nVidia GT200 Series Thread

[BFG10K]

How many high-profile games don't scale well with Crossfire?

Take a look at this one:

http://www.behardware.com/arti...-quad-gpu-systems.html

It's quite recent (28th May) but the results are all over the place from both vendors. There were instances were both vendors failed outright and/or attained performance from multiple GPUs that were worse than a single GPU.

To me the notion of paying more money to get worse compatibility and/or performance is flawed.

 

[Extelleron]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

How many high-profile games don't scale well with Crossfire?

Take a look at this one:

http://www.behardware.com/arti...-quad-gpu-systems.html

It's quite recent (28th May) but the results are all over the place from both vendors. There were instances were both vendors failed outright and/or attained performance from multiple GPUs that were worse than a single GPU.

To me the notion of paying more money to get worse compatibility and/or performance is flawed.

That article is about tri/quad GPU setups, not dual-GPU.

I would not recommend anyone go beyond a 2-GPU setup unless absolutely necessary. But 2-way SLI/CF scale very well.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Extelleron
World in Conflict:

http://www.tweaktown.com/revie...in_conflict/index.html - They didn't seem to have a problem, and that was in March

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3209&p=11 - Anandtech had no problems with scaling back in January

Hellgate London: I don't know if anyone uses that game in reviews, but I'm pretty sure Appopin has played it and he said it worked with his CF setup.

Lost Planet:

http://www.driverheaven.net/re...2Review/lostplanet.php - They didn't have a problem with scaling.

http://www.firingsquad.com/har...performance/page10.asp - Great scaling is shown in Lost Planet under DX10, DX9 scaling is nonexistant.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

http://www.driverheaven.net/re...X2Review/quakewars.php - They had no problem with scaling. In fact the 3870 X2 had over 100% scaling in this instance.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3209&p=6 - The Anandtech results were not nearly as good as the ones above, but they still saw CF scaling.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardwa...i_radeon_hd_3870_x2/12 - Scaling is evident, not so great. Bit-tech says that the QW 1.4 patch killed CF scaling for some reason.

I don't see your point, I said some or all of the issues may have been fixed since 8.3, but people were waiting for those fixes:

Lost Planet DX9 in February, for example:

http://www.firingsquad.com/har...3870_x2_top/page10.asp

There's really no argument or debate here:
What BFG said was true. There are games that don't scale, lots don't at launch, and the CF drivers aren't as flexible about working around these limits.

OTOH they have multi monitor capability, and mix n match cards.

There are also some people who are more senitive to the framerate irregularity load balancing introduces, and some to AFR "mouse lag" at some games.

There's no possible way to say an AFR based card or solution doesn't have some tradeoffs compared to single GPU, so my point single>multi if price/performance ~ equal is also true.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: bryanW1995
you're right, tal, quadcores are stupid. (looking at sig)

not stupid, niche market. They are too expensive and give marginal benefits (or none) for most users. Doesn't mean that there aren't people whom they are good for. But those things prevent them from being the standard, as dual core has become.

 

[n7]

SLi/CF or sandwich cards give:

-Higher fps...on mainstream games, most of the time

-Input lag
-Stuttering/chugging
-Bad minimum fps, sometimes worse than single cards
-Higher power consumption, meaning more expensive PSUs
-More expensive motherboards
-no dual display on SLI during games; disabling SLI required to use two displays

And i can go on.

Even if the HD4870X2 gives comparable fps in some games to the GTX 280, that in no way puts it on par due to the multitudes of drawbacks associated with CF.

Same thing if nVidia tries making another sandwich...as far as i am concerned, SLi/CF or sandwich cards are not viable options unless you can ignore all the issues.

Not one of the issues mentioned above occurs with quad cores.
Quad core CPUs are not remotely the same as multi-GPU setups.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: nRollo

Originally posted by: Extelleron
World in Conflict:

http://www.tweaktown.com/revie...in_conflict/index.html - They didn't seem to have a problem, and that was in March

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3209&p=11 - Anandtech had no problems with scaling back in January

Hellgate London: I don't know if anyone uses that game in reviews, but I'm pretty sure Appopin has played it and he said it worked with his CF setup.

