First look: SLI priced as mainstream computer
Until now we've showed you two 8800 Ultra's, one that is overclocked, EVGA's SuperClocked 8800Ultra, and Gainward's BLISS 8800Ultra at reference clocks. EVGA is clocked higher but that didn't stop us to do SLI and overclock the Gainward card to match EVGA.
You guessed right, we tested the Geforce 8800 Ultra SLI at "Superclocked" clocks of 655 MHz for the core and 2250 MHz for the memory. For now we will just show you the 3Dmark results, since we are just testing Lost Planet DirectX 10 and the results will be here shortly, so be sure to check them out soon. As we play around with Lost Planet you can check out what these cards can do in SLI. Bear in mind that these two cards come with a price tag of a normal mainstream system, about 1500€.
We tested them under Windows XP, then under Vista. 3DMark for DirectX 10 is going to come out soon and what we can see from the results is that older 3DMark versions will work better with DirectX 9 and Windows Vista. We were surprised to see that after enabling SLI under Vista, we had to restart the system, which is not the case under XP.
EVGA Geforce 8800Ultra works at 655 MHz for the core and 2250 MHz for memory, while Gainward works at reference 612/2160MHz. When paired in SLI both cards works at a reference 612/2160 MHz. The situation is different than before when the clocks in SLI adapts to the faster card. Now we had to set the clocks on the cards manually to 655/2250 MHz. Gainward's card did well with EVGA "SuperClocked" clocks and we didn't encounter any issues during the test in SLI.
Testbed:
Intel Core 2 Duo 6800 Extreme edition
Nforce 680i EVGA board
Windows XP
Windows Vista
OCZ Reaper 1066MHz 5-5-5-15
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB SATA NCQ hard drive
Akasa EVO AK 922 Blue Athlon 64/X2/FX cooler and Intel CPU's
Silverstone DA750W modular PSU
Testing:
|
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03 |
3DMark 03 |
Game2 |
Game3 |
Game4 |
|
NVIDIA 8800GTX reference 575/1800 MHz XP |
39904 |
350.9 |
258.7 |
227.4 |
|
EVGA 8800Ultra 655/2250 MHz Superclocked XP |
45158 |
407.0 |
295.0 |
259.9 |
|
EVGA 8800Ultra 655/2250 MHz Superclocked Vista |
43887 |
394.0 |
289.7 |
257.4 |
|
SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 612/2160MHz XP |
63860 |
605.7 |
427.7 |
388.9 |
|
SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 612/2160MHz Vista |
61243 |
571.3 |
420.3 |
378.8 |
|
SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 655/2250MHz XP |
66440 |
626.0 |
445.1 |
415.6 |
|
SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 655/2250MHz Vista |
62321 |
587.6 |
431.9 |
391.1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03 |
Single Texturinng |
Multi Textur. |
Vertex Shader |
Pixel Shader 2.0 |
|
NVIDIA 8800GTX reference 575/1800 MHz XP |
6855.4 |
17652.4 |
127.7 |
643.9 |
|
EVGA 8800Ultra 655/2250 MHz Superclocked XP |
7826.6 |
20152.8 |
148.0 |
750.1 |
|
EVGA 8800Ultra 655/2250 MHz Superclocked Vista |
7795.6 |
19946.4 |
144.0 |
718.9 |
|
SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 612/2160MHz XP |
14374.0 |
36609.0 |
210.4 |
1228.0 |
|
SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 612/2160MHz Vista |
13962.8 |
34039.3 |
211.5 |
1118.2 |
|
SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 655/2250MHz XP |
15208.7 |
38712.4 |
215.9 |
1232.5 |
|
SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 655/2250MHz Vista |
14752.7 |
35818.7 |
213.5 |
1143.4 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
This is the first time we've seen 66,440 in this test, which is an absolute record for us. We didn't overclock the CPU, but we will try it, as we want to break 70.000 3Dmarks. It's just never enough. Overclocked SLI is about 60 per cent faster then with a single card, while under Vista you end up about 4,000 marks short on the same system. Vista drivers could do with some more tweaking.
Game 4 now goes over the magic 400 FPS limit and it's the first time we've seen it, about four years ago, it barely did 24 FPS's.
Single and multi texturing doubles with this SLI.
|
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05 |
3DMark 05 |
Game1 |
Game2 |
Game3 |
|
NVIDIA 8800GTX reference 575/1800 MHz XP |
17147 |
63.7 |
49.7 |
102.0 |
|
EVGA 8800Ultra 655/2250 MHz Superclocked XP |
17940 |
63.9 |
50.0 |
115.8 |
|
EVGA 8800Ultra 655/2250 MHz Superclocked Vista |
17285 |
63.1 |
47.6 |
110.1 |
|
SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 612/2160MHz XP |
19060 |
63.3 |
49.6 |
140.9 |
|
SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 655/2250MHz XP |
19907 |
63.3 |
49.6 |
142.0 |
|
SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 612/2160MHz Vista |
18335 |
62.6 |
46.7 |
135.1 |
|
SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 655/2250MHz Vista |
18324 |
62.5 |
46.3 |
136.0 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05 |
Single Texturinng |
Multi Textur. |
Pixel Shader |
Last modified on 18 May 2007
|