Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Performance

Version: 1.4

Settings: All Highest Quality

For this benchmark, we use FRAPS to measure average frame rate during the opening cut-scene of the game. We start FRAPS as soon as the screen clears in the helicopter and we stop it right as the captain grabs his head gear. As we saw in the preview, this game does scale beyond two GPUs, and our tests here show some very interesting results.

Call of Duty 4 Multi-GPU Scaling over Resolution


Unlike in Oblivion, Call of Duty 4 scales well with three or four GPUs no matter what resolution we are running. We did enable the option to support dual graphics cards, and it is clear that when developers put some effort into explicitly supporting multi-GPU configurations good results can be achieved. This is also interesting in light of the fact that this game is a little more flat when it comes to resolution scaling than other titles.

Call of Duty 4 Performance


Call of Duty 4 Performance
  1280x1024 1600x1200 1920x1200 2560x1600
NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT SLI 127.7 116 104.3 78.8
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra SLI 145.8 134.1 127.4 102.8
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra 78.3 75.7 70 57.5
NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT 66.5 59.4 55 40.8
AMD Radeon HD 3870x2 (x 2) 89.6 86.3 82.6 74.8
AMD Radeon HD 3870x2 + 3870 78.2 74.8 72.9 64.5
AMD Radeon HD 3870 X2 61.5 56 53.8 47.5
AMD Radeon HD 3870 46.4 41.3 38.2 29.6


In spite of the fact that four GPUs scales well on AMD hardware, NVIDIA's 8800 Ultra GPUs in SLI handily outperform the quad solution, as does 9600 GT SLI up to 2560x1600. Call of Duty 4 has certainly favored NVIDIA hardware, as is shown by the fact that a single 8800 Ultra can keep up with three 3870 cards in CrossFireX, and a single 9600 GT performs on par with the 3870X2.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Performance S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Performance
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  • MAIA - Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - link

    "After rebooting a few times to let windows do its thing, we installed the driver and all was well."

    This sentence is soooooo microsoft windows !!! :))

    Sorry .... had to say it.
  • dash2k8 - Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - link

    I'm just wondering: instead of piling on the number of GPU's, why hasn't a manufacturer just come out with ONE monstrous GPU that does away with the need of using multiple video cards? If someone is crazy enough to spend moola on 4 GPU's, I imagine that person would be equally willing to buy ONE card that has the same horsepower. Just saying.
  • punko - Monday, March 10, 2008 - link

    Thanks Derek for a good review. As you indicated, this may be the future and its good to see the tech reach a point where it is ready for use and can be improved upon as all tech goes forward.

    It also sound like you had a lot of help directly from AMD on this one.

  • gsellis - Monday, March 10, 2008 - link

    "but today a WHQL drier is available "

    Hey Derek, typo in the beginning. Still mirthful about this one. Water cooling and you needed it drier to work with all GPUs?
  • ltcommanderdata - Sunday, March 9, 2008 - link

    I'm just curious as to whether you've checked to see if quad channel memory has any benefit for multiple GPU situations? With 3 or 4 GPUs sucking data, I would presume the additional memory bandwidth provided by quad DDR2-800 would increase performance, especially since dual channel FB-DIMMs are not as efficient as the best dual channel DDR2 or DDR3 setups on desktop boards. It would be interesting to see the results of a 4x1GB setup on Skulltrail vs the 2x2GB setup you used.
  • cerwin13 - Saturday, March 8, 2008 - link

    Would it be wise to try this upgrade without SP1 installed with Vista 32? I am currently using 2x Radeon HD3870 x2s and would like to benchmark with these new drivers, but apparently SP1 isn't officially out yet?
  • DerekWilson - Saturday, March 8, 2008 - link

    other people had luck without SP1; it's not a requirement, but some of our editors did find that it helped with a lot of stuff ...

    you'll want to make sure you have hotfixes:

    929777-v2
    936710
    938194
    938979
    940105
    945149

    as a minimum
  • Ananke - Saturday, March 8, 2008 - link

    XFX has Forceware 169.32, my guess it was added after 9600GT appear. On Nvidia official download site the highest ver is 169.28
  • Ananke - Saturday, March 8, 2008 - link

    XFX has Forceware 169.32, my guess it was added after 9600GT appear. On Nvidia official download site the highest ver is 169.28
  • Incisal flyer - Saturday, March 8, 2008 - link

    Derek, thanks for the very timely and detailed review. I'm going to be building a system for Flight Simulator X and have been trying to figure out the best graphics card(s) for that application. Have you considered benchmarking that sim? A lot of discussion right now on AVSIM etc on what to do in terms of GPUs for people building new systmes. There is a lot of back and forth on advantages and disadvantages of different configs. I realize FSX is a bit of a niche product. Would FSX use multiple GPUs like 2 3870 x2s and are the potential headaches of that configurtation worth it if you are a not a computer geek? Or am I better off just getting a couple of Nvidia 8800s in SLI or a single 3870 x2 and not hassling with the 4 GPU solution? Any help or advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for your time.

    Incisal Flyer

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