Lost Planet:

http://www.driverheaven.net/re...2Review/lostplanet.php - They didn't have a problem with scaling.

http://www.firingsquad.com/har...performance/page10.asp - Great scaling is shown in Lost Planet under DX10, DX9 scaling is nonexistant.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

http://www.driverheaven.net/re...X2Review/quakewars.php - They had no problem with scaling. In fact the 3870 X2 had over 100% scaling in this instance.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3209&p=6 - The Anandtech results were not nearly as good as the ones above, but they still saw CF scaling.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardwa...i_radeon_hd_3870_x2/12 - Scaling is evident, not so great. Bit-tech says that the QW 1.4 patch killed CF scaling for some reason.

I don't see your point, I said some or all of the issues may have been fixed since 8.3, but people were waiting for those fixes:

Lost Planet DX9 in February, for example:

http://www.firingsquad.com/har...3870_x2_top/page10.asp

There's really no argument or debate here:
What BFG said was true. There are games that don't scale, lots don't at launch, and the CF drivers aren't as flexible about working around these limits.

OTOH they have multi monitor capability, and mix n match cards.

There are also some people who are more senitive to the framerate irregularity load balancing introduces, and some to AFR "mouse lag" at some games.

There's no possible way to say an AFR based card or solution doesn't have some tradeoffs compared to single GPU, so my point single>multi if price/performance ~ equal is also true.

he does have a point here... waiting from feb to may until a driver fix is released is ridiculous... not as bad as the wait for nvidia drivers (he kinda shot himself in the foot here), but still, there is no way i would still be playing a game 4 months after its release. (well, not an A title game).
The thing is, nvidia really focused on the SINGLE GPU with this generation, while AMD focused extensively on the multi-GPU. for nvidia, multi GPU is something you would do if you want excessive power at ridiculous prices for a few select games that don't play well on a single GPU. Which makes it more of a niche market.
For AMD, multi GPU is going to be the minimum for almost anyone who wants to play games on their platform. Which makes such issues much more significant, even if they address them faster then nvidia, taking many months to address them is unacceptable when they occur at almost every game, instead of just applying to a few rare games where you need the extra oomph.

 

[Extelleron]

Originally posted by: nRollo

Originally posted by: Extelleron
World in Conflict:

http://www.tweaktown.com/revie...in_conflict/index.html - They didn't seem to have a problem, and that was in March

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3209&p=11 - Anandtech had no problems with scaling back in January

Hellgate London: I don't know if anyone uses that game in reviews, but I'm pretty sure Appopin has played it and he said it worked with his CF setup.

Lost Planet:

http://www.driverheaven.net/re...2Review/lostplanet.php - They didn't have a problem with scaling.

http://www.firingsquad.com/har...performance/page10.asp - Great scaling is shown in Lost Planet under DX10, DX9 scaling is nonexistant.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

http://www.driverheaven.net/re...X2Review/quakewars.php - They had no problem with scaling. In fact the 3870 X2 had over 100% scaling in this instance.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3209&p=6 - The Anandtech results were not nearly as good as the ones above, but they still saw CF scaling.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardwa...i_radeon_hd_3870_x2/12 - Scaling is evident, not so great. Bit-tech says that the QW 1.4 patch killed CF scaling for some reason.

I don't see your point, I said some or all of the issues may have been fixed since 8.3, but people were waiting for those fixes:

Lost Planet DX9 in February, for example:

http://www.firingsquad.com/har...3870_x2_top/page10.asp

There's really no argument or debate here:
What BFG said was true. There are games that don't scale, lots don't at launch, and the CF drivers aren't as flexible about working around these limits.

OTOH they have multi monitor capability, and mix n match cards.

There are also some people who are more senitive to the framerate irregularity load balancing introduces, and some to AFR "mouse lag" at some games.

There's no possible way to say an AFR based card or solution doesn't have some tradeoffs compared to single GPU, so my point single>multi if price/performance ~ equal is also true.

The point is you are wrong.... those games scale with Crossfire and HAVE scaled with Crossfire for a long time. Nobody is waiting for driver fixes to make CF work. ET: Quake Wars, World in Conflict, Lost Planet DX10, and apparently Hellgate: London (unless Apoppin is wrong) have scaled with Crossfire for a long time. Xbitlabs is the only one who seems to have trouble.

