NVIDIA Surround Technology Performance Review

[FrgMstr]

NVIDIA Surround Technology Performance Review - NVIDIA’s new multi-display Surround Technology is put to the test with GeForce GTX 480 SLI video cards in 3x1 Surround mode. We compare directly to AMD’s Eyefinity technology and the same three displays with 2GB Eyefinity6 HD 5870 CrossFireX and 1GB HD 5870 CrossFireX.

Should you like to comment on what this article does not contain, please post that here.

 

[heatlesssun]

Wow, 5870s got dusted. Thanks for confirming what I was seeing!

 

[Matrices]

Confirms what most of suspected. Hopefully ATI gets their EF/CF shit together next time, because as it stands even 470 SLI is going to be faster than 5870CF in triple-monitor. I wonder whether that means 460 SLI is faster than 5850CF in triple-monitor, too.

 

[Brackle]

Goes to show how fucking badass SLI Scaling is.

Crazy that you can have 2x AA on with AVP....simply amazing

 

[FrgMstr]

It would be extremely interesting to see how the overclocked 1GB SLi 460s do. Could prove to be a great setup for the budget minded enthusiast

As was noted in the article at least twice.....written out for your reading pleasure....yes we will be covering this.

 

[pedsaktix]

Also in the price difference... The need to purchase a DVI-DP cable was not mention. I heard this cable cost much like a additional graphics card albeit a lower end card but still added cost if you want to go with ATI.

Of'course if you have a panel that supports DP this is a moot point.

 

[FrgMstr]

Also in the price difference... The need to purchase a DVI-DP cable was not mention. I heard this cable cost much like a additional graphics card albeit a lower end card but still added cost if you want to go with ATI.

Of'course if you have a panel that supports DP this is a moot point.

RTFA.

Conclusion Page: "NV Surround can also be done with just DVI monitors not requiring new DisplayPort or adapters like AMD Eyefinity demands." This has been addressed over and over again our recent articles.

Prices we quoted were for the video cards alone. We did not take into account, motherboards, adapters, displays, cables, cooling, power supplies, etc.

 

[magoo]

That was a very nice review.

I have 5870 E6 CFX on my main box, and last weekend built up a "lesser system" to run Surround with two GTX 260s.

I am seeing excellent 3 monitor performance with the Surround system, essentially rivaling my EF system.

Many have doubted my results and experiences, but I think this article reinforces what I am seeing. Surround kicks ass, and SLI seems to just be more effieient and/or better than CFX, unfortunately.

Nvidia has caught and passed ATI in multimonitor gaming, no doubt.
I think the nvidia software is simpler as well.
Both have great bezel correction schemes.

I can't kick myself for buying the 5870s because I've been able to have EF for better than 6 months, while nvidia was getting their software set up.
That said, I'm very much considering swapping out for the GTX 480s.

Overall and any way you shake it, multimonitor gaming is the schizzle, it beats anything out there by a long shot. What you don't see in a game is way more than what you do using a single monitor.

 

[Nuby1Canuby]

Also in the price difference... The need to purchase a DVI-DP cable was not mention. I heard this cable cost much like a additional graphics card albeit a lower end card but still added cost if you want to go with ATI.

Of'course if you have a panel that supports DP this is a moot point.

As Kyle says RTFA. Plus you can get a Display Port to VGA adapter for $20 which supports resolutions up to 1920x1200. I doubt you'll notice the quality difference on a side monitor for gaming.

 

[heatlesssun]

Also in the price difference... The need to purchase a DVI-DP cable was not mention. I heard this cable cost much like a additional graphics card albeit a lower end card but still added cost if you want to go with ATI.

Of'course if you have a panel that supports DP this is a moot point.

If you have concerns over cost, heat, power and noise (unless you go to water cooling or there are other mitigating factors) you really just don't need to worry about this kind of setup. Plus there is a 3D option as well with the 480s that imposes even more costs and adds restrictions to the displays.

This solution is only about one thing, PERFORMANCE. That's it in a nutshell.

 

[revenant]

nice... after spending a bunch of dough on the cards and then the watercooling of them.. I was having a tiny moment of "well, did I do the right thing?" ... this removes any skepticism I had about my choice to go with surround..

 

[vengence]

Why on BF:BC2 was 2X AA considered unplayable? The graph shows only 1 dip under the 30fps for the whole run, and that one dip was only to 22fps. Above on the highest playable settings you found the AMD cards playable with more and lower dips.

I read the note where you say it looks like you could enable it but it was too jittery, but then you go onto say the 480 SLI was overall smoother. Aren't those contradictory?

How much does processor speed effect multimonitor setups? Obviously we are seeing more on the screen than we were before with a single monitor, as opposed to higher detail of the same image by simply changing resoultions, so how much of that translates to a need for more CPU power?

 

[Nuby1Canuby]

Excellent review Kyle.
Looks like the question if the price difference is worth it, between 2GB 5870 CrossFireX cards versus 1GB CrossFireX cards in triple monitor resolutions, has finally been answered.

