GTX 285 Dual and TRI SLI Scaling Analysis
Twenty Three DX9 and DX10 titles tested
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INTRODUCTION
Nvidia's Dual SLI technology has been out for quite a while now, and over the years we have seen it mature and become the top preference for PC gaming enthusiasts. In theory, using two cards can possibly double the frame rates that a single card can deliver. In most cases however, this is not entirely true but we have still seen several game engines come close to, or even achieving the ultimate performance gain of doubling the frame rates.
Tri Sli, however is relatively new to the scene, and was first introduced with the 8800 Ultras. Instead of two, three 8800 Ultra graphics cards could be run side by side to get upto three times the performance of a single card. When the technology came out, I was rather skeptical about its performance, based on the numbers from various websites, but being the enthusiast that I am, I could not stay away from Tri- Sli for too long. Recently, I made the move from Dual GTX 280's to Tri GTX 285's and have run a huge number of benchmarks to investigate the raw Power of tri-sli and also how well the three cards scale in various DX9 and DX10 titles.
TEST BED AND BENCHMARKS
The following system was used for this article:
Motherboard EVGA 780i SLI
CPU QX9650 @ 4.2 GHZ
RAM 4 GB GEIL Esoteria @ 875 5-4-4-12-2T
GPU (3) X EVGA GTX 285 3-SLI @ 648 / 1470 / 2480 (Forceware 182.08)
Monitor Gateway 30" XHD
OS Vista X64
The benchmarks that I used for this article are :
Half Life 2: Lost Coast (DX9)
Quake 4 (DX9)
Lost Planet Demo (DX10)
Call of Juarez Demo (DX10)
PT Boats: Knights of the Sea Demo (DX10)
DiRT Demo (DX9)
World in Conflict Demo (DX10)
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (DX9)
Crysis Demo (DX10)
Devil May Cry 4 Demo (DX10)
Race Driver: GRID (DX9)
Far Cry 2 (DX10)
Stalker: Clear Sky Demo (DX10)
FallOut 3 (DX10)
Drakensang: The Dark Eye Demo (DX10)
Tomb Raider Underworld Demo (DX9)
MotoGP 08 Demo (DX9)
The Last Remnant Demo(DX9)
F.E.A.R 2 Demo (DX9)
Tom Clancy's HAWX (DX10)
Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason Demo (DX10)
The Hunter (DX9)
Necrovision Demo (DX9)
BENCHMARKING METHODOLOGY
Synthetic tests such as 3DMARK06 are easy to perform as all you have to do is run a test and the results are conveniently output as an overall score and average frame rates. Games however may or may not be so easy to benchmark and there are multiple ways to benchmark a game. For this analysis, I have used two methods :
-Built in Demo : A lot of games these days come with a pre-recorded demo which the manufacturer deliberately includes for gamers to benchmark the game and gauge the performance of their systems. It gives you an idea of how well your PC will be able to run the game. This sort of benchmark is good since the exact same scene is run each time you play it. This gives you consistent Frame rate results. The downside is that it may not necessarily be comparable to the actual gameplay performance in the game for a variety of reasons. For example Artificial Intelligence (AI), or sound might be disabled in the demo but real world gaming will obviously have that.
-Real world Benching : A lot of benchers prefer real world benching. They use a program called FRAPS which runs in the background and monitors your frame rates as you play the game . This is useful since you get an idea of the actual gameplay performance. Another benefit is that you get frame rates recorded with time so you can clearly see when your fps dipped below average and what not. You can also very easily get the min, max and average frame rates. However, your results will not be consistent and totally accurate, you will not be able to make a full comparison between your results and someone else's and its tedious !
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