Quad-SLi 7900 GTX 512 benchmarks

Mako360

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 1, 2006
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Provided by nVidia themselves, fyi. As with the Conroe benchmarks provided by Intel versus a future AMD processor at IDF, these are best used as a rough guide at the moment until a third-party can validate them independently.

Benchmarks run on an FX-57 system with 1GB of ram and Windows XP SP2.

F.E.A.R, 2560x1600, soft shadows enabled
47fps - 7900 GTX 512 Quad-SLi
26fps - X1900XTX Crossfire

Chronicles of Riddick, 2560x1600, 4xAA/8xAF
82.9fps - 7900 GTX 512 Quad-SLi
53.5fps - X1900XTX Crossfire

Doom3, 2560x1600, 4xAA/8xAF
108.9fps - 7900 GTX 512 Quad-SLi
84.0fps - X1900XTX Crossfire

http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_30228.html
 
Wow the Crossfire is doing well... I thought this res is too much for dualSLI/Crossfire in newer games! I'll try it out with the new cards. 7900 GTX SLI is as fast as an XTX Crossfire. FEAR even had soft shadows enabled.

I would like to see Oblivion scores^^
 
nVidia specifically chose those particular benchmarks to illustrate Quad-SLi's performance level compared to Crossfire, which I would assume means those are the best case results in terms of showing a large variance between the two setups.

It's possible other games, or applications (3DMark) show little difference between the two rigs, as in many cases current games are going to be CPU-bound a bit even at that lofty rez.

Very interesting to me that nVidia chose not to do a high-range AA/AF comparison though, you would have thought that at 16xAA and 16xAF the Quad-SLi cards would extend their margins of victory over two Crossfire cards running at similar AA/AF levels. Apparantly that's not the case, possibly due to "just" 512MB limitations per core hindering the results, or driver immaturity not supporting the full potential of Quad-SLi at those levels. Pure speculation on my part, there may be other reasons why nVidia chose that 4xAA/8xAF level for these tests.

It will be interesting to see Quad-SLi evaluated by third-part tech websites. If these are the best case results, what will the worst case numbers look like?
 
:rolleyes: 4 Video cards at 500 dollars + a piece!!! :rolleyes:
I would rather see frame rates in the fucking 200s if I paid that much.

That's pathetic if you really ask me.
Yeah sure turning up eye candy may look better.
Does price really warrent the performance?

I'd rather spend 1500 on a HD flat panel and one 1900XTX then 4 cards.
Plus not to mention the power supply.
In all honesty I think this whole quad card thing is a marketing sham.
 
PSYKOMANTIS said:
In all honesty I think this whole quad card thing is a marketing sham.

There sure are alot of whiny people on the [H], especially when it comes to quad SLI.

It isn't a marketing sham at all. It is a marketing reaction to a specific niche: people who have 30in LCD panels and want to play at native resolution.

Obviously this is a small market, but so is the niche for people who want Ferraris. If I had a 30in display and the means (cash flow) to acquire a quad SLI system, I would do it.

Anyway, it isn't 4 cards, it is two cards with dual PCBs...
 
'fraid I don't believe it'll be anything like that.

Two facts:

-At the moment, if you have one 7900GTX and add another, you don't get a 100% increase, its nowhere near that.
-7900GTX SLI is fairly near X1900XTX crossfire performance.

If you combine those two, nVidia seem to be implying that adding the 3rd and 4th GPUs continues to give near 100% increases (hence the near doubling of crossfire scores in some cases). Absolute rubbish - heck, I was looking forward to getting Quad SLI until I saw the length of the cards, but there's no way it's gonna double Crossfire performance.
 
Sorry, but those numbers really suck. - i would of expected a much high performance gain then that over 2 crossfire cards.
 
Understood it's a nitche market...
Understood there are ENTHUSIASTS who have the expendable income to purchase such a BEAST of a system.
All things considering there are no games on the shelf to push even a single 7800GTX by today's standards at high resolutions.

What I don't understand is if the cards are only performing HALF their duties in SLI 2X, then why not is there a doubling in performance.

