SLI vs. CrossFire, Part 1 – mid-range multi-GPU scaling & value
Batman: Arkham Asylum (Game of the Year Edition)
Batman: Arkham Asylum is an action-adventure/stealth video game based on DC Comics’ Batman. Arkham Asylum is based directly on the long-running comic book’s Dark Knight character. The Joker devised an elaborate plot from inside Arkham Asylum that Batman is personally forced to put a stop to. The game’s primary characters are superbly voiced.
The game is played as an over-the-shoulder, third-person perspective action-adventure game with a primary focus on Batman’s combat abilities, stealth, detective skills and complete with an arsenal of gadgets that can be used in both combat and as exploring in “detective mode”.The game uses a “Freeflow” combat system as well as the ability to use Batarangs and the Bat-Claw. The player also has access to progressively stronger counter attacks as well as a special attack that can quickly take down a single foe. Stealth tactics includes silent takedowns by sneaking up on foes including dropping and/or gliding from overhead perches.
Batman: Arkham Asylum uses a highly modified version of the Unreal Engine 3. It does not support AA natively but must be added in and supported by the game’s developer. Unfortunately we cannot compare Batman: Arkham Asylum using our GeForce exactly against the Radeon with PhysX on; so all of our testing is with it off. We are using the Game of the Year Edition of Batman: Arkham Asylum which supports in-game AA settings for both Radeon and GeForce cards.
We begin testing at 2560×1600 with details maxed and with 8xAA applied in the game’s setting control panel (8xQ for Nvidia).
In each case, except for our GTS 450, the rest are able to offer reasonable playing experiences as the minimums are sufficiently high even at 2560×1600 with details maxed and with 8xAA applied. And adding a second GTS 450 allows this game to be playable. 1920×1200 can only be faster.
Now all of our cards can play Batman at 1920×1200 with 8xAA. The GTX 580 is fastest video card although it is soundly whipped by GTX 460 and our CrossFired cards are the fastest playing this game
I’m not 100% certain, but to analyze microstuttering, place a check in the box next to “Frametimes” in Fraps. Then when you press the hotkey, it will create a log file with a timestamp when each single frame was outputted. Only a few seconds is enough to make the log file really, really long. Then take a portion out of the log file and make a chart out of it, that measures the time between each timestamp, to see if the frames are consistent with each other in similar intervals, or if every other frame is too close to the other one.
If a game runs at say, 45fps with your SLI or CF setup, but feels more like 23-30fps, then definitely analyze this with FRAPS.
Great review so far.
How do the numbers change, if at all, if Split Frame Rendering is used instead of Alternate Frame Rendering?
The last time I used SLI was with my Voodoo2 3000s. It was a gigantic waste of $200, in 1996 dollars.
If SFR eliminates micro-stutter without too much of a performance penalty I might have to try SLI again.
why don’t they add BF:BC2?
and also 6950 n 6970 crossfire?
Concerning the microstutter, frames time (using that fraps option) is supposed to fluctuate more erratically on crossfire/sli than what it would be on a single card. I think instead of testing a moving scene, it would make more sense to test it on a completely still scene for a few seconds and see how they compare in the excel output file. You don’t want a moving scene because then you won’t be able to differentiate between the erracticness you would get from a moving scene and the erraticness you would get from microstutter.
Another interest option would be to downclock a sli/crossfire setup to a point where it matches the average framerate of the single card. This way you could could see if the multi-gpu setup looks choppier than a single card despite having the same average frame rate.
Excellent work! At the end, simple recommendations would have been nice. =)
Please include Civilization 5 if possible the next time you benchmark.
It is an important game which will test the tesselation feature and its scaling ability in multi-gpu configurations.
Civilization 5 has been added to my benching suite along with DiRT 3 and Total War, Shogun 2.
You’ve done a great job of benchmarking gaming performance, but including charts with FPS vs $$, and $$ vs wattage would be much more useful.
The wattage (both idle and load) figures can be especially important, as some of these cards can easily draw more juice than all but the most powerful (and expensive) power supplies can provide — and that definitely factors into the cost analysis.