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
Final Words
NVIDIA always does this. We got Quad SLI with the 7950 GX2, only to be replaced shortly thereafter by G80, and now we're getting 3-way SLI with the 8800 GTX/Ultra, which we all know is on the way to being replaced by G92. Investing in a 3-way SLI setup today would be a terrible idea, you're buying into old technology and you're buying it after it's already been made obsolete by a new GPU. It's only a matter of time before G92 makes its way up the food chain, and three of those bad boys with even more shader power should give us a much cooler running, and faster, 3-way SLI setup than what we've tested here today.
The setup works, we didn't run into any software issues, and we can't deny that there are some definite performance improvements in certain games. The problem is that 3-way SLI just doesn't scale well enough, in nearly enough titles to justify the price.
We'd love to say that 3-way SLI is exactly what you need to play Crysis, because at least that way there'd be a configuration in existence that would run that game well, but we just can't. The game currently doesn't scale well at all from two to three cards.
And that's the fundamental problem with 3-way SLI, it's a better effort than Quad SLI was, but it's doomed from the start: it's built on old technology. We'd much rather have a couple of faster G92 based GPUs than SLI-ing three 1.5 year old GPUs together.
Then there's the bigger issue of SLI and CrossFire technologies in general, scaling is a little too dependent on software. You're increasing the execution resources of a standard 2-card SLI setup by 50%, but the performance impact is no where near that. Whereas if you added 50% more SPs to those two 8800 Ultras you'd see a much more tangible outcome. It's an extreme version of the way Intel makes quad-core CPUs, but instead of sticking two die on a single package, you have two die spread over two cards - that's hardly efficient. GPU architectures have changed dramatically over the past few years, yet we're still left with the same old multi-GPU technology. It's time for a change.
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chizow - Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - link
Derek Wilson in 8800GT Review:Completely valid point about using 32-bit vs. 64-bit and somewhat of a hot topic over in the video forums. Honestly you have $5000+ worth of hardware in front of you, yet getting a 64-bit version of Vista running benchmarks at resolutions/settings where 64-bit and 2GB+ would help the most is too difficult? C'mon guys, seriously this is the 2nd sub-par review in a row (512 GTS review was poor too).
Also, could you clarify the bit about 680i boards being able to accomplish the same thing? Exactly what spurred this change in Tri-SLI support? Driver support? Seems Anand used 169.08 but I thought the 169.25 was the first to officially support Tri-SLI from the patch notes. Or has it always been supported and the 780i just hyping up a selling point that has been around for months? Also, the 780i article hinted there would be OC'ing tests with the chipset and I don't see any here. Going to come in a different article? Thanks.
blppt - Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - link
Yeah, seriously. Especially since the 64bit Crysis executable does away with the texture streaming engine entirely...how can you make a serious "super high end ultimate system" benchmark without utilizing the most optimized, publicly available version of the game? Is it that the 64bit Vista drivers dont support 3-way SLI yet?Otherwise, putting together a monster rig with 3 $500 videocards and then testing it with 32bit vista seems rather silly....
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - link
Address space consumption isn't 1:1 with video memory, it's only correlated, and even less so in SLI configurations where some data is replicated between the cards. I'm not sure what exact value Anand had, but I'm confident Anand had more than 2GB of free address space.JarredWalton - Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - link
Testing at high resolutions with ultra-insane graphics settings serves one purpose: it makes hardware like Quad-SLI and Tri-SLI appear to be much better than it really is. NVIDIA recommended 8xAA for quad-SLI back in the day just to make sure the difference was large. It did make QSLI look a lot better, but when you stopped to examine the sometimes sub-20 FPS results it was far less compelling.Run at 4xAA on a 30" LCD at native resolution, and it's more than just a little difficult to see the image quality difference, with sometimes half the frame rate of 4xAA. A far better solution than maxing out every setting possible is to increase quality where it's useful. 4xAA is even debatable at 2560x1600 - certainly not required - and it's the first thing I turn off when my system is too slow for a game. Before bothering with 8xAA, try transparent supersampling AA. It usually addresses the same issue with much less impact on performance.
At the end of the day, it comes down to performance. If you can't enable 8xAA without keeping frame rates above ~40 FPS (and minimums above 30 FPS), I wouldn't touch it. I play many games with 0xAA and rarely notice aliasing on a 30" LCD. Individual pixels are smaller than on 24", 20", 19", etc. LCDs so it doesn't matter as much, and the high resolution compensates for other areas. Crysis at 2560x1600 with Very High settings? The game is already a slide show, so why bother?
0roo0roo - Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - link
faster is faster, the best is expensive and sometimes frivolous. at that price point you arent thinking like a budget buyer anymore. like exotic cars, you can't be that rational about it. its simply power ...power NOW.crimson117 - Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - link
If it's true that it's all about power, then just find the most expensive cards you can buy, install them, and don't bother playing anything. Also, tip your salesman a few hundred bucks to make the purchase that much more expensive.0roo0roo - Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - link
look, its not like you don't get any advantage from it. its not across the board at this point, but its still a nice boost for any 30" gamer.seriously, there are handbags that cost more than this sli stuff.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - link
Next up from AnandTech: Overclocked Handbags!Stay tuned - we're still working on the details...