Anyone wonder if the two prongs on the GTX and Ultra are just there to lock out certain cards; not that they're incapable of actually working in three way?

Perhaps if someone devised a hub of a switch...

Hello,

One thing I will say:Try (4 * ATI RADEON 3870 X2) in CrossFire X mode or at least (4*ATI RADEON 3870).

Thanks

Crysis does lots of deferred rendering, post-processing, calculates water deformations in 2D screen space, etc. So, my guess is it wants more memory bandwidth than any of these cards can give. Also IIRC there are some things that are not calculated every frame like the sky, and copying these large buffers could be hamstringing SLI performance.

311 GB/s of memory bandwidth

Something about adding up the memory bandwidth from each card just doesn't make sense to me. Can each card access the memory on the other cards? What is the peak bandwidth over the SLI connector? I feel like the memory bandwidth and the total amount of memory should, in practicality, remain the same as for a normal 8800 Ultra.

But, but, it goes to eleven!

Just ... out of curiosity, have any of the benches been run without AA? I understand the benefits of AA, but I wouldn't mind trading AA for higher FPS in games with higher resolutions (to fit my native LCD screen).

You are still using dual core system to run crysis. My rig's performance is better then your results playing crysis (1920X1200), i think (i could be wrong) 3 Way SLI would perform better on quad cpu system.

I realize the performance doesn't justify it, but having a rig like that in your home would be akin to seeing the face of God.

I'm wondering what would happen to the card in the middle of that setup. No room for air intake and exhaust!

There should have been a benchmark to show Flying Fox's increase in frustration if someone where to want three way SLI over two way SLI. ;-)

Question. Why does Nvidia advise you to get an 1100Watt PSU if the whole rig only askes for a little over 600?

I would rather have had the review of the 45nm chips. I have one, and have it up to 3600MHz. I don't think the temp rose a degree...

Witty as ever

Think I can dry my hair in that setup?

The law of diminishing returns in action to the max...

Interesting results, but I will definitely stick with my 7950 GT.

Here, three-way SLI is clearly the least unplayable of all four unplayable configurations tested. Victory!

I literally laughed out loud when reading that.

First, thanks very much to Tech Report for going to all the effort on these comparisons. I have really wanted to see just what it would take to run Crysis at 1920 x 1200 with max DX10 settings and this gives the closest idea yet.

==> Before it fades in your mind, can you report subjectively on how much different Crysis looked at high res with AA both ON and OFF? I've read that AA is not really needed at high resolutions (1920 x 1200) and it seems to be a deal-breaker on the graphics cards. If I knew it made very little difference I could plan better for my next gfx upgrade.

Thanks again -
Arbie

PhysX?

Seeing it clean-up in 3DMark06 is easily enough to justify it...

but our nForce 680i SLI motherboard doesn't support 45nm processors.

That's not correct. The 680i SLI supports 45nm CPUs, just not 45nm *quads*. My e8400 on my eVGA 680i (The older TR, too, not the quadfixed T1) does 1600+ FSB with nary a hiccup.

You should really drop an 8400 in, go to 1600FSB, and see if dually at 3.6GHz can spank quad at ~3. I'm sure you have tons of time to look into that, too. [/sarcasm]

it seems to me that something else might have been restricting the performance of the platform. Usually, when we've seen flat performance lines in the past, it's because something else is holding the system back.

You know, there is more than gaming performance you can test for in SLI configurations...

Isn't that a RADICAL concept??...

What crap.

This is like the "Backonater" of the video card world. Gluttony at its best/worst.

Nice article. Interesting to see how... well... useless the 3-way SLI is. Who is the target demographic for the marketing pf this stuff? Expensive boutique system OEMs, maybe? Some of them might need a reason to charge an extra arm and leg for a high-end system...

I don't know much about programming. That said: after a certain point I've found myself wondering if Crysis being such a beast on requirements is a result of it looking really good or it being badly optimized.

There are lots of other games out there with some incredible graphics and, while you could make the point that Crysis looks a lot better than those games, I don't think it looks THAT much better.

Tell me I'm not alone?

3x SLI = FTML.

It is bad when 2x8800U perform almost as well and more far affordable 8800GT SLI is bitting its ankles in most test.

whats the point of shelling out for even a mid range card if you can't even play at midrange resolutions? in that case, i hope crysis will come out for ps3 cus i refuse to shell out more cash for a card that will last a month or two.

I'm still not a fan of SLI mainly because I built a system with duel 7900GTX's back in the day and I was rather upset to see it was making the games act funky. Maybe it has changed these days but i'm not willing to pay the money to find out.