# NVIDIA Quad-SLI vs. ATI Crossfire



## W1zzard (Apr 29, 2006)

At this year's CeBIT the most controversial and most debated new hardware was NVIDIA's Quad-SLI, which was awarded "best product of CES" earlier this year. We had the chance to put two identical retail 7900 GX2 QuadSLI and X1900 XTX CrossFire systems right next to each other and evaluate them. There were quite a bunch of surprises.

*Show full review*


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## POGE (Apr 30, 2006)

W1zzard said:
			
		

> Dear NVIDIA,
> I have a great performance improvement suggestion for your next QuadSLI driver release:
> if ((resolutionX<1600) && (resolutionY<1200))
> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;DisableQuadSLI();



Lol...


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## OOTay (Apr 30, 2006)

Wow... very nice review! the way i see it now after this review is that quad sli is a huge waste of money.


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## FLY3R (Apr 30, 2006)

OOTay said:
			
		

> Wow... very nice review! the way i see it now after this review is that quad sli is a huge waste of money.



Yeah big waste!!!

By the way awsome review!!!


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## Migons (Apr 30, 2006)

Wah??!! You freaking *bought* those systems?!?!


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## wazzledoozle (May 1, 2006)

QuadSLI is just another example of how awesomely useless sli is.


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## zekrahminator (May 1, 2006)

Not to mention the fact that crossfire is alot better then SLI...Crossfire is like graphics card raid lol. No SLI profiles required, high framerate, awesome quality, and sometimes better pricing. 2 of ATI's elite were better then Nvidia's new beast lol. Oh yeah and crossfire doesn't require an insanely long video card . Though in my opinion, any multi-card configuration is useless, I'm perfectly happy with my single X850XT.


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## thedivinehairband (May 1, 2006)

Single card ftw!!!

Maybe in the years ahead I'll scope out a x800 crossfire from ebay for a lil extra juice.

Or just buy a better card!


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## i_am_mustang_man (May 1, 2006)

FINALLY!! the best quadsli v crossifre match up i've seen!  thank you!

about the results themselves, all i have to say is wow.  with such a price premium and all the hype, one would hope 4xSLI would pwn, but guess not. i was really hoping it would just obliterate everything, because nothing is better for us middle of the pack gamers  (as well as everyone else!) than technological advancement at the top, so it can trickle down.

oh well.

i'm wondering if it could possibly be a driver optimization issue, because it does seem to be having some major difficulties.  I know that some cards increase like 10-15% in speed as newer drivers emerge, maybe for this as well (and maybe more than that too?)?

so...what are you doing with the rigs now..... lol


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## PVTCaboose1337 (May 1, 2006)

WOW!  That was helpful.  Would have liked to see a single x1900xtx.


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## DaJMasta (May 1, 2006)

The GX2s dissapoint me....


Hopefully they'll get their drivers up to par and the raw power will show itself....


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## i_am_mustang_man (May 1, 2006)

just a random question: any chance we could get most likely the sickest screenshot ever of FEAR at 2560X1600 using fraps of a grenade exploding?  i think that would be the dankest pic of all time!


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## newtekie1 (May 1, 2006)

> After some time I found that changing the "PEG Link Mode" from "Auto" (CMOS default, system shipped with it) to "Normal" or "Disabled" helped stability a lot. PEG stands for PCI-Express Graphics, so it would make sense that ASUS overtuned something in their BIOS. Nothing is known about what this option really does.



I have this motherboard(A8N32), and the PEG Link Mode option automatically overclocks the graphics cards, that is its only function.  Which explains the instability.


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## wazzledoozle (May 1, 2006)

How the hell do the cards not overheat like crazy with them being so close?
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/QuadSLI/images/card1.jpg

WTF!?!?


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## HookeyStreet (May 1, 2006)

WOW! Awesome review W1zzard and what an eye-opener!  You would think that the QuadSLi setup would destroy the CrossFire setup, this review just shows that ATi's technology still towers over nVIDIA (IMHO no flaming please  )


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## gR3iF (May 1, 2006)

what a waste of money omg!
quad sli is sensles or even crap?
no one would play a shooter on a high res lcd 

but it shows that nvidias star is falling since years


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## RickyG512 (May 1, 2006)

im am ATI all the way, but i still say we shouldnt bad mouth this until nvidia bring out proper drivers


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## Migons (May 1, 2006)

Here you have, real live W1zzard in action!  
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31368

Is that Rolex?


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## newtekie1 (May 1, 2006)

wazzledoozle said:
			
		

> How the hell do the cards not overheat like crazy with them being so close?
> http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/QuadSLI/images/card1.jpg
> 
> WTF!?!?




The severally underclocked the cards to get them to not overheat.  They are basically clocked to almost 7900GT speeds.


