6990-6970 Trifire VS GTX580 Tri-SLI CLASHED

[Jaskanwar Singh]

Introduction - NVIDIA GeForce 3-Way SLI and Radeon Tri-Fire Review | [H]ard|OCP

The Bottom Line
AMD Radeon Tri-Fire is giving you the same or better performance than GTX 580 3-Way SLI for $500 and 200 watts less. You get both a money savings and a power savings using Radeon 6990/6970 Tri-Fire instead of GeForce GTX 580 3-Way SLI.

It just makes no sense to build a GTX 580 3-Way SLI currently. AMD Radeon 6990/6970 Tri-Fire is better in terms of value, efficiency, and gaming performance than GTX 580 3-Way SLI. If you want to utilize that performance, the 2GB of RAM per GPU on the Radeon HD 6970 will allow you to do this and provide a noticeable gameplay experience and visual improvement over GTX 580 3-Way SLI. No other conclusion can be made at this point, AMD Radeon HD 6970 Tri-Fire is a tremendous value compared to GTX 580 3-Way SLI, and Tri-Fire is the better choice for multi-display gaming.

Given NVDIA's history of excellent SLI scaling, we expected to see the GeForce GTX 580 3-Way SLI dominating AMD Radeon Tri-Fire. Instead, this review has only further reinforced what an incredible value AMD's current generation video cards really are.

In fact, the best case was that GTX 580 3-Way SLI matched Radeon Tri-Fire performance. In none of these games did the average framerate of GTX 580 3-Way SLI exceed that of AMD Radeon HD 6990/6970 CrossFireX. This is bad news for the GTX 580 3-Way SLI folks, considering the Radeon HD 6990 wasn't even running in its OC performance mode. On top of that, three separate Radeon HD 6970 video cards offering triple-GPU performance will be faster still since those have faster core clock speeds and faster RAM speed than what we tested here.

the power consumption -
*www.hardocp.com/images/articles/1303213710rBOPZA7NSR_3_1.gif
Conclusion - NVIDIA GeForce 3-Way SLI and Radeon Tri-Fire Review | [H]ard|OCP

My bad. Mods move it to gfx card section.

 

[Cilus]

Very good read Jas...thanks for the Link. It looks like AMD is seriously improving constantly in their driver, offering more better performance every day in Multi GPU scaling which was really dominated by nVidia couple of years ago.

Hope they come out with some good in House Physics Engine too.

 

[ico]

Nice review. Infact, I'm myself surprised from this.

I guess it is time for everyone to accept that Crossfire scaling in HD 6000 series is superior. And higher VRAM is not the only reason if you ask me.

 

[asingh]

nVidia really lost it 2010-11 regarding thermals and power. Now multi-GPU is slipping too.

Jas, really nice article. Short, informative and to the point. Well done.

 

[Skud]

My mind goes back to the days of X800 when you need special Crossfire slave cards and that Ugly DVI connector. How I hated ATi those days! The 6000 series changed everything though. One major development is the Catalyst Application Profiles which are released as and when required taking care of most of the Crossfire issues.

Once again great article by HardOCP.

 

[vickybat]

Nice review. Infact, I'm myself surprised from this.

I guess it is time for everyone to accept that Crossfire scaling in HD 6000 series is superior. And higher VRAM is not the only reason if you ask me.

Here's a quote from hardocp guys:

For F1 2010 we were able to turn on 4X AA at 5760x1200 to try and push this game. We could not use 8X MSAA as a comparison because the GTX 580 3-Way SLI configuration ran into the VRAM wall at 8X CSAA and 8X MSAA.

For crysis warhead

With GTX 580 3-Way SLI we were able to play at 5760x1200 with No AA and all Enthusiast settings. We were not able to have 2X AA enabled however, once again the VRAM limitation hit us. However, with AMD Tri-Fire we had no problems enabling 2X AA at these settings, providing a better gameplay experience.

How can you say vram isn't the issue? On higher resolutions , with aa and and other texture settings, higher vram becomes a necessity. In case of the trifire config, the vram playing field is 4gb (6990) whereas for the tri sli, the playing field is just 1.5gb.

You can't say that sli scales poorly here. The gpu is clearly held back by the paltry 1.5gb vram of 580 at higher resolutions.

I am sure that a tri-sli setup of 3 gtx 580 3gb versions will go past a 6990+6970 or even 3 6970 setup.

