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#1 | Advertisement (Guests Only)
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The Tool
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![]() We've just published our part of the Definitive Multi-GPU World Tour. Our responsibility, like nV News and Legit Reviews before us, was to test and benchmark a bunch of games that you normally don't find in hardware reviews. We also took the opportunity to pick up where Mike of nV News left off with his Anti-Aliasing quality comparison and check out texture filtering differences between ATI and NVIDIA. I'm sure you'll find that part especially interesting. Here's a quote from the article: Not only is stability on NVIDIA’s side, so is ease of use and practicality. There is no master/slave stuff and there is no giant pain in the ass dongle with thumb screws that break off and are way too small and cables that are way too stiff to bend nicely like the monstrosity you get with hardware Crossfire. NVIDIA’s SLI bridge-board is elegant, easy to use, and doesn’t get in your way. Granted you can’t defend yourself against hordes of evil undead zombies with it like you can ATI’s dongle, but really, who wants zombie goo all over their computer anyway. The Definitive Multi-GPU World Tour - Part 8 Uncommon Benchmarks @ Rage3D
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#2 |
Radeon R520
Join Date: Apr 2002
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![]() As someone who deals with computer issues daily for my customers, I have to say that not getting to the bottom of the problems with Crossfire shows how little this benchmark means to the reviewer. I've seen defective motherboards and cards, and when you get into systems like this, you don't just say, "It doesn't work", or "It had too many problems to properly benchmark". You call the motherboard manufacturer, you call the video card manufacturer, you call ATI(who knows which Radeon cards were used, maybe the lowest end version of the X1900XTX you could find?!?). Yes, this may be "typical" of Crossfire cards for these tests, but this may also be a case of a defective motherboard, or you have old Catalyst drivers(again, no information was given to indicate what was used, Catalyst 6.1 or perhaps even earlier?) I can't say that I'm in a position to do my own benchmarks for these cards right now, since I will be building my own Athlon 64 X2-5000 based system in October with a Radeon X1900XT and will also be setting up Crossfire. But I do know that if there were problems, you write about the problems, then fix them if at all possible. I also NEVER trust the default video driver settings since they may not work properly in all applications. Application preference should almost always be prefered. |
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#3 |
The Tool
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![]() The test setup information is on the "Test Setup" page. Drivers used and testing methodology are all outlined there. I wrote about the problems in the benchmark Notes and in the conclusion. The problems can only be fixed with new and better drivers that contain profiles for the games that are broken, the hardware itself is not defective.
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#4 |
Radeon Caribbean Islands
Join Date: Dec 2005
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![]() After reading that article I understand why even die hard ATI fans have been bashing CrossFire. I am surprised how CF doesn't seem to work on less popular games, maybe ATI jsut forgot them and made drivers to only support CF with popular games. |
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#5 |
Radeon Arctic Islands
Join Date: Feb 2004
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![]() EDIT 3: Okay done reading the article and I have to say, that for a Multi-GPU benchmark article, it was pretty useless as 80% of the ATI benchmarks, were only using 1 (one) card. Good article though for entertainment value. It was fun to laugh at Nvidia for their unecessarily inferior IQ, and ATI's crap Crossfire platform. After seeing this: ![]() Crossfire Does not load with Crossfire enabled. Tested as single card SLI Does not scale, no errors And this one: ![]() Crossfire Frequent crashing with Crossfire enabled, render errors. Tested as single card SLI Scales, no errors I have to wonder why it was included as the ATI setup was benched using 1 (one) card and the NVidia was benched with 2 (two) cards. This is beyond unfair and unprofessional. I'm a little dissapointed so far with the article already. I'll pipe back in later to let you know what I feel about the rest, not that anyone cares lol, but I'll voice my opinion anyways. EDIT: Okay after reading that page, the ONLY valid benchmark was this one: ![]() And I have to say that NVidia is WAY ahead of ATI in this market segment. EDIT 2: I find this pretty impressive though; ![]() Crossfire Does not load with Crossfire enabled. Tested as single card SLI Does not scale, no errors Even though ATI was up against 2 (two) cards, it still came out on top, and very competitive even after that.
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(O.o) (> <) Last edited by AluminumHaste : Jul 30, 2006 at 11:06 AM. |
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#6 |
The Tool
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![]() Most of the games didn't work with Crossfire enabled, so if you have a Crossfire system you have to disable it to play those games. Those are the performance characteristics you'll see in those cases. It's valid in more ways than one. SLI does not scale in GTR2 demo, as noted, so the 7950 GX2 is only using one of its two GPUs (it should scale in the full version when the game is released as it's already in NVIDIA's profiles).
