Multi-GPU World Tour Part II: GPUs

'Unlimited Budget' system:

At the bleeding edge, we configured the fastest system available for both ATI and NVIDIA - that meant a pair of Radeon X1900's in CrossFire and a pair of GeForce 7900 GTX's in SLI. We used the current fastest available processor - AMD's Athlon 64 FX-62 - of course, this is subject to change in the near future with Intel's upcoming Core 2 Duo processors, but they're not expected to ship for a while yet. Additionally, waiting for Conroe and AMD's upcoming price cuts would have changed the whole scope of the article massively, too.

Along with the FX-62, we used 2GB of SuperTalent DDR2-800 memory, running at 4.0-4-3-8 2T with only 1.8V. Due to the nature of high end hardware just after launch, we stuggled to get enough of the same motherboards on the NVIDIA side. We will use a combination of Foxconn C51XEM2AA and ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboards in the NVIDIA test systems - both perform similarly.

For the ATI system, we had some issues finding a readily available socket AM2 CrossFire Xpress 3200. However ECS's KA3 MVP is virtually ready for retail in North America, and is already selling in the UK. We are told by ECS that it should be shipping in North America in the second half of July.

Finishing up...

This concludes our coverage in the multi-GPU world tour article series. Bjorn3D will be looking at platform performance later this week - we'll let you know as soon as the article is published! After the weekend, we'll see the first of five articles covering the 3D performance over a wide range of games and applications, starting with HardInfo. We're eagerly-awaiting the outcome of the mass of testing that will follow over the next few weeks!

Article List:

• Introduction - PenstarSys - Live!
  
• GPUs - bit-tech - Live!
  
• Motherboards - Bjorn3D - Live!
  
• Common Benchmarks - HardInfo - Live!
  
• Xfire most played - NeoSeeker - Live!
  
• Uncommon Benchmarks 1 - NVNews - Live!
  
• Uncommon Benchmarks 2 - Legit Reviews - Live!
  
• Uncommon Benchmarks 3 - Rage3D - Live!
  
• The Verdict - Guru3D - Live!