SLI vs. CrossFire, Part 1 – mid-range multi-GPU scaling & value
Lost Planet 2
Lost Planet 2 is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition and is also made by Capcom. The events take place ten years after the first game and on the same, now thawed, EDN III. The PC version was released on October 12, 2010 and it runs on the MT-Framework 2.0 engine; an updated version of the engine used in several Capcom games. Campaign mode can have up to 4 players working together over the Internet. Lost Planet 2 allows players to create and customize their own characters which will allow them to unlock more things after leveling up and downloading content.
We are using the retail game’s built-in benchmark in DX11 with maximum settings. As the game is quite demanding, we first test at 2560×1600 resolution with no AA.
Just as in the original game, none of our cards can play easily play Lost Planet 2 at 2560×1600 at the highest settings although the GTX 580 comes closest. However, we do see the GTX 570 again passing the GTX 480 while the GTX 560 Ti gets very close to the HD 6970’s performance. Our GTX 560 Ti SLI setup gets the highest frame rates followed by the HD 6970 then HD 6870 in CrossFire and finally by the GTX 460 SLI which sits in-between the GTX 480 and the GTX 570 in performance. Our GTS 450 SLI is lost at this resolution, never mind the single video card which struggles to even maintain a slideshow. Let’s lower the resolution to 1920×1200, add 4xAA, and test again with all of our DX11 cards.
In this more tessellation-heavy DX11 game, the HD 6870 catches the HD 5870 as a single video card although it is slightly edged by HD 5870 CrossFire. The GTX 580 is impressive and the GTX 570 again beats the GTX 480 and at 1920×1200, the GTX 560 Ti beats the HD 6970. SLI cannot save the GTS 450 although the SLI’d GTX 460 is a much better solution and GTX 560 Ti SLI is the fastest of them all.
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.