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#7 |
Radeon Arctic Islands
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![]() Excellent as always, Mark. I must say that after the 6.7 Cats came out, I jumped the gun and started bashing Catalyst drivers because of how horrid they were. Well, that turns out not to be the case. Other then a few display anomalies that appeared upon startup after installation, games have been running fantastically. COD2 @ 1600x1200 w/4x AA & 16x HQ AF with the highest settings @ a near rock-solid 60 fps in a 12-man online match is truly amazing. |
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#8 |
May 2, 1965 - April 21, 2008
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![]() Great review Ratch! I see what your saying...CF just doesn't work right with every game. And if you (the gamer) have paid "X" amount for CF you would want it to simply work....as SLi seems to do. Good review ![]()
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#9 | |
Radeon Arctic Islands
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#10 | |
May 2, 1965 - April 21, 2008
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eVGA nForce 680i SLi
Intel Q6600 Quad Core Stock @ 2.4GHz nVidia 8800GTX @ stock speeds 2GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 @ 800mhz 4-4-4-12 1T Seagate Barracuda 320GB SATA2 PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 1KW COOLER MASTER Stacker Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Westinghouse 22in wide screen LCD @ 1680x1050 Report a bug with the NVIDIA graphics driver. |
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#11 | |
Radeon Arctic Islands
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#12 |
Radeon R200
Join Date: May 2006
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![]() GTR2 Demo "DOES NOT SCALE". Huh? Works for me. GT Legends: Works great here. Colin Mcrae...works here too, as it does in the review. I don't have the other games currently. Bu I don't understand why these issues are related in the review, yet not in my own experience. ![]() Nice review tho, i guess. |
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#13 | |
The Tool
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#14 |
Did someone say, RGSSAA?
Join Date: May 2001
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![]() The importance of profiles is a very important point to raise and thankfully improved with the 6.7's. nVidia deserves a lot of credit with improving profiles with SLi. ATI deserved this negative, imho! The only point I want to raise is this: If someone raises the negative point about the dongle and mastercard -- one should offer Super-AA benchmarks. ATI's composite chip isn't added to the GPU's core and the only way you could garner real-time performance with Super-AA was this way, imho. I am not happy over-all with this Dual GPU tour because Super-AA was not discussed from an objective point-of view. You're not forced to use CPU limited or old titles to use Super-AA! |
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#15 |
God uses ATI.
Join Date: Nov 2002
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![]() Well done Mark! Thanks for this. ![]() I especially liked your texture filtering discussion! Go ATI IQ! C.
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#16 | |
Radeon R200
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Colin MCrae and Richard Burns have never been issues with this set-up. The SIMBIN games use Supertiling, so to expect an increase in framerates is not realistic. Perhaps this should be mentioned. When using increased resolutions and AA, there is no performance drop, so the cards ARE getting used, they simply do not increase framerate. I'm a driving game nut...I have almost every one...and I have absolutely no issues. The one game that game me problems, TombRaider LEgends, required a game update to solve the issue. I have major issues with reviews only using framerates to relate performance...it's not accurate. Sure, one card may be faster than another, but if one card draw squares while the other draws circles, you don't have a decent comparison. I find the same to be found in this review. the SIMBIN games don't need more than one x1900, so using the second to increase framerate is pretty useless...it should be used to increase visual quality, and i beleive this is what is happening with these games. I'm a gamer...so pretty much any "top" game that has come out in the last few years i own, and upon building this system i installed each and every one of them...all the way back to DeusEx. Not one of these games "shows no increase". ![]() You MUST also mention that the nVidia cards do not play Colin MCrae very well. In daylight driving, with glare from the sun, frames will drop. It's so bad, that my X850XT gives almost better perforamnce in this area than my 7800GTX's dis in SLI! ![]() Last edited by cadaveca : Jul 31, 2006 at 01:00 PM. |
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#17 |
May 2, 1965 - April 21, 2008
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eVGA nForce 680i SLi
Intel Q6600 Quad Core Stock @ 2.4GHz nVidia 8800GTX @ stock speeds 2GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 @ 800mhz 4-4-4-12 1T Seagate Barracuda 320GB SATA2 PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 1KW COOLER MASTER Stacker Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Westinghouse 22in wide screen LCD @ 1680x1050 Report a bug with the NVIDIA graphics driver. Last edited by Vengeance : Jul 31, 2006 at 02:52 PM. |
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#18 |
Radeon Arctic Islands
Join Date: Apr 2004
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![]() Wow, what a lot of reading! I actually just read thru all 9 sites ![]() My simple summary after reading through all 9 sites: CF is simply a poor solution in too many cases right now. There are a select few benefits, but overall, the negatives outweigh the positives it seems. SLI seems to be a very decent solution right now, with availability, ease of setup/use, & game support being quite good. On a side note: IQ, something only R3D touched on, is definitely better on ATi presently. But that's something we already knew.
