Core i7: NVidia SLI vs ATI CrossFireX

Core i7:  NVidia SLI vs ATI CrossFireX

With X58 handling both SLI and CrossFireX, which is better for the Core i7/X58 platform.

With the Core i7 launch just literally a few days away, performance reports are flooding the internet.  However, it takes a keen eye and a technology dictionary at hand to make sense of it all.  It has come to light that SLI can be enabled on X58 motherboards by a simple certification by NVidia.  There are no nForce 200 chips needed, so it begs the question why other non NVidia chipsets did not have SLI support.

However, this review is not about pondering enabling SLI on other motherboards, it is about the performance between these two multi-GPU technologies.  On the Intel platform, Intel has had much experience with the CrossFire technology, so that should be the prevailing winner.  SLI is a new setup for non NVidia chips, so it should be interesting how this plays out.  Also added to the mix is several other platforms to see just how much more performance the X58/Core i7 combo adds.

Test Setup

Platform	Core i7 965 Extreme	Core 2 Extreme QX9770	Phenom X4 9950
Chipset	Intel X58	Intel X48 Nvidia nForce 790i SLI Ultra	AMD 790FX/SB750
Motherboard	ASUS Rampage II Extreme Gigabyte EX58-Extreme	Intel DX48BT2 EVGA nForce 790i SLI Ultra	ASUS M3A79-T Deluxe
Video Card	GeForce GTX 280 Radeon HD 4870X2	GeForce GTX 280 Radeon HD 4870X2	Radeon HD 4870X2
Memory	6 GB DDR3-1333 7-7-7 (triple-channel)	4 GB DDR3-1600 7-7-7 (dual-channel)	4 GB DDR2-1066 5-5-5 (dual-channel)
Storage	Intel SSDSA2MH080G1GN 80 GB SSD
Optical	Lite-On DH-4O1S BD-ROM
Power	Cooler Master UCP 1100W

Test Results

Click on chart for larger view

	Benchmark Results: World in Conflict   From the results in this comparison, we see several things.  First off is that the AMD processor just does not scale very well.  It could be the chipset or the game could be processor limited.  Also, the ATI Crossfire does not scale as well in this game as does the GTX 280.   Winner:  Core i7 and GTX 280
	Benchmark Results: Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance Looks like Supreme commander was written to directly take advantage of the Radeon video card architecture.  For some reason, there is no scaling from 2 to 3 GeForce cards.   Winner:  Core 2 and 4870 X2
	Benchmark Results: Crysis 64-bit Well, so much for ATI taking the crown.  While Crysis normally kills almost all high-end builds, we see that the GTX 280 and Core i7 mop the floor with Crysis.  While the highest resolution kills all the configs, at 1900 x 1200, you can see the clear winner.    Winner:  Core i7 and GTX 280
	Benchmark Results: Crysis: Warhead Again, we see much of the same thing as both these games are built on the Crytech game engine.  The GTX 280 steals the show with its power and the Core i7 shows its superiority to the Core 2.   Winner:  Core i7 and GTX 280
	Benchmark Results: Company of Heroes This is more bad news for ATI fans.  Seems like Company of Heroes was again written directly for the GeForce line of cards.  NVidia does have that advantage as more companies have always supported them in favor of ATI.  Sometimes having better drivers and games written for your card is more important then overall power.   Winner:  GTX 280
	Benchmark Results: Unreal Tournament 3 While playable across the board, we see that the two card setups actually perform better in this game.  Unreal may be somewhat dated, so better drivers and profiles may help with 3 and 4 GPU scaling.  The slightly better performance can be attributed to the Core i7.   Winner:  Core i7
	Benchmark Results Far Cry 2 Fans of Far Cry 2 hoping that the new game engine would improve frame rates are sorely disappointed by the graph on the left.  While new games take some time to be fully utilized with better drivers and profiles, this is just horrible.  However, looks like Far Cry 2 takes great advantage of the Core i7 and GTX 280 combo.  Even below, we see the GTX 280 far better then 4870 X2 with a Core 2.   Winner:  Core i7 and GTX 280
	Benchmark Results: 3DMark Vantage Take these ratings with a grain of salt.  With NVidia's built in GPU support for PhysX, it artificially inflates the CPU score portion of the testing.  Thus these results are skewed and cannot be taken seriously.  However, games that do include support for PhysX will see this benefit, although hardly any do.   Winner:  Doesn't matter
	Averaging It All Out We take all the average FPS and combine them to come up with this graph.  While some may buy hardw3are based on the games they own, some have to go on overall performance.  The AMD solution did not do that bad, but did not beat the Core 2 or Core i7 by a long shot.   Winner:  Core i7 and GTX 280
	Averaging It All Out (2) Same as above, but takes into account AA and AF, something which I did not cover in this article.  You can see the full graphs and text on the original review website.   Winner:  Core i7 and GTX 280

 

Conclusions

To me, it looks like ATI now has to play catch-up again after having a few months of domination.  NVidia sales have dropped drastically due to shoddy chipsets and hardware.  While the GeForce cards have been amazing, their high prices and lack of good motherboards drove down prices and total sales.

 

With this new platform and great SLI scalability, looks like NVidia is gearing up for a good Q4 this year in terms of sales.  With the GTX line hitting rock bottom pricing, there is no reason not go SLI with this platform.  ATI needs to step it up with better drivers and game profiles if they want my vote of confidence in the coming months.

 

More Information

Original Article

 

X58 Motherboards Comparison

I appreciate all the time and effort and info you provide here on this forum Matt  it is a real help to us soon to be/already  customers of Ava Direct.

You can OC the cards, that is not the problem.  The problem is that OC does almost nothing as at best, you can OC by 5% - 10% max.  Even then you will have problems with stability and noise/heat issues as well.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3459&p=4

wow, EVGA performs the worst in gaming (such a small difference though).

I've also seen every other board get some good overclocking results, so EVGA doesn't seem the BEST. 

And matt about the 16x 8x 8x, they said that's only when you do tri SLI, something like that.

I know i'm not buying EVGA, unless maybe their upcoming board is better. What is a board that can run 16x 16x for quadfire, and if a third slot isn't taken up then it won't become 8x?

sorry if i'm confusing, read anand's review and you'll know what i'm talking about though.