I guess CrossFireX 5970s run at stock 5870 speeds (850 core 4800 memory), wouldn't be worth the price to performance difference between SLI 480s.

 

[kllrnohj]

Goes to show how fucking badass SLI Scaling is.

Crazy that you can have 2x AA on with AVP....simply amazing

No, it shows how broken EF+CF is. SLI and CF on a single monitor are neck and neck, with a *slight* nod towards SLI. Hopefully ATI will fix that with Southern Islands...

I would have loved to have seen a single 5870 tossed into the mix.

 

[Naieve]

I am so glad I didn't give in to my many impulses and buy a $650 5970 or a pair of 5870's, when the 2gb 5870's dropped I had them in my cart and almost clicked buy until I checked out to see if EF/CF scaling had improved yet.

I could not be happier with my 5760x1200 480 setup. Smoother than any single gpu card I have ever owned.

 

[munkle]

Nice article, but I'll never be able to afford 1 let alone 2 480's

 

[avatar[djedi]]

Thanks for the review, very interesting results!

Have you (or anyone?) done any initial testing with Tri-SLI setups? Or is that not possible yet for some reason (i.e. due to nvidia's configuration software not supporting the option for it yet or something).

Thanks!

 

[magoo]

How much does processor speed effect multimonitor setups? Obviously we are seeing more on the screen than we were before with a single monitor, as opposed to higher detail of the same image by simply changing resoultions, so how much of that translates to a need for more CPU power?

I have my GTX 260 Surround running off a Q6600 at 3.25 GHz and my EF off a Ci7 920 at 4.2 GHz, within the limitations of the GTX 260 (ie DX10 only) I don't think it has any trouble keeping up powered by the Q6600.

 

[shansoft]

Looks great..

Now, we just need to wait ATI to pull their magic wand out to fix CF issue on Eyefinity, their CF scaling is pretty good on single monitor, it just triple that cripple them down.

 

[LeninGHOLA]

Looks great..

Now, we just need to wait ATI to pull their magic wand out to fix CF issue on Eyefinity, their CF scaling is pretty good on single monitor, it just triple that cripple them down.

I hope they do have a magic wand, because CF -> EF scaling just got owned. I have great scaling in a single monitor setup with 2 5850's, but I will not be making the plunge to a third monitor with my setup, unless drivers can fix it...

 

[SpeedyVV]

Brent, this is the [H]ardest [H]ardocp article I read since joining [H].

It was awesome. I can only imagine how much work it took.

Can't wait for the follow ups.

I am curious, why are you still using the MSI Eclipse? Was that not a mobo that you had many problems with?

 

[Stoly]

I'm impressed two fold.

The SLI scaling if great for the gtx480 but its Xfire performance is quite dissapointing.

Almost seems like going from 1 to 2 5870s makes no difference.

 

[Matrices]

I'm impressed two fold.

The SLI scaling if great for the gtx480 but its Xfire performance is quite dissapointing.

Almost seems like going from 1 to 2 5870s makes no difference.

Not too far from the truth. Some people have been in denial about it, ATI in particularly, apparently. Love to have one of their engineers explain the root of the issue - bandwidth limitation of the CF bridge?

 

[piscian18]

I think one thing the articles highlights is that if you're in a position where a single card is the best solution ATI is the way to go. If you can and want to go dual GPU(not counting 5970) Nvidia is more or less the way to go. Honestly the review didn't do much for me as I've written off the GTX480/470, but hard is really performance above all else so I can understand why they stick to those cards.

 

[GoldenTiger]

Looks great..

Now, we just need to wait ATI to pull their magic wand out to fix CF issue on Eyefinity, their CF scaling is pretty good on single monitor, it just triple that cripple them down.

Seems there's a little less scaling even at 2560x1600 compared to the SLI solutions at this time. It's not just a surround/eyefinity issue, I don't think.

 

[Chameleoki]

Great article and shows what I feared: I should have waited another month to buy my 3-monitor setup.

 

[Stoly]

looking at some other Sli reviews, seems that a couple of 460 should perform pretty close to 2 5870 in xfire.

 

[kllrnohj]

Seems there's a little less scaling even at 2560x1600 compared to the SLI solutions at this time. It's not just a surround/eyefinity issue, I don't think.

There are comparisons of the two floating around that basically shows SLI scaling at about 80% and CF scaling at about 70%, really not all that significant.

 

[LibertySyclone]

Great article guys. but really we never expect less

This IMO makes the couple month delay for multimon acceptable knowing that NV got it right and didnt make the user as much of a guinea pig. (and that 2xx cards do it)

while eyefinity is nice on one card for 2d work, it is a must. Hell 2560x1600 last gen really required 2 cards and thats ~3mil pixels LESS than a 3 mon 5760x1200 set!!! of course you need two cards

Are there plans for a 3 card setup Kyle/Steve? 3-470s are right around the 2-480 price...

looking at some other Sli reviews, seems that a couple of 460 should perform pretty close to 2 5870 in xfire.

w/o aa I agree, I cant wait to see the results on this. I am kinda mad I had to have the 480s so soon...