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#19 |
God uses ATI.
Join Date: Nov 2002
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![]() Ya I get the same feel from all of them. SLI is more mature and functional than CF. Thank God I am not a dual card kinda guy. This hobbie, while one of my favorites, does not warrant the cost of a dual card rig for my tastes. Second thing I get from all this is that ATI has better IQ (which is important to me). So in the single card arena I still prefer ATI. But overall I like one of each so I can do my own comparisons. I wonder how things will go the next few years with AMD at the ATI helm. C.
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#20 |
Next to her
Join Date: Nov 2000
Posts: 2,931
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![]() GRAW works fine in CF, just have to either rename the game's exe, or force AFR thru the drivers. Works fine, in fact, gives more than 100% boost for some reason. At least the demo did. Also, it does has "AA" in the game. Not real AA, just kinda blurs it to it looks smoothers. Looks pretty crappy, but they call it AA. Clearly SLI works better than CF in older games. I dont play any of those games, so it doesnt matter. ATi does need to get user creatable profiles out the door. Their recent chat said they're working on it, which is good. No short comings you can think of with SLI? How about its horrid performance in SLI AA, compared to Super AA? Its not even close, Super AA is much faster.
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#21 | ||||
The Tool
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#22 | ||||
Next to her
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I am a little curious as to why the games were picked? They look to be older (most of them) and not very played. IMO, this makes CF look worse than it really is, because every game I have, and most demos I have tried, have worked just fine. Quote:
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I am not a woman. Last edited by Emilee : Aug 2, 2006 at 11:40 AM. |
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#24 |
Next to her
Join Date: Nov 2000
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![]() Dont think Im picking at you, for what its worth, you're reviews, and the way they are set up, is one of favs. It just looks worse for CF, than it really is. At least to me. All of my games work with CF, and going by the article, most wouldnt. Anyways, Im done "complaining".
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#25 |
Radeon R200
Join Date: May 2006
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![]() The joys of being an online writer for a forum...you must face the critics. nVnews. nVidia-based, perhaps? nVidia choosing review material, for a hardware compare? ![]() |
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#26 |
The Tool
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![]() nvidia came up with the idea, they didn't choose the hardware or how and what we tested.
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#27 | |
May 2, 1965 - April 21, 2008
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I wondered the same thing at first. I figured these were all hand picked games from nVidia. But from everything I read thats just not the case. But I'm sure some will never believe it.
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#28 |
Radeon R200
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![]() Well, i got the info i wanted. nVidia came up with the idea, which means they sponsored/paid for it. ![]() ![]() sheesh. |
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#29 | ||
The Tool
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NVIDIA didn't pay us for anything, and you're looking too hard for a conspiracy that doesn't exist.
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#30 |
Radeon R200
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![]() i was ribbin' ya, Ratchet. You know, giving you a hard time? ![]() Feeling like ya gotta defend yourself? You don't. ![]() Sheesh. ![]() ![]() ![]() Still wondering why i don't have the issues you do tho... ![]() Last edited by cadaveca : Aug 2, 2006 at 02:21 PM. |
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Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
The Definitive Multi-GPU World Tour - Part 9 Conclusion @ Guru3D | Ratchet | Front Page News | 7 | Aug 1, 2006 08:08 AM |
The Definitive Multi-GPU World Tour - Part 7 Uncommon Benchmarks @ Legit Reviews | Ratchet | Front Page News | 3 | Jul 29, 2006 05:38 PM |
The Definitive Multi-GPU World Tour - Part 6 Uncommon Benchmarks @ nV News | Ratchet | Front Page News | 9 | Jul 28, 2006 06:49 PM |
The Definitive Multi-GPU World Tour - Part 4 Common Benchmarks @ HARDiNFO | Ratchet | Front Page News | 7 | Jul 20, 2006 08:41 PM |
The Definitive Multi-GPU World Tour - Part 3 Motherboards @ Bjorn3D | Ratchet | Front Page News | 10 | Jul 18, 2006 08:10 AM |