In the test 15 years ago: ATi CrossFire X against Nvidia Quad-SLI in an exchange of blows

0
84

In the test 15 years ago, ComputerBase devoted itself to a technology oddity that is now extinct: CrossFire X and Quad-SLI. Both technologies allow up to four GPUs to be operated in a multi-GPU network. In the test, two ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2 competed against two Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 (test).

2 x 2 makes 4

Both the ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2 and the GeForce 9800 GX2 were dual-GPU graphics cards – both had two graphics chips. CrossFire X and Quad-SLI were AMD's and Nvidia's technologies, respectively, to connect two such dual-GPU graphics cards with each other, for example, and thus operate four GPUs in one system. The computing work was then divided between the GPUs using “Alternate Frame Rendering” (AFR). In practice, this meant that the GPUs calculated an image in turn, and then the frames were output with shorter intervals.

  1. Nvidia Quad-SLI

Image 1 of 2

ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2 CF

The disadvantage of the AFR method was that each GPU had to hold the entire scene in memory, so the available graphics memory no longer increased with the number of GPUs. In addition, AFR suffered from micro-stuttering caused by the fact that the distances between the images were not even – this could give the impression that a game was not running smoothly despite high frame rates.

Radeon HD 3870 Radeon HD 3870 X2 GeForce 8800 GTS 512 GeForce 9800 GX2 Chip RV670 R680 (2 × RV670) G92 2 × G92 transistors approx. 666 million approx. 2 × 666 million approx Manufacture 55nm 65nm Chip Clock 775MHz 825MHz 650MHz 600MHz Shader Clock 775MHz 825MHz 1625MHz 1500MHz Shader Units
(MADD) 64 (5D) 2 × 64 (5D) 128 (1D) 2 × 128 (1D) FLOPs (MADD/ADD) 496 GFLOPS 2 × 525 GFLOPS 624 GFLOPS 2 × 581 GFLOPS ROPs 16 2 × 16 16 2 × 16 Pixel fill rate 12,400 MPix/s 2 × 13,200 MPix/s 10,400 MPix/s 2 × 9,600 MPix/s TMUs 16 2 × 16 64 2 × 64 TAUs 32 2 × 32 64 2 × 64 Texel fill rate 12,400 MTex/s 2 × 13,200 MTex/s 41,600 MTex/s 2 × 38,400 MTex/s shader model SM 4.1 SM 4 hybrid CF/SLI – ✓ effective Windows
Energy-saving function ✓ – Amount of memory 512 MB GDDR3 2 × 512 MB GDDR3 512 MB GDDR3 2 × 512 MB GDDR3 Memory clock 1,125 MHz 900 MHz 970 MHz 1,000 MHz Memory interface 256 bits 2 × 256 bits 256 bits 2 × 256 bits Memory bandwidth 72,000 × 00.7.62 MB/s MB/s 62,080 MB/s 2 × 64,000 MB/s

While CrossFire X was introduced at CeBIT 15 years ago, Quad-SLI was not a new invention. Nvidia had previously supported SLI groups of four GPUs with the GeForce 7950 GX2 – but that originally only worked under OpenGL. The reason was that DirectX 9 on Windows XP only accepted three commands in advance for rendering a frame. However, both the new Quad-SLI and CrossFire X required Windows Vista, which did not have this limitation and therefore also supported four GPUs under DirectX 9.

Power full

As expected, the multi-GPU teams with four GPUs performed well in the benchmarks compared to single and dual GPU graphics cards. The performance increase was consistently strong – even in higher settings and resolutions – until the GeForce 9800 GX2 ran out of memory. This was noticeable in the fact that a single Radeon HD 3870 – which used its memory more efficiently despite the same memory size – was faster than two GeForce 9800 GX2 when playing in 2,560 × 1,600 pixels with 8x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering .

Rating

Rating – 1280×1024 4xAA/16xAF

    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 SLI152,4
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2100,0
    • ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 CF99,6< /li>
    • ATi HD 3870 X2 + HD 387094.7
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X274.4
    • Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 51265.4
    • ATi Radeon HD 387045.3

Unit: Percent Rating – 1600×1200 4xAA/16xAF

    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 SLI163.8
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2 CF117.8
    • ATi HD 3870 X2 + HD 3870107.7
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2100.0

      • < li class="chart__row">ATi Radeon HD 3870 X283.9

    • Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 51271.1
    • ATI Radeon HD 387050.5

Unit: Percent Rating – 2560×1600 4xAA/16xAF

  • < ul class="chart__group-body">
  • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 SLI143,9
  • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2 CF106,7
  • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2100.0
  • ATi HD 3870 X2 + HD 387098.1
  • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X275.8
  • Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 51259.2
  • ATi Radeon HD 387050.3