 

[vengence]

There are comparisons of the two floating around that basically shows SLI scaling at about 80% and CF scaling at about 70%, really not all that significant.

It starts to add up though. When you take one card that is 15% faster than another, put two of them together, one has a 14% better scaling (0.8/0.7) you'll end up with 34% difference in final preformance.

 

[darkpaw]

Great article. And a not surprising lack of people that were calling [H] testers AMD fan boys a few months back admitting they were wrong (they never do it seems). In the few years I've been enjoying this site they've always called things the way they were. They rightly gave props to Eyefinity as a game changer when it came out last year and rightly were critical of the GTX 470/480 issues when they launched. Now that there is an actual use for them and Nvidia finally released the promised features they are rightly praised for putting that horsepower to work. Just another reason I love this site.

 

[Intel_Hydralisk]

There are comparisons of the two floating around that basically shows SLI scaling at about 80% and CF scaling at about 70%, really not all that significant.

On a single monitor maybe. But if you think about it, if a single GTX 480 was ~10% faster than a 5870, and if two of them scaled at 180% vs. 170%, then you're comparing 180% vs. 0.9*170% = 153%, so that's a 17.6% increase with two cards. Anyway, whatever the actual numbers are, you get the idea that when you put two cards together and the faster one scales better then the increase gets multiplied.

However, I will note from personal experience that Xfire scaling in 3 monitors is definitely WORSE than single monitor scaling. That then would contribute even more to the performance difference. However it's impossible to test triple monitor 'scaling' for Nvidia cards since it's impossible to run nvsurround with one card.

I still think that a single 5870 is probably the best value for triple monitors. This is considering that 3 monitors will cost about the same as a second card or just slightly more. I probably would not have gotten my second 5870 in retrospect, but I'm going to keep it since it does provide a pretty good boost over a single card in several games like BC2.

 

[thehybridfrog]

It starts to add up though. When you take one card that is 15% faster than another, put two of them together, one has a 14% better scaling (0.8/0.7) you'll end up with 34% difference in final preformance.

Yep. Even if SLI is slightly better than CF on one screen at 1080p or higher, the difference is quite compounded at triple screen. I think it has more to do with the fact that CF+EF has really poor scaling. I've seen just how poor compared to my 480's because my roommate is running CF+EF 5870's with a very, very similar setup to mine (i7 proc with 5760x1080).

 

[Cecil]

Is there plans for a 470 and 460 SLI surround review?

Also, can you comment lightly if 460 1gb SLI can handle three screens with modern games at high settings, even with no AA? A simple yes, no, mostly, or not really answer would do for a lot of people.

 

[Intel_Hydralisk]

Is there plans for a 470 and 460 SLI surround review?

Also, can you comment lightly if 460 1gb SLI can handle three screens with modern games at high settings, even with no AA? A simple yes, no, mostly, or not really answer would do for a lot of people.

That's actually interesting... I take back what I said earlier about a single 5870 being the best value. If you can get a good deal on two 460's it should be faster if you don't mind the 'issues' with two cards.

 

[Brackle]

No, it shows how broken EF+CF is. SLI and CF on a single monitor are neck and neck, with a *slight* nod towards SLI. Hopefully ATI will fix that with Southern Islands...

I would have loved to have seen a single 5870 tossed into the mix.

They need to fix it asap. I mean it's true you really want 2 cards for multi-monitor gaming. ATI started multi-monitor gaming, you would THINK they would have way better CF performance then what they show.

 

[kuyaglen]

Well this is some high praise for a site thats supposedly in the red corner.
I wish that we could of had some video of the testing and setup.

 

[vengence]

They need to fix it asap. I mean it's true you really want 2 cards for multi-monitor gaming. ATI started multi-monitor gaming, you would THINK they would have way better CF performance then what they show.

Not to mention pushing a dual GPU card for the last several generations. I'm sure ATI sold a hell of a lot more 4870x2s than Nvidia did 295s, and obviously nvidia doesn't have a dual GPU this generation. It's suprising how much better the implmentation of Nvidia's solution is than ATI's.

 

[heatlesssun]

They need to fix it asap. I mean it's true you really want 2 cards for multi-monitor gaming. ATI started multi-monitor gaming, you would THINK they would have way better CF performance then what they show.

While I'm not any where near qaulified to say much about the underlying implementation of the technology I simply think that leaverging SLI is just a superior way to scale across monitors with multiple-GPUs than CF + EF. In other words I wouldn't be suprised that in the future if AMD implemented EF in two different fashions, the EF we have today in single card form and EF that bypasses current EF pretty much altogether and that uses CF to handle multiple monitors when using multiple cards. Just an uneducated guess on my part. I simply think that its easier to do and is more efficient. I'm just thinking that AMD didn't have any idea that in less than one year nVidia would be able to TOALLY outclass them in multi-monitor multi-GPU setups.

 

[anthrex]

[H] is biased against those who don't deliver.

Thanks for the review guys! Like to see competition on the video card front. Innovation and power..bring it!