SLI vs. CrossFire, Part 2 – High-end multi-GPU scaling
Dirt 3
DiRT 3 is a nicer looking game than DiRT 2 as it is build on the latest Ego 3.0 engine. It is very impressive-looking in DX11 and it runs well on midrange cards at 1080p. Of course, we want to test it at the highest resolutions also and with fully maxed-out settings.
We test first at 1920×1200 then at 2560×1600 with ultra details and 8xAA:
The GTX 580 and 580 SLI beat HD 6970 and HD 6970 CrossFire although the HD 6990 is quicker than the GTX 590. Let’s try 2560×1600 next.
Much the same results as with 1920×1200. Decent scaling from our multi-GPU setups. What about 5760×1080? (which looks spectacular, by the way)
At the highest resolution, the GTX 590 still falls behind the HD 6990 although GTX 580 SLI beats HD 6970 CrossFire.
Thanks for this article. It was a very interesting read
I’m really looking forward to the next parts in the series. Overclocking and potential CPU-bottlenecking in Single-Card VS SLI is something I’ve been wondering about for a long while. And also microstuttering, I’ve never experienced it myself, but it scares me enough to make me cautions of buying another GTX 570 to SLI.
And oh, is it possible to get Battlefield 3 Beta added in your test-games?
Thanks for the feedback. I would not be afraid of getting a second GTX 570 for SLI. Nvidia (and AMD) work to minimize micro stuttering in the drivers and it is something that you can generally further alleviate by backing down on settings if you notice it.
I plan to add BF3 to my regular benching suite after it is released. The beta is only going to be valid for less than a month.
Thank you very much for this! It isn’t easy finding benchmark results with newer drivers. Not for a quad-SLI or quadfire setup that is. Cheers!
Err, strike the quad-SLI and quadfire part, but all the same – it is nice to find more up to date benchmarks!