Example:

2 card SLI
Desktop Resolution: 2048X1536
Each card: rendering 1024 X 768 lines of resolution a piece

So why are the scores if anything 20-25% increase in performance and not double what a single card would be?
Is there something I'm missing? I really want to understand the benifits other then more AA and AF at higher resolutions.
Is there an archetecture bottleneck perhaps in the SLI solution?

From all I'm getting out of this 4X SLI hogwash is a heck of a power hungry PC.
Soon you will need a dedicated 15 amp breaker just for your PC alone... WTF FTW BBQ.
 
J-Mag said:
Obviously this is a small market, but so is the niche for people who want Ferraris. If I had a 30in display and the means (cash flow) to acquire a quad SLI system, I would do it.

The Ferrari analogy applies well here. You can't argue the "logic" of buying a Ferrari. If transportation is the goal of the automobile, and a basic Honda Civic can achieve that goal, there is no reason to spend 10x as much on an Ferrari.

But at the ultra-high performance level that Quad-SLi will occupy, particularly with 30" Dell LCD owners as J-Mag mentioned, it makes all the sense in the world. To "hate" on Quad-SLi is fairly silly. I suspect it stems primarily out of jealousy by those unable to afford it. It's an in-your-face reminder that they're lower on the economic chain than others. Ferraris and Lamborghinis produce a similar backlash by the same group of people, they describe the cars as "obscenely expensive" in a negative way as if they should be outlawed for their excess.

I may never buy a Quad-SLi setup, but I'm glad it exists. The industry should always be reaching to deliver ultimate performance, no matter how small of a market exists for it. :)
 
PSYKOMANTIS said:
Example:
2 card SLI
Desktop Resolution: 2048X1536
Each card: rendering 1024 X 768 lines of resolution a piece

Wow where do you get these ideas from? SLI doesn't work at all like you think it does, so I can understand why you are confused.
in AFR mode each card will render the whole frame of the orignal resolution.
SFR is a little more complicated as the resolution of the frame being rendered by each card changes depending on the vertex/shader load of a given scene.

PSYKOMANTIS said:
So why are the scores if anything 20-25% increase in performance and not double what a single card would be?
Is there something I'm missing? I really want to understand the benifits other then more AA and AF at higher resolutions.
Is there an archetecture bottleneck perhaps in the SLI solution?

There will always be diminishing returns in a parallel architecture. DO you see DOUBLE performance with a dual core proc? Not even close. SLI is far superior to the Dual core in that respect.
 
yes its a very good analogy...but if quad sli is only a ferrari/lamborghini, then what is the Bugatti Veyron? O.O :D :p ;)
 
J-Mag said:
There will always be diminishing returns in a parallel architecture. DO you see DOUBLE performance with a dual core proc? Not even close. SLI is far superior to the Dual core in that respect.

Exactly. Dual cores don't produce a 100% gain over a single core, quad cores don't produce a 100% gain over dual cores, and eight cores won't produce a 100% gain over quad cores.

Diminishing returns due to shared bandwidth and other physical hardware limitations outside the pervue of the actual cores themselves.
 
Mayhs said:
yes its a very good analogy...but if quad sli is only a ferrari/lamborghini, then what is the Bugatti Veyron? O.O

LOL, the Veyron is an Intel Kentsfield quad-core CPU plus a G81 refresh 4GB Quad SLi setup in Q1/07. :eek: :D
 
Mayhs said:
yes its a very good analogy...but if quad sli is only a ferrari/lamborghini, then what is the Bugatti Veyron? O.O :D :p ;)

I think ATI has sold some 32 GPU systems to the military for flight sims...
 
All things considering there are no games on the shelf to push even a single 7800GTX by today's standards at high resolutions.

You dont game much do u.... 7800GTX get eaten by games like FEAR and CoD2 on higher LCD native res and any eye candy on.
 
MrGuvernment said:
You dont game much do u.... 7800GTX get eaten by games like FEAR and CoD2 on higher LCD native res and any eye candy on.

