SLI vs. Crossfire: Which is King?

When we compared the GeForce GTX 480 and the Radeon Hard disk drive 5870 as unmarried carte solutions we gave the nod of approval to the Radeon for a few simple reasons. Fifty-fifty though the GeForce was faster, it's also more expensive and also power hungry, making it a less practical pick. The Radeon HD 5870 on the other paw is almost equally fast, information technology's a better value per dollar, and much more fuel efficient.

Still at that place are those who volition be looking to purchase not i but rather two loftier-stop graphics cards, taking the GPU upkeep from the $400-500 range to nearly a thousand bucks. In this situation, nosotros saw an opposite direction with Nvidia claiming the crown of who is who in the PC graphics globe.

In our tests ATI's Crossfire technology didn't scale nearly equally well as Nvidia'southward SLI engineering. Although historically nosotros accept seen far worse results from dual GPU configurations, in this ocassion Crossfire provided with an average frame per second improvement of 62%. That is, doubling down your investment on a Radeon GPU will provide you with that kind of performance boost.

And so we accept the GeForce GTX 480 SLI cards which toll ~25% more than the Radeon Hd 5870 Crossfire graphics cards. Even so these cards were able to calibration considerably meliorate providing an average of ninety% more than performance when gaming at 2560x1600 in the games we tested. When you consider that the GeForce GTX 480 was already a bit faster than the Radeon Hard disk drive 5870 in virtually games, and and then adding a second graphics card to each configuration favored the GeForce GTX 480 by well-nigh xxx% things beginning to add up.

With the exception of Crysis Warhead (8xAA) and Metro 2033 (4xMSAA/16xAF/Tessellation) which didn't run correctly on the ATI platform, nosotros institute that the GeForce GTX 480 SLI setup delivered on boilerplate 34% more than operation than the Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire graphics cards.

Granted the major victory was had when testing with Metro 2033 and Tessellation enabled, where the GeForce GTX 480 SLI setup was 94% faster. The Nvidia cards withal provided just over 20% more than operation in newly released games such every bit Aliens vs. Predator and Battlefield Bad Visitor 2. The GeForce GTX 480 SLI cards were just 6% faster when testing with Just Cause 2 and xviii% faster in Metro 2033 with Tessellation disabled.

Fifty-fifty if you remove the extreme scenarios the GeForce GTX 480 SLI cards were ~20-25% faster than the Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire cards which covers the pricing gap.

Earlier we wrap things up we must bear on the ability figures as they were a little disturbing when looking at the Nvidia cards. Our test system was consuming 787 watts under full load which is incredible, even more than so when y'all consider that this was 33% more the Radeon Hard disk drive 5870 Crossfire cards. Nigh pocket-sized room heaters only swallow ~1000 watts of power, so essentially a GeForce GTX 480 SLI organization can serve 2 purposes, the 2nd of which volition likely exist welcomed during winter months.

Even the nearly addicted of gamers will not spend all their fourth dimension playing games, and this is why the idle consumption of 348 watts is besides a little scary. This ways that from the moment you boot up to the moment you close down your computer, it volition take consumed no less than 348 watts at whatever given time.

Regardless of this, if you can handle the power requirements and so SLI is the manner to become for your high-finish dual GPU needs. For the lower-end cards we observe it harder to go past a pair of Radeon Hard disk drive 5770 Crossfire graphics cards every bit they outpace contenders such every bit the GeForce GTX 470 and Radeon Hard disk 5850. However for those seeking the ultimate high-end feel nosotros highly recommend checking out a GeForce GTX 480 SLI setup.