quad sli 295's vs tri sli 280's

[tastegw]

the 3 280's wins, amazing.

YouTube - Mega Test GTX295 Quad SLi vs GTX280 Tri SLi

 

[ricanflow]

Actually the world record is held by 295's, not 285's.

 

[tastegw]

Actually the world record is held by 295's, not 285's.

thats not the point of the video.

it was about overall gameplay.

the tri sli setup ran much smoother than the quad sli, and at higher fps in all but crapsis.

 

[ricanflow]

Ill check the vid later.

 

[Ninjawithagun]

Here's my two cents. The video benchmark is quite flawed from the perspective of an enthusiast gamer. All of us avid PC gamers know by now that the true test of video cards is that only 1920x1200 resolutions or higher should be used and with ALL settings maxed out in whatever benchmark is being used. This is just my opinion, but if we are discussing the use of the highest end hardware, then use the highest settings - duh! I don't know of any enthusiast PC gamers that use 1680x1050 as their standard resolution. Also, other things were not taken into consideration with this benchmark such as the total amount of power required to run three GTX280s versus two GTX295s. And what was the system setup used? What nForce drivers were used? 181.20, 181.22, or the current beta version? Too many questions and no answers provided.

I can guarantee that the GTX295 quad-SLI setup would have demolished the GTX280 tri-SLI setup had 1920x1200 resolutions been used and all the settings (AA, AF, post processing, HDR, motion blur, etc) maxed out. That's what enthusiast gaming is all about! Okay, I'm done griping

 

[wafflehammer]

I use 1680x1050 :\


anyway: I'm sure this is due to just bad drivers and quad-SLI scales like crap anyway. And and card for card the 280 is faster considering 1 GPU on the 295 is basically a downclocked 280. So the tri-280 beating quad-295 isn't that suprising

 

[Ninjawithagun]

Drivers are very immature - comparing Tri-SLI GTX280s with very mature drivers against a Quad-SLI GTX295 setup of which the drivers are brand new. Remember, the 181.22 drivers are the FIRST WHQL certified GTX295 drivers. Things will only get better with each subsequent release/update. Also keep in mind that the GTX295 card just came out last month! The GTX280 has been out since when? July 2008. That's almost 8 months ago.

I guess only time will tell in seeing just how much more juice and refinement can be brought to the GTX295s. I for one and am extremely happy with my quad SLI setup. Getting over 50fps in Crysis and Crysis Warhead with all settings maxed at 1920x1200 resolutions is something indeed to behold. Can you say "photo-realistic"

 

[wafflehammer]

meh i still think it's a realistic out come. No matter how immature the drivers are quad-sli/xfire never scales that great. So considering that you can kinda kill off 1 GPU of the gtx295...then you're left with 3 downclocked gtx 280's. three downclocked gtx 280 vs 3 gtx 280's and you get these results

 

[saltynay]

Seeing as you can gtx285 tri-sli for virtually the same price as gtx295 its hardly a hard decision. Been reccomending this setup for a month already

 

[meat_helmet]

I remember quad SLI has always scaled like crap, back since they tried it in the 7 series. I believe it, and i would get 2 more gtx285s over 2 gtx295s any day.