The only one of the games you mentioned that does not scale is Lost Planet under DX9 mode. It scales under DX10, and I would not call Lost Planet a high profile game either. I would rather ATI concentrate on improving Crysis scaling than getting a year old console port to scale.

For AMD, multi GPU is going to be the minimum for almost anyone who wants to play games on their platform.

That's just not true either. I don't think anyone with a 1680x1050 or below monitor is going to have trouble with any game, including Crysis, on a single-GPU HD 4870. Except Crysis, at 1920x1200 a single 4870 should be enough as well.

 

[taltamir]

anyone with a 1680 or below is past due for an upgrade. most 300$ monitors in the past year have been 1920x1200. And if you are still using some ancient smaller rez monitor then it should be upgraded before you drop hundreds of dollars on a new video card.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Extelleron
The point is you are wrong.... those games scale with Crossfire and HAVE scaled with Crossfire for a long time. Nobody is waiting for driver fixes to make CF work. ET: Quake Wars, World in Conflict, Lost Planet DX10, and apparently Hellgate: London (unless Apoppin is wrong) have scaled with Crossfire for a long time. Xbitlabs is the only one who seems to have trouble.

The only one of the games you mentioned that does not scale is Lost Planet under DX9 mode. It scales under DX10, and I would not call Lost Planet a high profile game either. I would rather ATI concentrate on improving Crysis scaling than getting a year old console port to scale.

Dude- I can do this all day, because I'm right:

http://www.pcper.com/article.p...=463&type=expert&pid=1

Update (10/10/07): The real magic of AMD's Catalyst 7.10 update comes when you plug in a second HD 2900 XT card -- our CrossFire experiences with this driver were WORLDS above what we had to deal with on the 7.9 driver revision. In all of our games we saw notable improvements in the scaling of CrossFire and in some cases turned a negative performance gain into a strong positive one. In Bioshock we saw a 54% gain in CrossFire performance, in Company of Heroes we saw a 73% gain and in World of Conflict a 93% gain.

COH launched 9/13/06, on 10/10/07 it gets a 73% CF gain?

WIC out in Sept 07, gets 93% gain October 07

Bioshock launched in August, not October

As noted, BFG is right- part of the value of the GTX280/260 will be in not having to wait weeks or months for profiles.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Holy cow batturd. Is rollo cutting down SLI/Xfire scaling. Remember back in the day befor crossfire. When ATI single cards were faster than NV singles and NV got sli. OH! What a tune you sang rollo. Until we see what ATI/AMD has accomplished with the 4870x2 its all speculation . No matter what it looks like this round is going to be really good for everybody as far as us buyers are concerned lots of good choices sitting at great price points.

 

[ronnn]

Sales drive the conversation and unfortunately negative advertising is a powerful tool. So expect to see a huge flame war erupt if ati can compete.

 

[Hauk]

Sure will be nice when actual benchmarks surface. Then we'll have something to talk about.

Let's not get too worked up, one big family, remember? :beer:

These two threads should probably be locked on lauch dates so we can actually talk about the cards in new threads..

 

[Arbie]

I am in the single GPU camp, and can justify buying a powerful one for my new build since I rarely upgrade. So I've been watching the GT200 news. However, I have real limits on average power dissipation / long-term room heating, and thought that would probably rule out something like the GTX 280.

But the latest info is that this card can ramp back to around 25W for desktop / 2D use. If so, that's great! Besides being about 50% stronger than an 8800 Ultra on the top end...
don't know how I can resist that combo!

I hope that when they review the new Nvidia and ATI cards, Anandtech will test and verify the power management schemes and tell us if they really work. I mean the mobo-independent circuits, not "hybridpower" etc which I think only operates under Vista anyway.

Arbie

 

[Tempered81]

Originally posted by: SteelSix
Sure will be nice when actual benchmarks surface.

this is about as close as it gets so far:
http://www.imagehost.ro/pict/08211400484c2168ad54b.jpg

source:
http://we.pcinlife.com/viewthread.php?tid=946259&page=1

running in the 1600 to 1900 range of resolutions, I expect the 280 to perform about ~29% faster than an 8800 Ultra. IMO, expect 40 FPS in crysis [8800 Ultra] to goto approx 52 FPS [gtx280]. Hopefully driver improvements aid in performance over the next few months...

