CrossFireX Arrives: First Look at 3 and 4 GPUs in 2 Card Setups
by Derek Wilson on March 7, 2008 12:05 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Test
This time around, we had the opportunity to compare games of our choosing. We did check to see if there were any real performance improvements up from our preview, but we haven't seen any huge changes. Crysis still only shows a performance improvement with two GPUs, and adding a third or fourth can sometimes even degrade performance. That's unfortunate, considering Crysis remains one of the games best able to bring any current GPU setup to its knees.
We decided to tackle this article from the perspective of two-card performance that enables three or four GPUs. This means using the 3870X2 in combination with the 3870 or another 3870X2. There are quite a few permutations that AMD's CrossFireX makes possible. With the way the industry is moving, it seems we won't be able to avoid further investigation into more-than-two GPU configurations. We will definitely continue to investigate this and will report on any interesting findings, but for now we will use two-card setups in order to avoid any concerns about PCI-E slot bandwidth playing a part in our initial performance numbers.
Our goal is to do two things. First, as in our preview, we want to assess the additional benefit gained from going to three or four GPUs. This is obviously relevant, as we want our readers to know what they are getting for their investment. Second, we want to compare the performance of the 3870 in its multiple configurations to other competing solutions from NVIDIA. This will help us to put the performance in a context of relative value to other single and dual card options.
Our test system is Intel's Skulltrail, as it has been in the recent past for graphics articles. We have moved off the AMD Phenom system and will now be able to better compare relative performance values on the best platform to do so. Here is our test setup:
| Test Setup | |
| CPU | 2x Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9775 @ 3.20GHz |
| Motherboard | Intel D5400XS (Skulltrail) |
| Video Cards | ATI Radeon HD 3870 x2 ATI Radeon HD 3870 NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra |
| Video Drivers | Catalyst 8.3 ForceWare 169.28 ForceWare 174.12 (9600 GT only) |
| Hard Drive | Seagate 7200.9 120GB 8MB 7200RPM |
| RAM | 2xMicron 2GB FB-DIMM DDR2-8800 |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit |
Crysis Performance
As one of the most demanding titles currently available, Crysis seems like a great showcase for multi-GPU technologies. We did test performance, but with the current drivers we saw no improvement in performance. However, we also tested prior to the 1.2 patch that just came out on Thursday. We will look at Crysis performance in a future update once we have conducted additional testing.
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MAIA - Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - link
"After rebooting a few times to let windows do its thing, we installed the driver and all was well."This sentence is soooooo microsoft windows !!! :))
Sorry .... had to say it.
dash2k8 - Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - link
I'm just wondering: instead of piling on the number of GPU's, why hasn't a manufacturer just come out with ONE monstrous GPU that does away with the need of using multiple video cards? If someone is crazy enough to spend moola on 4 GPU's, I imagine that person would be equally willing to buy ONE card that has the same horsepower. Just saying.punko - Monday, March 10, 2008 - link
Thanks Derek for a good review. As you indicated, this may be the future and its good to see the tech reach a point where it is ready for use and can be improved upon as all tech goes forward.It also sound like you had a lot of help directly from AMD on this one.
gsellis - Monday, March 10, 2008 - link
"but today a WHQL drier is available "Hey Derek, typo in the beginning. Still mirthful about this one. Water cooling and you needed it drier to work with all GPUs?
ltcommanderdata - Sunday, March 9, 2008 - link
I'm just curious as to whether you've checked to see if quad channel memory has any benefit for multiple GPU situations? With 3 or 4 GPUs sucking data, I would presume the additional memory bandwidth provided by quad DDR2-800 would increase performance, especially since dual channel FB-DIMMs are not as efficient as the best dual channel DDR2 or DDR3 setups on desktop boards. It would be interesting to see the results of a 4x1GB setup on Skulltrail vs the 2x2GB setup you used.cerwin13 - Saturday, March 8, 2008 - link
Would it be wise to try this upgrade without SP1 installed with Vista 32? I am currently using 2x Radeon HD3870 x2s and would like to benchmark with these new drivers, but apparently SP1 isn't officially out yet?DerekWilson - Saturday, March 8, 2008 - link
other people had luck without SP1; it's not a requirement, but some of our editors did find that it helped with a lot of stuff ...you'll want to make sure you have hotfixes:
929777-v2
936710
938194
938979
940105
945149
as a minimum
Ananke - Saturday, March 8, 2008 - link
XFX has Forceware 169.32, my guess it was added after 9600GT appear. On Nvidia official download site the highest ver is 169.28Ananke - Saturday, March 8, 2008 - link
XFX has Forceware 169.32, my guess it was added after 9600GT appear. On Nvidia official download site the highest ver is 169.28Incisal flyer - Saturday, March 8, 2008 - link
Derek, thanks for the very timely and detailed review. I'm going to be building a system for Flight Simulator X and have been trying to figure out the best graphics card(s) for that application. Have you considered benchmarking that sim? A lot of discussion right now on AVSIM etc on what to do in terms of GPUs for people building new systmes. There is a lot of back and forth on advantages and disadvantages of different configs. I realize FSX is a bit of a niche product. Would FSX use multiple GPUs like 2 3870 x2s and are the potential headaches of that configurtation worth it if you are a not a computer geek? Or am I better off just getting a couple of Nvidia 8800s in SLI or a single 3870 x2 and not hassling with the 4 GPU solution? Any help or advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for your time.Incisal Flyer