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## W1zzard (May 1, 2006)

Migons said:
			
		

> Here you have, real live W1zzard in action!
> http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31368
> 
> Is that Rolex?



no that's not me... thats theo


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## bruins004 (May 1, 2006)

This is just like the problem Nvidia and ATI has with Crossfire and SLI in the beginning.  You used to only be able to get about a 5% increase (which sucked).  Now you get around a 30% increase average.  I bet the same will eventually happen for Quad SLI, but thats only once they optimize the drivers.  Unfortunately, there will never be a 100% increase bc there is always some overhead between the 2 cards, but it would be nice to see an 80% increase some day.


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## tofu (May 1, 2006)

DaJMasta said:
			
		

> The GX2s dissapoint me....
> 
> 
> Hopefully they'll get their drivers up to par and the raw power will show itself....




LOL by the time they do that, I bet ATI will have quad Crossfire!!!
Too late for that.  NVIdia the dissappointer, especially for the price you pay.


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## newtekie1 (May 1, 2006)

The overhead on syncing 2 cards is already big enough...syncing 4 cards has to have a pretty big overhead.


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## Migons (May 1, 2006)

W1zzard said:
			
		

> no that's not me... thats theo



Damn... Thought you were Theo - all those glasses etc...


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## trog100 (May 1, 2006)

i can give u some single x1900xtx 3Dmarks.. just add about 1200 points to the the 2006 score for the missing cpu core.. the one that matter to me is the 2005 score.. its a good general game comparison..  

amd 3700+ cpu at 2.9.. x1900xtx card at 690/800.. 2 x 1 nanya memory 420 at cas-3..

3Dmark 2000 = 31237

3Dmark 2001 = 33202

3Dmark 2003 = 19254

3Dmark 2005 = 11934

3Dmark 2006 = 5385

trog

ps.. i also liked the oblivon results.. he he he..  and the ati explanation of why the x1900 runs sooo hot..


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## mR Yellow (May 3, 2006)

Nice review W1zzard. Thanx for showing us how worthless QUAD SLI really is, plus its a waste of money. I would consider Crossfire or even Dual SLI but QUAD seems like another ploy to get our hard earned cash. All this just for the biggest e-penis   

My next upgrade will only be once DX10 boards come out.


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## RickyG512 (May 3, 2006)

actualy in the review over at xbit

the quad sli kills crossfire, quad sli beats crossfire in every bechamark


http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/geforce7900-quad-sli.html


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## Sasqui (May 4, 2006)

RickyG512 said:
			
		

> actualy in the review over at xbit
> the quad sli kills crossfire, quad sli beats crossfire in every bechamark
> http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/geforce7900-quad-sli.html



Wow - you must have read one or two pages of that article, it certainly does not beat in every benchmark - the X1900XT comes out on top in many of them in that article (but less than half).  

They beat the hell out of QSLI in the end for stability problems.


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## encrypted (May 7, 2006)

In the year 1999 everything should become new and fresh.....On the black Friday, the 15 December 2000 3dfx was bought up by its competitor nVidia ...
do you remember these.....
	

	
	
		
		

		
			



 
is this nvidia's new plan


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## W1zzard (May 7, 2006)

no, you cant put 4 current gpus onto one pcb without major loss of signal integrity and the need for ALOT of pcb layers


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## gR3iF (May 7, 2006)

but the heat output would be funny^^
4x4 79gtx cores xD  
that would be hot^^


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## infrared (May 13, 2006)

W1zzard said:
			
		

> [page=Introduction]
> Dear NVIDIA,
> I have a great performance improvement suggestion for your next QuadSLI driver release:
> if ((resolutionX<1600) && (resolutionY<1200))
> DisableQuadSLI();



Fixed code:

if ((resolutionX<1600) && (resolutionY<1200))
   Don'tBuyQuadSLI();


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## CjStaal (May 13, 2006)

lol w1zz smacked them lol
nvidia=inferior technology!


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## TheeMahn (Jun 6, 2008)

I just do not understand personally.... I bought my rig in greed for speed, coming from a SLI rig (ASUS A8N-SLI deluxe) with 2 7600's to quad crossfire "junk", to quad cores NTL from dual core, the dual core with 2 NVidia cards spins circles around my new rig as far as video.  ATI has piss poor support, total crap, zero support for linux disables 3 of 4 vid cards (nvidia supports *nix, both SLI and twinview, zero with ATI in *nix), in windows still garbage, sure I know the bus gets cut down.  ATI is worthless, all I can hope is since AMD bought ATI support actually starts.  Before it is over I will probably end up selling the board & video cards and buy a real mainboard.

Just my 2 cents,

TheeMahn


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## imperialreign (Jun 6, 2008)

Holy thread resurrection, batman!


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