MultiGPU Update: Two-GPU Options in Depth
by Derek Wilson on February 23, 2009 7:30 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Left 4 Dead Analysis
Based on Valve's Source engine, Left 4 Dead can run fairly smoothly with any card we tested at any resolution with the maximum settings. The game is definitely not bad looking either, so getting playable framerates on the Radeon HD 4850 at 2560x1600 is no small feat. We do test with a custom demo that makes use of a heavy swarm of zombies in an outdoor area, and though the performance impact is as heavy as we could make it in our benchmark, it may still be possible to hit situations where the lowest end cards stutter with lots of enemies around at very high resolution.
1680x1050 1920x1200 2560x1600
At 1680x1050 and 1920x1200, CrossFire and single ATI cards tend to do better than their NVIDIA counterparts. The GTX 295 does hang out near the top, though. Oddly, the 9800 GTX+ SLI does better than GT200 2 card solutions. If it were just the single card GTX 295 that performed better than the two card options, we would speculate that there was some bus bandwidth or latency issue that caused problems, but it seems that there's something else limiting the performance of the NVIDIA GT200 SLI options. Of course, with the high framerates we see, we aren't exactly complaining. We recommend turning on triple buffering for this game to both eliminate tearing and minimize the input latency possible when just enabling vsync.
1680x1050 1920x1200 2560x1600
Performance at 2560x1600 shirts the playing field putting SLI and CrossFire on more equal footing. While NVIDIA's GTX 260 options lead the competing 4870 class options, the 4850 does very well against its competition. There are no real disappointments with this game and any multiGPU solution though.
When it comes to scaling, at lower resolutions we see CPU/system limited performance affecting the improvement possible with multiple GPUs. The 9800 GTX and 4850 are the only cards that see any real improvement at 1680x1050, and it's not even that much better at 1920x1200. Moving up to 2560x1600 we finally see most of the players above 50% scaling. The exceptions are the fastest single GPU configurations in this test: the GTX 280 and GTX 285.
1680x1050 1920x1200 2560x1600
Between the two "low" resolutions we test, there's no change in the value lineup even though there are shifts in the performance lineup. At these resolutions, multiGPU options tend not to be a good investment because of the CPU/system limit issue. The exception are the 4850 CrossFire and 9800 GTX+ SLI because of the fact that the single card options are GPU limited and we see better scaling for the money with two GPUs. At higher resolution, value compresses more and the 4870 1GB drops in value while NVIDIA hardware pushes up a bit.
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nubie - Sunday, March 1, 2009 - link
Have you ever used a tool or edited the game profile yourself?I had an 8800GTS 320MB that I used with AA extensively (Also with 3D stereoscopic), and I was told on a forum to use nHancer to modify the profile into a specific mode of Anti-Aliasing, I am pretty sure it worked. It was the beta 162.50 Quadro drivers I believe, you can just put your card's id into the inf and they install and work great.
It is possible the drivers work great and the control panel/GUI is piss-poor (a theory that may hold water).
I wish that nVidia would open up the drivers a little so that control freaks like myself could really tweak the settings to where I want them.
Razorbladehaze - Monday, February 23, 2009 - link
Yeah In my main rig right now i have a i7 920 with two 1gb 4850's i recently bought a third 4850 and installed it. There was some funky flickering, that i think was driver related in BF2 and HoI2 in 3-way mode, but most games seemed okay. Funny thing is... same thing happened when i tried a 3870x2 & 3870 in 3 way on my older x38 core2. I am really hoping these next articles will come with some additional commentary on image quality.To the person who stated that the 9800gtx+ was comparable to the 4850x2. What R U thinking???
I have never really had a problem with any crossfire setups before except with 3-way and i wonder if it is the odd gpu count and if 4 would eliminate some issues. Looking forward the the upcoming articles, this is mostly a teaser with information many already knew.
I agree that the new format for graphs looks good line graphs are crap visually, but i think the default should be the 1920x1080/1200 that most people are interested in based on your survey data : )
See I pay attention.
SiliconDoc - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - link
THANK YOU !" Yeah In my main rig right now i have a i7 920 with two 1gb 4850's i recently bought a third 4850 and installed it. There was some funky flickering, that i think was driver related in BF2 and HoI2 in 3-way mode, but most games seemed okay. Funny thing is... same thing happened when i tried a 3870x2 & 3870 in 3 way on my older x38 core2. I am really hoping these next articles will come with some additional commentary on image quality. "
________
Another PERFECT REASON to not mention "image quality" - the red fan boy wins again - assist +7 by Derek !
Amazing.
Thank you.
MagicPants - Monday, February 23, 2009 - link
Have you tried forcing on transparency super-sampling? If you don't edges defined by transparency in the texture won't AA. By default Nvidia (ATI?) only AA edges defined by depth difference.SiliconDoc - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - link
I've seen one review on that, with the blown up edged images, and the ati cards don't smooth and blurr as well - they have more jaggies - so they HAVE to leave that out here - cause you know Derek loves that red 4850 and all the red cards -Elfear - Monday, February 23, 2009 - link
Derrick (or anyone else for that matter) can you comment on why the 4870 512MB Crossfire solution generally performed better than the 4870X2?SiliconDoc - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - link
Or WHY the GTX260 isn't praised to the stars for running 20 of 21 tests successfully - taking THE WIN !I guess it doesn;t matter when a gamer spends hundreds and hundreds on their dual gpu setup then it epic fails at games... gosh that wouldn't be irritating, would it ?
Amazing red bias...chizo pointed out the sapphire 4850 / other 4850 driver issues thankfully, while Derek has a special place in his heart for the bluebacked red card, and says so in the article - then translates that to ALL 4850's.
DREAM ON if you think that would happen with ANY GREEN card Derek has ever tested!
MagicPants - Monday, February 23, 2009 - link
I'd like to see an article that rates overall systems in price to performance. Try to get as high as fps for the least amount of money spent.As one reader mentioned frame rate below 15 fps doesn't count because it's unplayable, so just pick a number between 10 and 15 and subtract it from the fps. Maybe vary it by game. Frame rates over 60fps shouldn't count either because most monitors can't even show that.
This would be interesting because even small tweaks would make a difference e.g. adding a $60 sound card might get you 4 or 5 fps in a few games and might pay for itself.
marsbound2024 - Monday, February 23, 2009 - link
It doesn't look like the GTX 260 Core 216 provides much, if any, tangible benefit over the GTX 260 according to these tests. Sure it had some wins, but they weren't very big ones and it also had some loses--albeit not very big ones either. One would be tempted to just get a GTX 260 or 4850 and wait to upgrade until the next generation of cards come out this summer. The time is getting close, anyways.SiliconDoc - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - link
Good call.Even the 4830 or the 9800GT twice either, or the 9800gtx gts250 or 9600gt or 9600gso twice each - or the ati the ati - uhh... uh... do the reds have their "midrange" filled up ? Uh.. the 4670 ?
LOL
Yeah, nvidia needs more midrange - right ?
LOL
THE RED LIARS ARE SOMETHING ELSE!