True that. Normal dual SLI is a minimum requirement if you game at 1600x1200 and like AA/AF. I imagine a lot of these anti-Quad SLI people are still running their little 19" 1280x1024 LCDs at 60fps in FEAR and wondering what all the hubbub is about...sure, if you're lowball like that, you don't even need two GPUs, let alone four.

But try 1920x1200 sometime, which I've run since 2003 via a Samsung 240t, or worse, the Dell 30" 2560x1600 that's available now. Then see how "great" a single high-end card is from ATi or nVidia. Chop. Chop. Chop.
 
Mako360 said:
LOL, the Veyron is an Intel Kentsfield quad-core CPU plus a G81 refresh 4GB Quad SLi setup in Q1/07. :eek: :D

lol theres more transistors there then there were in the terminator
 
MrGuvernment said:
You dont game much do u.... 7800GTX get eaten by games like FEAR and CoD2 on higher LCD native res and any eye candy on.

On the contrary I do game a lot. My 6800GT has gotten me through FEAR and COD2.
Yes I do admit I have to turn everything down to 1024 X 768 with everything on paired with a FX53. :D I do understand that I have a sub-superior card in respect to a 1900 or a 7900.

And by the way thanks {H] community for the responses.
I just don't see any benefit to buying 2 cards or for that matter 4.

Now this is coming from an "oldschooler" who used to own Dual Voodoo2 12MB cards.
One card was powerful but two... that was double performance bar none.
I'm sure there's some sort of archatecture fact I'm just not getting.

Also mind you I never turn on AF or AA. (lets not get into that again LOL :D )
In my personal opinion I do call myself a vanilla gamer. I just would like to see the RAW non AF or AA power of 4 cards without anything turned on running the games at FULL blast. Nobody seems to review cards like that anymore.
 
PSYKOMANTIS said:
Understood it's a nitche market...
2 card SLI
Desktop Resolution: 2048X1536
Each card: rendering 1024 X 768 lines of resolution a piece

That's actually 4 times the resolution.

2560x1600 is over 3 times the resolution of 1280x1024. If SLI was 80-85% efficient, then you would need about 4 cards to run at the same quality at 2560x1600 as 1280x1024 with only 1 card.


I'm not going to need a quad setup anytime soon cause I won't be getting a monitor capable of 2560x1600 in the near future lol

Maybe if i was able to mod 4 12x10 monitors together ... *goes off thinking*
 
I would have to say that I am not that impressed. Also, with all that power, the 7900's are still not able to do AA+HDR AFAIK, and wouldn't you want that when you spend $2000 on Graphics cards? It is getting kind of funny to have so many GPU's now. Pretty soon it will be 8, then 16 GPU's and so on in a PC. LOL.
 
I want those cards.

Then again...I'd just as well take a winning lotto ticket. :D
 
MrGuvernment said:
Sorry, but those numbers really suck. - i would of expected a much high performance gain then that over 2 crossfire cards.
That is what I was thinking. And for an FX 57 system with FOUR 7900GTXs to only achieve 47FPS is pretty bad. I'm thinking it is inefficiency in the game to blame, but I would have expected more still.
I would have to say that I am not that impressed. Also, with all that power, the 7900's are still not able to do AA+HDR AFAIK, and wouldn't you want that when you spend $2000 on Graphics cards? It is getting kind of funny to have so many GPU's now. Pretty soon it will be 8, then 16 GPU's and so on in a PC. LOL.
They can't do HDR+AA because of a limitation in the core, not neccesarily because of a lack of power,
 
If i wanted to buy a quad SLi setup, I'd wait for G80, which is right around the corner anyway (something's always around the corner lol). It's more "future proofed" with whatever new features NVidia would put in it, not to mention it's DX10. If I bought a quad sli 7900 setup though, I BETTER be able to turn up that AA and AF to their absolute max, which is like what, 16xaa and 32xaf? :D
 
That was a joke, but then again if you can afford a monitor to push these resolutions, you should be able to afford the cards and deal with shimmering from 2000.00 worth of cards.

