XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 Quad SLI Versus ATI CrossFireX

XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 Quad-SLI Testing

ATI CrossFireX versus NVIDIA Quad-SLI

Last week, we got a chance to look at the XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics card and found that it was a very powerful card for gaming. At the conclusion of that article we stated that we couldn't show Quad-SLI numbers as NVIDIA had them under NDA. The gag order has finally lifted, so we can share with you our thoughts on Quad-SLI with a pair of XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics cards and, of course, we also have a pair of ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics cards for some Quad-CrossFireX testing to go along with them.

ATI CrossFireX versus NVIDIA Quad-SLI

Since we have already reviewed the Radeon HD 3870 X2 the GeForce 9800 GX2 and CrossFireX we can move right on to the good stuff.

NVIDIA Quad-SLI AFR

It's been nearly two years since NVIDIA has produced a dual PCB video card design and they feel they have a winner in the works with the GeForce 9 series. One of the reasons NVIDIA feels so strongly about the GeForce 9800 GX2 is because they have a whole new approach at how the video game frames are being rendered. The first generation Quad SLI technology seen on the GeForce 7950 GX2 back in 2006, used a hybrid mode of split frame rendering (SFR) and alternate frame rendering (AFR) to enable concurrent rendering on four GPUs. With the latest games utilizing complex shaders, inter-frame effects, and multi-pass rendering, SFR becomes less efficient.

NVIDIA Quad-SLI SFR

The GeForce 9800 GX2 features a new video bridge and a re-architected driver to allow for four frames to be rendered concurrently, but there is a catch. The OS framework required to support four frames in-flight is only available in Windows Vista. With the new 4-way AFR technique, geometry, texture, and shader processing all benefit from GPU scaling. Just how much does it scale? We will get to that in a second!

NVIDIA Quad-SLI AFR

To get Quad-SLI enabled, we just added a second card to the system and went to the NVIDIA control panel to set the SLI configuration. After a few flickers and flashes, the software enabled Quad-SLI and we were able to reboot the system and get testing.

The Test System

The Main Test System

The test system was running Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit with all available Microsoft updates including the hotfixes required for enthusiast video cards to run correctly. ATI CATALYST 8.3 drivers were used on all the Radeon HD graphics cards and NVIDIA Forceware 174.53 drivers were used on all GeForce graphics cards. All results shown in the charts are averages of at least three runs from each game or application used.

The XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 GPU-Z Screen Shot:

XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 GPU-Z

The Video Cards:

  • EVGA GeForce 9800 GX2 (600MHz/2000MHz)
  • ATI Radeon HD X2 - 1GB (825MHz/1.800GHz GDDR3)

An Intel Core 2 Quad QX9650 'Yorkfield' processor was used for testing as it proved to be the best desktop processor when it comes to game performance. The test system was also loaded with 4GB of memory and water cooled to ensure throttling of the processor or memory wouldn't cause any issues. The ATI CrossFireX test platform had the DDR2 memory set to 800MHz with 4-4-4-12 timings and the NVIDIA Quad-SLI used DDR3 memory at 1333MHz with agressive 7-7-7-20 timings.

Crysis

Crysis Benchmark Results

Crysis is a science fiction first-person shooter computer game that was developed by Crytek, and published by Electronic Arts. It was released on November 15, 2007 in the United States. The game is based off the CryENGINE2 game engine, which is an extended version of CryENGINE, the game engine behind the hit game Far Cry a number of years ago.

Crysis Benchmark Settings

The full retail version of the game Crysis was used with patch 1.2 for benchmarking. FRAPS was used over the internal benchmark utility to help avoid driver enhancements. Legit Reviews has just NVIDIA data for this game as we just recently updated the game to version 1.2 and picked a new scene to run FRAPS on and didn't have time to re-test all the cards in time for this article, but managed to get a number of the high end cards tested.

Crysis Benchmark Results

Results: With the latest patch of Crysis and the game set to very high quality settings with no AA the video cards had a hard time rendering the game. The GeForce 9800 GX2 didn't scale that well when the second card was added to the system and Quad-SLI was enabled. A 3% framerate increase is not significant, which is a shame since the second GeForce 9800 GX2 will set you back another $600. The ATI Radeon HD 3870X2 was able to scale by 40%, which is nice, but it wasn't enough to catch up to one GeForce 9800 GX2.

3DMark 2006

3DMark 2006

3DMark 2006

3DMark 06 is the worldwide standard in advanced 3D game performance benchmarking and the latest version in the popular 3DMark series! 3DMark06 tests include all new HDR/SM3.0 graphics tests, advanced SM2.0 graphics tests, AI and physics driven single and multiple cores or processor CPU tests and a collection of comprehensive feature tests to reliably measure next generation gaming performance today.

3DMark 2006

Default 3DMark06 settings were used for testing, so a resolution of 1280x1024 was used.

3D Mark 2006

Benchmark Results: The GeForce 9800 GX2 Quad-SLI setup didn't seem to like 3DMark2006 too much and turned in a score that was just 317 points higher than a single GeForce 9800 GX2. The ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 showed over a 1,000 point increase when moving from a single card to Quad-CrossFireX

3D Mark 2006

3D Mark 2006

Benchmark Results: The SM 2.0 and 3.0 scores show what we would expect other than the SM 2.0 decreased on the Quad-SLI setup.

Power Consumption and Conclusions

Power Consumption

For testing power consumption, we took our test system and plugged it into a Seasonic Power Angel. For idle numbers, we allowed the system to idle on the desktop for 15 minutes and recorded the measurement. For load numbers, we measured the peak wattage used by the system while running the game World in Conflict at 1920x1200 with very high graphics quality.

Power Consumption Results

Power Consumption Results: When it comes to power consumption the ATI cards use less idle and load. Power consumption varies from game title to game title, but this is a good idea of how much power will be consumed at load.

ATI CrossFireX versus NVIDIA Quad-SLI

Final Thoughts

NVIDIA has done a great job with Quad-SLI and with some driver improvements it should only get better. The XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics cards running in a quad-SLI showed increased performance in every application we tested versus a single GeForce 9800 GX2, which is something that can not be said about the ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 as they had some driver issues on Tomb Raider: Anniversary. We almost didn't include Tomb Raider: Anniversary in our testing, but our two store-bought DVD versions of Bioshock say they have been installed too many times, so this game was a last minute addition. If you were wondering where BioShock wasn't included you can thank the idiotic DRM they use, which limits you to five installs (SecuROM, please respond to our emails). Overall, Quad-SLI is impressive, but mostly on older game titles. We played a bunch of older game titles like The Sims 2, Quake 4, Doom 3 and Star Wars Legos without finding any issues with Quad-SLI. This is good news and far better than when Quad-SLI originally came out back in 2006.

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