SLI vs. CrossFire, Part 1 – mid-range multi-GPU scaling & value
Aliens vs Predator 
Aliens vs. Predator, known to fans as Aliens versus Predator 3 or AVP3 is a video game developed by Rebellion Developments, and published by Sega in February 2010. It is the sixth game of the Aliens versus Predator game series. There are three campaigns in the game, one for each race or faction (the Predators, the Aliens and the Colonial Marines), that form one main storyline although they differ in objectives depending on your choice of campaign.
Alien vs Predators DX11 benchmark is a stand alone bench that as the name says is only for DX11 cards. It is more demanding than actually playing the game generally. First we bench at 1920×1200 with maxed out settings plus 2xAA.
The GTX 580 is the fastest card leaving the GTX 480 to trade blows with the GTX 570 wile the GTX 560 Ti sits in between the HD 6950 and the HD 6970. Now we test at 1680×1050 and 2xAA. Our GTX 560 Ti SLI sits in between HD 6870 and HD 5870 CrossFire while GTX 450 SLI still is not sufficient.
We see the GTX 580 take a solid performance lead followed closely by the GTX 570 and the GTX 480. The GTX 560 Ti sits almost exactly in between the HD 6870 and the HD 6950 in terms of performance in this game benchmark. This time, good scaling saves the GTX 450 SLI but GTX 560 Ti SLI is still in-between HD 6870 and HD 5870 CrossFired performance. Again, the SLI’d GTX 460s beat our single fastest video cards.
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.