SLI vs. CrossFire, Part 1 – mid-range multi-GPU scaling & value
World in Conflict Soviet Assault
World In Conflict is set in an alternate history Earth where the Cold War did not end and Russia invaded the USA in 1989 and the remaining Americans decided to strike back. World in Conflict (WiC) is a real-time tactical/strategy video game developed by Massive Entertainment and released in 2007. The expansion, Soviet Assault, was released in 2009. Although it is generally considered a real-time strategy (RTS) game, World in Conflict includes gameplay typical of real-time tactical (RTT) games. WiC is filled with real vehicles from both the Russian and the American military. There are also tactical aids, including calling in massive bombing raids, access to chemical warfare, nuclear weapons, and far more.
Here is yet another amazing and very customizable and detailed DX10 benchmark that is available in-game or as a stand-alone. We use the full retail game’s in-game benchmark as it offers more settings than the demo and is updated by patches. The particle effects and explosions in World in Conflict Soviet Assault are truly spectacular! Every setting is fully maxed out.
We start our benching at 2560×1600:
Now we test at 1920×1200
The GTX 560 Ti has no trouble passing the HD 6950 at 1920×1200, nevermind the HD 6870; at 2560×1600, the HD 6950 edges the GTX 560 Ti. Here we see just some fair scaling by our CrossFired and SLI’d video cards, yet it is sufficient to blast them past the single flagship cards, except for the GTS 450 SLI. The GTS 450 benefits by SLI – enough to make the game playable at 1920×1200, something it could not manage by itself. The GTX 560 Ti SLI is fastest overall, followed by GTX 460 SLI in-between HD 6870 and HD 5870 CrossFired performance.
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.