 

[bryanW1995]

if you're not gaming at 19x12 or higher, there is exactly one game that should tempt you to upgrade from an 8800 ultra. i must admit that I'm interested in the power management features of 280/260 gtx since they are going to be so power hungry at load.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: ronnn
Sales drive the conversation and unfortunately negative advertising is a powerful tool. So expect to see a huge flame war erupt if ati can compete.

Disagree- I think the 4870 based products being cometitive will reduce "huge flame wars" because there won't be much to argue about.

 

[Hauk]

Originally posted by: nRollo

Originally posted by: ronnn
Sales drive the conversation and unfortunately negative advertising is a powerful tool. So expect to see a huge flame war erupt if ati can compete.

Disagree- I think the 4870 based products being cometitive will reduce "huge flame wars" because there won't be much to argue about.

You'd think...

 

[BFG10K]

That article is about tri/quad GPU setups, not dual-GPU.

If you look closely you'll see dual-cards have issues too (e.g. in Bioshock you lose the ability to run AA on Crossfire - unacceptable).

I'd love to continue multi-GPU discussion with you in this thread bit alas it's off topic and I fear I might derail the thread.

I'll finish up with this: if the 4870 X2 turns out to be faster than the GTX280 it will be a hollow victory as far as I'm concerned.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: SteelSix

Originally posted by: nRollo

Originally posted by: ronnn
Sales drive the conversation and unfortunately negative advertising is a powerful tool. So expect to see a huge flame war erupt if ati can compete.

Disagree- I think the 4870 based products being cometitive will reduce "huge flame wars" because there won't be much to argue about.

You'd think...

Lol, yeah. Generally the most bickering we've had on these forums is when the two have been competitive. The gpu wars were at their full swing during the NV3x/R3xx - G7x/R5xx era. I don't think it's been nearly as heated between the manufacturers and forum goers since AMD acquired ATI and G80 was launched. Recently, I think there was more debate between single-gpu vs. multi-gpu than there was between NV vs. ATI.

Honestly, I don't think it's going to be too much of a competition this time around either. NVIDIA will be the hands down single gpu winner, ATI will most likely make up most of the difference with a dual gpu card, but the crown will go to NVIDIA.

...just like BFG says:

I'll finish up with this: if the 4870 X2 turns out to be faster than the GTX280 it will be a hollow victory as far as I'm concerned.

 

[thilanliyan]

Naked pics of 280
http://www.vr-zone.com/article...ripped_Naked/5856.html

Damn I hope that's not the die size and is just the heatsink. :Q

 

[dv8silencer]

Originally posted by: thilan29
Naked pics of 280
http://www.vr-zone.com/article...ripped_Naked/5856.html

Damn I hope that's not the die size and is just the heatsink. :Q

HaHa It is well endowed.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
I'll finish up with this: if the 4870 X2 turns out to be faster than the GTX280 it will be a hollow victory as far as I'm concerned.

I tend to agree with you, however I'm going to reserve judgment until they actually release the card. Two of the rumored new features sound like they will make a huge improvement. The GPU-to-GPU communication will be done in memory, plus the entire memory on the card will be fully utilized (as opposed to 'half wasted').

If you look at how seemlessly multiple CPUs can chug through an SMP-enabled application such as video encoding, you've gotta keep the faith that someday dual GPUs will be capable of 100% gains over a single one.

If the X2 can beat the GTX280 without any major driver issues, AMD will have pulled a major rabbit out of their hats IMO. I personally see the lack of texturing units as the 'achille's heel' of the 4870, but time will tell.

 

[taltamir]

the improved to communication could mean that the x2 would outperform two individual 4870 cards... that means that you will not be platform locked with those cards, and that the only reason to get a mobo with 2 pcie slots is for quad xfire... good times.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: taltamir
the improved to communication could mean that the x2 would outperform two individual 4870 cards... that means that you will not be platform locked with those cards, and that the only reason to get a mobo with 2 pcie slots is for quad xfire... good times.

Or for SLI'ed 280GTXes.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: dv8silencer

Originally posted by: thilan29
Naked pics of 280
http://www.vr-zone.com/article...ripped_Naked/5856.html

Damn I hope that's not the die size and is just the heatsink. :Q

HaHa It is well endowed.

It looks like a heat spreader to me. It's impossible to tell the actual die size with it on there.

The heat spreader does look rather large though.