I would like to see someone squeeze these into a normal PC case. ;)
 
Interesting how few views this thread has gotten for something so unprecedented...Good evidence that there likely isn't much interest in the subject, of if there is, it's just not affordable enough to care about researching by even die-hard enthusiasts like [H] board members.

I wonder if ATi will sit this one out and stay with Crossfire the way it is instead of following nVidia down a road that might not lead anywhere.
 
Personally I think these quad setups are advertisement hardware. They make them so that they can say, "Hey we here at green team have a quadsetup that's going to market, those reds don't even have a prototype. We win, buy our stuff."

How much do those 25x16 monitors cost anyways?

I can see it now:

Dual mother board configs, where you have one facing the other one at 180 degrees. It would be like a minicluster.

N-Vidia Mo2, 2 times the Motherboard, 2 times 8 the money.
 
I agree it's marketing. I already have a watercooled SLI setup, and I'm selling off my 7800gt cards to get a new pair of 7900gt extreme cards.

Even though I REALLY enjoy the performance of the SLI, it is a total pain in the ass to setup, maintain, and pay to keep current. In short, there is no way in hell I'd buy four video cards even if I did have the money.

I would very much appreciate it if Nvidia and ATI would realise that parallel processing needs to happen on the same card, and preferably in the same GPU core. The original marketing thought behind SLI was to provide an upgrade path. In reality those of us looking for max performance on our high end monitors (1920 or higher) are almost forced to use it.

Could we please have dual and quad core GPUs mainstream at a reasonable price instead of multiple physical cards?!?!
 
Mako I would watch what kinda crap you shove out of your mouth/keyboard. Your calling 95% computer users lowballs and poor beggars with a comment like:

"I imagine a lot of these anti-Quad SLI people are still running their little 19" 1280x1024 LCDs at 60fps in FEAR and wondering what all the hubbub is about...sure, if you're lowball like that, you don't even need two GPUs, let alone four."

I wonder if a guy like that gets ever beaten in a bar by these lowballs since he is calling everybody else poor beggars and wearing Miami Vice kinda white suite with bling bling gold all over him. I sure hope so :D

More to the point, Agreeing big time with Advils comment. I blaim solely Nvidia by dragging the whole industry to this backward thinking of "more cards more power" which its total BS. Not only you can´t have 4x power with 4 cards it´s going to cost you a arm and a leg. Keep the stuff on one card and be innovating, my suggestion to the industy which nobody notifyes/cares :D
 
J-Mag said:
There sure are alot of whiny people on the [H], especially when it comes to quad SLI.

It isn't a marketing sham at all. It is a marketing reaction to a specific niche: people who have 30in LCD panels and want to play at native resolution.

Obviously this is a small market, but so is the niche for people who want Ferraris. If I had a 30in display and the means (cash flow) to acquire a quad SLI system, I would do it.

Anyway, it isn't 4 cards, it is two cards with dual PCBs...[/QUOte

Thank you, that was concise andg accurate. I may never go quad sli but if I do I will of course interperate such whining as you call it as just sour grapes.

When I see someone who owns or plans to aquire such toys I am happy for them. I really do not understand all the hositility that surrounds the subject of quad sli. It is what it is.
 
MrGuvernment said:
You dont game much do u.... 7800GTX get eaten by games like FEAR and CoD2 on higher LCD native res and any eye candy on.
t

I can attest to that
 
a-lamer said:
Mako I would watch what kinda crap you shove out of your mouth/keyboard. Your calling 95% computer users lowballs and poor beggars with a comment like:

"I imagine a lot of these anti-Quad SLI people are still running their little 19" 1280x1024 LCDs at 60fps in FEAR and wondering what all the hubbub is about...sure, if you're lowball like that, you don't even need two GPUs, let alone four."

I wonder if a guy like that gets ever beaten in a bar by these lowballs since he is calling everybody else poor beggars and wearing Miami Vice kinda white suite with bling bling gold all over him. I sure hope so :D

More to the point, Agreeing big time with Advils comment. I blaim solely Nvidia by dragging the whole industry to this backward thinking of "more cards more power" which its total BS. Not only you can´t have 4x power with 4 cards it´s going to cost you a arm and a leg. Keep the stuff on one card and be innovating, my suggestion to the industy which nobody notifyes/cares :D


That was an entertaining read.

