling with AFR in DX10 titles.
The problem of planned obsolesce is a concern though and it's almost inevitable that 3-way SLI based on G80 will be replaced very soon. There's no doubt that NVIDIA will eventually replace the 8800 GTX and Ultra with G92 based variants, which will reduce power consumption and improve performance. The fact that G80 came out over a year ago should preclude any thoughts of purchasing a brand new 3-way SLI setup, but for users who already have two 8800 GTX or Ultra cards, adding a third is a mostly reasonable proposition.
The Test
Special thanks to both EVGA and ASUS for providing us with hardware for this review. Both EVGA and ASUS sent us 8800 Ultras and 780i based motherboards for this comparison, although it is worth mentioning that you could use a 680i motherboard and any brand (or mixture of brands) of 8800 GTX/Ultra cards - provide of course that your 680i motherboard has the necessary x16 PCIe slots.
| Test Setup | |
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 @ 3.33GHz |
| Motherboard | EVGA nForce 780i SLI |
| Video Cards | NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra x 3 |
| Video Drivers | NVIDIA: 169.18 |
| Hard Drive | Seagate 7200.9 300GB 8MB 7200RPM |
| RAM | 4x1GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 4-4-4-12 |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit |
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48 Comments
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paydirt - Friday, February 15, 2008 - link
Physics belong on the GPU, Crysis put them on the CPU. (search: AGEIA Crysis)This is partly why framerates stink in Crysis, because it is bogging down a processor that isn't designed to properly handle physics.
LtUh8meDoncha - Monday, January 7, 2008 - link
So yeah. On the first page of these comments OrooOroo hit the nail on the head. If you bought 2 Ultras buying a third one (even at the end of its lifecycle) isn't going to bother you. It's like upgrading the twin turbos on a ferrari. No you don't need to but it would be cool if you did! There will always be honda drivers that look at you like your crazy but you're not buying it for them (although if you did I bet thier opinion on 3-way SLI would change).The article sounds like it was written by someone who knew they would have to return the product and go back to there 22"WS and single 8800GT setup. I love how he/she just brushed off the Bioshock results because they didn't support your arguement and then made some half-baked excuse about how cpu speed had something to do with it and removed it from "how many games benefit from 3xSli" off topic test. Stick to your benches. Thats all you have. If you say one part of your test is faulty why should I believe any of the others are working?
Keep it simple. Just the facts. I bought 3-Way because simply put it IS faster(ugh... I already had 2xSLI GTX and I got the third on ebay for like $380 if that makes anyone on a budget feel any better). If you have to justify the cost you have no business even buying 1 Ultra much less 2 or even thinking (or talking) about the next gen top end because you're not going to buy that either. What your going to do is try to make excuses why no one should buy the card you can't afford until a year later when they come out with something thats in your price range and is almost as fast (eghehm.. 8800GT). You'd do better saving your money for some off brand 17" rims or really nice spinner hubcaps.
borisof007 - Thursday, January 3, 2008 - link
No XBox or any console game will do well on PC platform (Assuming it was made for the console first), so shutup about it.Now, regarding the video cards, Tri SLI is a waste of money, end of discussion. We've beaten this horse for 5 pages now, we can all agree on this.
Moving on, to differentiate between Nvidia and ATI is actually very easy.
If you want high end performance, no matter the cost, go Nvidia dual SLI. If you want high end performance with cost in mind, but still want solid bang for your buck, go with ATI's 3850/3870 lineup in Crossfire. The 790 FX chipset is very nice and the 3850's offer dominating performance in its category and for its cost.
Done.
borisof007 - Thursday, January 3, 2008 - link
No XBox or any console game will do well on PC platform (Assuming it was made for the console first), so shutup about it.Now, regarding the video cards, Tri SLI is a waste of money, end of discussion. We've beaten this horse for 5 pages now, we can all agree on this.
Moving on, to differentiate between Nvidia and ATI is actually very easy.
If you want high end performance, no matter the cost, go Nvidia dual SLI. If you want high end performance with cost in mind, but still want solid bang for your buck, go with ATI's 3850/3870 lineup in Crossfire. The 790 FX chipset is very nice and the 3850's offer dominating performance in its category and for its cost.
