SLI vs. CrossFire, Part 1 – mid-range multi-GPU scaling & value
Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2
Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an air combat video game developed by Ubisoft for PC. We are using the built-in benchmark from the full retail game. The way tessellation is implemented shows AMD graphics cards are perhaps unnaturally slow compared with other DX11 titles although their newer drivers have made significant performance gains over earlier drivers in H.A.W.X. 2. without sacrificing any noticeable image quality.
H.A.W.X. 2 runs on DX11 faster and with more detail than on the DX10 pathway. Here the emphasis is on terrain tessellation which looks outstanding in DX11 and “flat” in DX10. Let’s check out H.A.W.X. 2 with our video cards at 2560×1600 and with fully maxed out in-game settings and with 8xAA:
And now we test at 1920×1200 resolution:
We see the GTX 580 flying away from all the competition with the GTX 480 ahead of the GTX 570. However, the single Radeons can also play this game maxed out at 1920×1200. We also see that the HD 6870, although generally slower than the HD 5870, is much faster in this tessellation-heavy game. The GTX 560 Ti rules the skies in its price range and above as it outflys the HD 6970 by a significant margin.
Again, the HD 6870 CrossFire outperforms HD 5870 CrossFire. Our GTS 450 SLI can match a single GTX 460 and GTX 460 SLI trades blows with a single GTX 580 and HD 6870 CrossFire.
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.