Triple SLI benchmarks!!!!!

[hmammen]

The German print and online magazine PC Games Hardware had the opportunity to bench Nvidia's tripple-SLI. The benchmarks have been done using Crysis and some other games. Unfortunately a unreleased Crysis build with number 5837 was used which seems to be optimized for triple-SLI. This new patch will be publicy available in a couple days.

So far only te 8800 GTX and 8800 Ultra are capable of running triple-SLI. What else is needed to run triple-SLI?

- 3 Geforce 8800 GTX or Ultra cards
- a 3-way-SLI_Connectorboard (or as a alternative: 2 very short and 1 very long SLI-bridge)
- a mainboard with 3 PCI-E-x16-slots (680i or the upcoming 7x0i)
- the right Forceware driver (in this case 169.18 was used)
- a PSU that is strong enough to provide enough juice =)

Nvidia recommends using at least a 1,100W PSU. The Thermaltake Topower that was used in the test was really stressed. The kill-a-watt-device showed a total power consumption of 819W.

The benchmarks were done with a system that Nvidia provided. It's specs are:

CPU: Core 2 Quad Q6850 @ 3000 MHz (333x9)
Board: Asus P5N32-E SLI with Nforce 680i-Chipsatz
RAM: 2x1,024 MiByte Corsair Dominator
OS: Vista 32 Bit (Enterprise Edition)

As tests were used:
Tests:
• Crysis Build 3857, PCGH-Ice-Benchmark
• Unreal Tournament 3, PCGH-vCTF-Suspense-Benchmark
• Fear v1.08, int. performance-test
• Company of Heroes, int. performance-test

VGA: 3x XFX Geforce 8800 Ultra (612/1,512/1,080 MHz)
Driver: Forceware 169.18

The pictures speak for themselves =)

Link to the (German) article: PCGH - Praxis: PCGH-Hands-on-Test: Nvidias 3-Wege-SLI: Crysis in HD endlich flüssig

Link to the picture-galerie: PCGH - PCGH-Hands-on-Test: Nvidias 3-Wege-SLI: Crysis in HD endlich flüssig - 2007/12/3waySLI_01.JPG

(Click into the picture to enlarge it, "nächstes Bild" means next picture)

no airflow eh?

 

[veg1992]

wow... Triple SLi has more than double performance over the 1 card.. except for the 3x of the price..

 

[hmammen]

exactly....completely worthless right now....until we can get a game that will really require 3 GPUs, this seems for bragging rights only. Maybe 3 8800GTs?? i would be down for that.

 

[nOcLuE98]

wow... Triple SLi has more than double performance over the 1 card.. except for the 3x of the price..

but just normal SLI is almost double performance. That is insanely cool though, I have to admit, that is totally badass.

 

[Akubane]

yeah that does look pretty badass. I bet you could cook a 4 course meal on those cards after a good 5-8 hour gaming session lol.

 

[nOcLuE98]

yeah that does look pretty badass. I bet you could cook a 4 course meal on those cards after a good 5-8 hour gaming session lol.

yeah, I would love to see some temps on those cards, no room for cooling has to get those babies hot as all get out

 

[veg1992]

but just normal SLI is almost double performance. That is insanely cool though, I have to admit, that is totally badass.

no its not.. its like 40-50% increase.... what are you talking about?

 

[hmammen]

having three SLI...is basically performing like 2 1/2 GPUS....unfortunately.

 

[nOcLuE98]

no its not.. its like 40-50% increase.... what are you talking about?

that does say 14.6 right?
14.6 x2= 29.2 close to 27?

 

[veg1992]

yes.. but thats only on high resolutions.. but of course thats gonna happen..