SLI vs. CrossFire, Part 2 – High-end multi-GPU scaling

3DMark11

3DMark11 is Futuremark’s brand new DX11-only benchmark. We are keeping track of the overall (for these tests, meaningless) scores and the framerates of the 4 graphics tests (which are more meaningful). First the basic tests results.We note the rankings and that the cards are ranked very similar to Vantage. Unfortunately, scores are completely meaningless when they are presented in this way. However, the next set of tests actually measures framerates of four short timedemos that focus on DX11 graphics performance.

We see an interesting lineup. Unfortunately for our purposes, 3DMark11 scores are just as meaningless as Vantage in an attempt to compare one video card’s performance in games to another – even in the same system. These synthetic tests are, however, useful in tracking driver changes quickly and the expanded tests give interesting theoretical information about the video cards that are tested.

Let’s move on to PC games and to real world situations and we will create our snapshot of current performance of the two most-powerful single- and dual-GPU video cards from AMD and Nvidia to see how they scale in CrossFire or SLI.