LOSTCIRCUITS

SPEC.org vierwperf 8.1: SLI AntiAliasing

So far, there was no tangible advantage of having two x 16 PCIe slots available, quite honestly, we did not expect to see anything like that anyway. Each x8 slot in a standard SLI configuration already supports 4 GB/sec which is realistically all the system memory can supply anyway. In this respect it is also necessary to take into account that the nForce4 Pro chipset used on the Foxconn board comprises two separate controller ICs and, by extension, this has to add extra latencies for a slot to slot communication compared to a monolithic solution since there are extra latches involved and the entire bus configuration is quite a bit more complex. In addition, the Foxconn Winfast NFPIK8AA-8KERS with its socket 940 interface needs to run registered ECC memory which adds additional address and command latencies to each access. The fact that there is relatively little effect of this only stresses the excellent level of implementation on the level of both the chipset and the board manufacturer.

One scenario, though in which the per slot bandwidth supposedly makes all the difference in the world is when we are starting to use Anti-Aliasing. Current drivers do not yet support the 32x antialiasing that will be implemented in future driver revisions, so we had to stick with the supported 4x AA per card or 8 x SLI AA mode:

Blue: DFI "2x8 lanes", lavender: Foxconn "2x16 lanes"
There is a definite small increase in performance on the Foxconn board compared to the DFI board. The one notable exception is 3dsmax, in case AA was enabled, we could not wiggle the mouse-bug out of the system....

Gaming Performance

Regardless of how inconsequential the gaming performance of high end professional cards is, we are still constantly presented with the same question namely, whether it is really possible to play games on professional graphics cards. Frankly, there is no reason why not other than the feature set in the control panel, particularly the presence of antialiasing settings. Arguably, there are faster cards out there at lower prices but even 3DMark06 works just fine on these monsters:

In any event, the average score at default settings of 3DM'06 and with the cards running in default mode was around 6600, with a tad of overclocking to 500/1300 MHz we easily broke the 7k mark.

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