I’ve never before found myself in the position where I’ve been this rushed off my feet to get an article online. This afternoon I was e-mailed the Quad SLI Vista Driver! - At the same time, a second 9800 GX2 rocked up in my hot little hands. It was clear what I needed to do.

We found ourselves in the IBP bunker sitting in front of a 4GHz Water-cooled system with an SLI capable motherboard and an 8GB Pen Drive in hand with the 174.53 Quad SLI Driver installed.

You want results? We’ve got ‘em!

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/13...ted/index.html

TT previous 9800GX2 results have not been on par with what we've seen on other sites, their 9800GX2 has been under performing since the start, where other sites have the 9800GX2 leading the 3870X2 by a nice margin, in TT benchmarks the 9800GX2 is hardly faster... so take these results with a grain of salt

TT UT3 bench:



TechReport UT3 bench (which is in line with other sites)

Attached Thumbnails

It all depends on cpu power really.When you're going this high in gpu performance, even a 3.6Ghz quad core cannot really make the difference between a quad crossfire or quad sli setup. You really need 4.5Ghz+ (quad) cpu power to see a bigger difference.

wait wait wait... Thorgal is claiming CPU limited ?
that does not explain the lower performance of QUAD SLI, no the fact that the 9600 GT comes so close.

Techreport, Anandtech, HardOCP and many others show much better results for 9800GX2 and they are not using overclocked CPUs for their tests.
you should now better than to say 9800GX2 Quad SLI is causing CPU limit, when it's clear that in FPS games, the GPU will remain the limit, especially at higher AA/AF

TT uses Quad Core @ 4ghz , too speedy for any game out there, overkill thus. Games are GPU limited, remember?

But you've got a point on the AA & AF scaling, should scale there, so it must be a driver issue. I call BS on Anand en HardOCP results though : Anand uses uncomparable skulltrail resuls, en HardOCP uses "real world testing", in other words, non repeatable and totally unreliable and uncomparable results. Games gpu limited ? Not any more I think (unless you use AA & AF).

Edit : the UT3 benches are not really representable either, Crysis scales nicely in their tests.

proving that it's not CPU limited
these Quad SLI results are more promising and show CPU limited in games is not yet today, CPU is outpacing GPU, as games rely on GPU for most of their fancy GFX works which takes the most power. hency games remain GPU limited

I like to see an article with E8200 CPU used in Quad SLI at resolutions 1920x1080 and higher in games with 4xAA/16xAF, before I would even consider calling the system CPU limited
what good is having Quad SLI or one single 9800GX2, if you can't run 4xAA/16xAF (or higher) ?

Combine the CPU with a suitable VGA and vice-versa. If you buy a $900 CPU, don't use a $200 VGA. If you get a $120, don't combine it with $700 VGA. But if I had to choose between those two weird setups, I would go for the latter

You seem to have too much time.

Quad SLi is so pointless, it isn't worth discussing

Crysis results tell otherwise Rutar, only setup that can run 1920x1080 High detail is Quad SLI setup

Which costs money most of us cannot afford, even if you don't count the 1 KW PSU you need.

as if 9800GX2 is meant for the masses
people who can easily afford 9800GX2, should have much problems buying a second