But amd setup consumes a lot less power for the performance and offers good value on setting a multimonitor config at a cheaper price.

 

[asingh]

^^
Vicky, if the 580 SLI is being held back because of the paltry 1.5GB -- it is the GPUs fault right..? So the economics and thermals of this type of solution. XfireX wins this round.

 

[vickybat]

^^ yup it is nvidia's fault of giving such less vram to a strong gpu core.

Definitely xfirex wins the round owing to cheaper setup and 200+ watts lesser power consumption. Fermi's were always power hungry right from the 4 series.

Hope nvidia fix all these issues in its upcoming "kepler" based gpu's.

ps- For sake of performance, tri sli these and see it decimate every competition

 

[ithehappy]

They surely will. But I think this 3 way SLI is absolutely impractical. Wanna compare? Go on with a single pair of SLI. How many of general users or even extreme gamers use Multi Monitor setup?

 

[Skud]

You are right. Very few users have more than a single monitor. But one things for sure, they look AWESOME!!! Again, with AMD, its comparatively easier to setup 3 or more monitors and even a single card is sufficient if you really want to take the plunge.

 

[damngoodman999]

Check out the resolution they benched , its 3 monitors setup 5XXX resolution , No way way Nvidia cards gona beat Ati @ this resolution .
Need to be benched @ single monitor performance , though i accept ATI Thumbs UP for
EYEFINITY

 

[vickybat]

^^ 3gb gtx 580 tri sli can beat a 6990+6970 trifire @ 5xxx resolutions. But the cost and power will go skyhigh and thus not a practically ideal setup.

 

[Jaskanwar Singh]

those who say amd is given 4gb ram then guys 6990 is combined with 6970 which has 2gb vram. so AFAIK 2gb will be used.

and people missed this -

We have given every advantage to the GeForce GTX 580 3-Way SLI configuration in this evaluation, and yet it still can't compete. We are testing with the "slowest" Radeon 6990/6970 Tri-Fire configuration possible in this $1000 price range, and GTX 580 3-Way SLI just can't touch it.

actually truth is they were not comparing with 2xAA even in crysis.

They surely will. But I think this 3 way SLI is absolutely impractical. Wanna compare? Go on with a single pair of SLI. How many of general users or even extreme gamers use Multi Monitor setup?

you need not worry. XFireX rules in dual gpu setups too.

Check out the resolution they benched , its 3 monitors setup 5XXX resolution , No way way Nvidia cards gona beat Ati @ this resolution .
Need to be benched @ single monitor performance , though i accept ATI Thumbs UP for
EYEFINITY

actually you dont expect people to go with triple setups for just full HD resolution

 

[vickybat]

^^Nope its 4gb. The primary cards frame buffer is used. Lets say you xfire 69702gb with 69501gb, there will be 2gb frame buffer. Atleast this is my understanding but i may be wrong.

They slied 1.5gb versions. They said the vrams holding back the gpu. So it has to be the 1.5gb version and not the 3gb ones. Infact the availability of 3gb laced 580's is scarce.
So learning this, we can assume the hardocp guys didn't give all the advantage to 580.

The above sentence you quoted means that they allowed the 580 to be tested in trisli mode instead of sli to give it a fair chance against the trifire setup.

It doesn't mean they tested the 3gb version.

 

[Jaskanwar Singh]

batman the sentence i quoted means that they tested 580 1.5gb tri sli by allowing it to compete comfortably at the settings it could easily play.

 

[Skud]

actually you dont expect people to go with triple setups for just full HD resolution

Even 25x16 res of 30-inchers would be insufficient to stretch those triple setup monsters.You need at least 2 monitors if not more to justify 3-way graphics config.

 

[damngoodman999]

The Real Fact
AMD has got really want to have all these years , Yes their Xfire profiles are gr8 -I ACCEPT

But

Check this Video ! YouTube - Quad SLI vs Quad Crossfire Heavyweight Showdown GTX 590 & HD 6990 Linus Tech Tips

Benched @ 2560x1600 , Single monitor

 

[Skud]

The point is when you are spending $1000 or more on graphics card alone, in all practicality you are not going to run it on a $300 monitor setup. AMD rules at multi-monitor setup. Like nVIDIA has the edge on 3D gaming.

 

[asingh]

Can the nVidia cards run multi monitor on single cards..?

 

[vickybat]

^^ No they can't. The gtx 590 can but its a dual card.