Done.
borisof007 - Thursday, January 3, 2008 - link
No XBox or any console game will do well on PC platform (Assuming it was made for the console first), so shutup about it.Now, regarding the video cards, Tri SLI is a waste of money, end of discussion. We've beaten this horse for 5 pages now, we can all agree on this.
Moving on, to differentiate between Nvidia and ATI is actually very easy.
If you want high end performance, no matter the cost, go Nvidia dual SLI. If you want high end performance with cost in mind, but still want solid bang for your buck, go with ATI's 3850/3870 lineup in Crossfire. The 790 FX chipset is very nice and the 3850's offer dominating performance in its category and for its cost.
Done.
LaZr - Thursday, December 27, 2007 - link
Why bua a nvidia when it dosent run 3dmark 2008http://r800.blogspot.com/2007/12/3dmark-vantage-br...">http://r800.blogspot.com/2007/12/3dmark-vantage-br...
Lack of dx 10.1
DiggIt that fanboys!!!!!
falc0ne - Monday, December 24, 2007 - link
the graphics brought are probably the best around these days but this WON'T SIMPLY JUSTIFY THE AMOUNT OF HARDWARE CONSUMED!C'mon guys..get real!
In my view this path with multiple video cards....is one way wrong street...Multiple GPU on a single board YES! - that would be another story here
Why Doom3 or H2 didn't require SLI or CF to work when they appeared?!
So, CRYTEK thaks but...no thanks! It's not reasonable at all to pay double(to get a SLI config) to play a SINGLE GAME- which in my view is a better looking version of Far Cry - poor story/scenario also - poor idea...You are the one man, one hero, left in the North Pole with a tooth brush in underwear to survive after which you are transfered to an island to fight Rambo style - Me vs ALL- "bring it on you maggots, I'm gonna teach you all...!"
Well this is the funny side of it- if you try to entertain yourself(yes games supposed to be entertaining, just not anymore) you won't be able to...cause you'll be preoccupied by surrounding enemies suit's battery and ammo depletion..weapons and ammo are scarce,and enemies die rather like in Hitman(very hard), you have to empty 3 clips to get 3 guys...wow so much fun..
sorry for the somewhat off topic...
Pneumothorax - Thursday, December 20, 2007 - link
In the closing comments the author is basically complaining about the stagnation of the GPU market. Nvidia with it's 1+ billion dollar cash should develop multi-core GPU dies instead of the same tried and tru $$$ approach of releasing year after year of >$500 video cards. Also notice since ATI is playing 2nd distant fiddle at the high end Nvidia has REALLY slowed down on their improvements. We're looking at a long dark ages in PC gaming until we get a viable competitor to Nvidia. Intel's delay on the 45nm mainstream chip release due to the Phenom failure is another sign we're heading back to >$900+ (remember those dreary P3/early P4 days, until Athlon's started cleaning Intel's clock) mainstream chips with stagnation on the cpu end also.ViperV990 - Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - link
I'm curious if it is possible to run three 8800GT's, each hooked up to its own monitor (say 20' UXGA LCD), for a nice triple-monitor setup. No SLI whatsoever. If this works as well as the Triplehead-2-Go from Matrox on the software side, I'd very much be interested in getting it.araczynski - Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - link
sadly, i think these kinds of things are what's rapidly getting rid of the 'fun' in staying in the pc gaming scene. i've been playing pc games since about 86 or so (so much longer than many these days, and yet not as long as many others), but only in the last few years have i been getting 'tired' of all the 'improvements' that hardware companies seem to come up with on a montly basis. not to mention the developers who keep giving them reasons to want to come up with new junk.i finally jumped into the console gaming world, have all 3 consoles, and quite frankly it feels much more relaxing these days to play a console game and know that it'll just 'work'.
there seems to be less and less incentive to waste time with pc gaming every day. as soon as they get real mmo's going on the consoles the pc gaming scene will just fade away finally i think. and i'll be the first to say 'good riddance'.
anyway, just venting. ignore me.