Well you have a point, i look at the quad setups as more like a hot rod and not a ferriari. You know, super chargers with blowers on top, shitty gas mileage but tons of fun.
 
I wonder what the performance difference will be with mature drivers. Looks interesting none the less.

I really would like to see something like the 9700 Pro. Something out of the blue that would knock our socks off. That would be sweet.
 
Ok let me interject with a little Devil's Advocate action...

Here's my hypothesis after reading over 8 articles surrounding the quad SLI solution.

Nvidia is pushing its remaining DX9 core silicon out the door by introducing a 4X SLI system to "stimulate the market." (lol I said stimulate) What a better way to introduce it to the masses by having a leading distributor (DELL) to start the marketing craze.
Come DX10 and Vista, the current DX9 native hardware will be already in your boxen, off the retail shelf with Nvidia lighting their cigars with your $2,200 dollars. They gotta burn off the excess DX9 stock by bumping clock speeds, integrating a couple capacitors or two, and tweaking a vid card BIOS. Then they trick the market by slapping a new model number on the card. (We've smelled this "fart in the car" before with the Nvidia 5950 Ultra) Conveniently for the OEMs out there, there's a FLEXIBLE new motherboard chipset configuration that is based off current Nforce archatecture but with 4X PCIe connectors.
Come June/July I'll put money down that a DX10 supported card will be available that will be just as powerful as a 2X SLI 7900GTX setup with the famed "MICROSOFT CERTIFIED" branding.

I like what was said in an earlier post. "Keep it all on one card and stay innovative."

I'm just going to wait for a DX10 supported video card. That's clearly logical and conservative.
Until then my 6800GT AGP is my hardened soldier still fighting my nightly online FPS wars and doing a damn fine job at it as well. ;)

Thoughts?
 
Mako360 said:
Interesting how few views this thread has gotten for something so unprecedented...Good evidence that there likely isn't much interest in the subject, of if there is, it's just not affordable enough to care about researching by even die-hard enthusiasts like [H] board members.

I wonder if ATi will sit this one out and stay with Crossfire the way it is instead of following nVidia down a road that might not lead anywhere.
When Sli came out I knew ATI would ans. and I wanted them to.

But a lot has changed since than. I hope ATI doesn't go Quad SLI.

When the R600(R620 ) appears just befor Vista . The landscape will change even more.

With vista and dx10 games Vista's API will be the the only thing running the games . There will be no optimiseations . IF ATI or NV does not pass every and i mean ever validition it will not run at DX10 but will default to DX9L.
open gl games will not run in DX10 mode. As I understand it all above statements are true.

Many will say so no games will be out for Dx10. There won't be many and the people that review these games are going to be more shocked than they were with the Conroe preview. So those na sayers are going to be in for a shock.

Myself and many others are ready for the future now. I really don't see Quad sli or Quad Xfire in that future.

I have stuck my neck out befor and I am willing to do it again right now with this statement. The ATI R600(R620) will pass MS validation. NV G80 will not pass MS validation.

Conroe will change what we look for in CPU brute force . R600 and Vista will change are gaming experiance.
 
I'll admit, I love the idea of 4X-GTXs.
I also admit I only run a 19" VX924.
I also admit I have a 7800GTX 512Meg, and thinking about going SLI.
In addition, my motherboard may well support QuadSLI (P5N32-SLI-Dlx X16 Intel).

I both love the Brute Force appeal of Quad SLI and hope for more "elegant" solutions over brute force in the future.

What if the first engine designers had been stuck at ONE cylinder? Sure they could have made that one piston very efficient (Hmm, STEAM?), but it wasn't until they gave up on pure efficiency, and put 2, 3, 4, 5, and more together, that the potential for the automobile was released.

I think Brute Force starts showing us the limits of tech, until we have to look at how to tie it together with ingenuity, and ultimately arrive at a more elegant solution for innovation.
 
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