Unit: Percent Rating – 1280×1024 8xAA/16xAF

    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 SLI188.9
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2 CF141,1
    • ATi HD 3870 X2 + HD 3870137,6
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2107,8

      • li>

    • Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 512105.8
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2100.0
    • ATI Radeon HD 387071.2

Unit: Percent Rating – 1600×1200 8xAA/16xAF

    • ATi HD 3870 X2 + HD 3870196.6
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2 CF191.4
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 SLI169,1
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2153,3
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2100,0
    • ATi Radeon HD 387099.4
    • Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 51288.2

Unit: Percent Rating – 2560×1600 8xAA/16xAF

    • < li class="chart__row">ATi HD 3870 X2 + HD 3870622.7
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2 CF592.8
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2451.0
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870380.7
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 SLI182.2
    • Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 512130.9
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2100.0

Unit: percent

The systems with four GPUs set new negative records in terms of volume, power consumption and temperature. In practice, that meant deafening volume, blisteringly hot systems, and up to 600 watts of power consumption when gaming.

Charts

Volume

  • Idle:
    • Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 51243.5
    • ATi Radeon HD 387044.0
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X245.5
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2 CF45.5
    • ATi HD 3870 X2 + HD 387045.5
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX247,5
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 SLI48,5
  • Last:
    • Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 51243.5
    • ATi Radeon HD 387045.0
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X256.5
    • ATi HD 3870 X2 + HD 387058.0Widely varying
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX258.5
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2 CF63.5Widely varying< /li>
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 SLI65.0

Unit: dB(A) Temperature

  • Idle – GPU:
    • ATi Radeon HD 387045
    • Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 51249
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X255
    • ATi HD 3870 X2 + HD 387059
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX260
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 SLI68
    • ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 CF70
  • Load – GPU:
    • Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 51281
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X282
    • ATi HD 3870 X2 + HD 387082
    • ATi Radeon HD 387084
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX284
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 SLI85
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2 CF89
  • Last – chip backside:
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X257
    • ATi Radeon HD 387057
    • Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 51258
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX263
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 SLI64
    • ATi HD 3870 X2 + HD 387071

      • li>

    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2 CF74

Unit: °C Power consumption

  • Idle:
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870136
    • Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 512159
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2175
    • ATi HD 3870 X2 + HD 3870202
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2205
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2 CF235
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 SLI325
  • Last:
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870245
    • Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 512265
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2361
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2379
    • ATi HD 3870 X2 + HD 3870490
    • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 SLI603
    • ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2 CF630

Unit: Watt (W) Overclockability

  • Company of Heroes:
    • – Default (/)0,0
    • – Overclocked (/)0.0
  • Jericho:
    • – Default (/)0.0
    • – Overclocked (/)0.0
  • World in Conflict:
    • – Default (/)0.0
    • – Overclocked (/)0,0

Unit: frames per second (FPS)

Conclusion

CrossFire X and Quad-SLI weren't successful even on the second attempt. While the systems were typically fast, they weren't worth the linear premium as performance didn't increase to the same extent. If you care about noise, power consumption or temperature, you could hardly make a worse decision than putting four GPUs in one computer. Micro stutters and driver problems were added.

In the category “In the test 15 years ago”, the editors have been taking a look at the test archive every Saturday since July 2017. The last 20 articles that appeared in this series are listed below:

  • GeForce 9800 GX2 with lots of power and little VRAM
  • Superlative mice with poor ergonomics from Razer
  • The Japanese mammoth cooler Scythe Orochi
  • The GeForce 9600 GT put AMD in its place
  • Scythe's Zipang came with six heat pipes and a 140 mm fan
  • The best CPU cooler came from Austria
  • The Radeon HD 3870 HD X2 as the high-end prize winner
  • Sapphire's Radeon HD 3870 with vapor chamber
  • The GeForce 8800 Ultra twitched and sweated in 3-way SLI
  • The Logitech G51 fought with the devil
  • li>What did inexpensive multi-GPU bring 15 years ago?
  • ZEROtherm kept graphics cards loudly cool
  • Intel's Core 2 Extreme on 45 nm steroids
  • The GeForce 8800 GTS 512 with the secret G92 complete expansion
  • Scythe Ninja Cu, the limited copper block
  • Allow me, Radeon HD 3850, the 135-euro miracle weapon
  • With the Zalman VF-1000 against Arctic Coolings S1
  • ATi made a comeback with the Radeon HD 3870
  • Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GT was almost perfect
  • Intel's 45-nm process made Penryn fast and economical

There is more content of this type and many other reports and anecdotes in the retro corner of the ComputerBase forum.