Xpand Rally
Next up is the rather nice-looking driving game, Xpand Rally. Interestingly, this is the only title in our benchmarking suite which doesn't support SLI 'out of the box' (In other words, there is no application profile in NVIDIA's current drivers for the game, therefore SLI is disabled by default). So, to enable SLI usage in this game, we needed to set up a custom application profile within the NVIDIA ForceWare drivers, and set multi-GPU rendering to enabled from there. This allowed the title to make use of both GPUs successfully without any graphical issues. Our benchmark here uses a HEXUS custom replay, and framerate for said replay is measured using FRAPS.At default settings, SLI appears to make no difference whatsoever, leaving the 3D1 running neck and neck with a single GeForce 6600GT. This allows the 6800GT to lead the pack by a few frames per second, particularly at 1280x1024, before inexplicably dropping off severely in performance at 1600x1200, leaving itself behind both of the other boards.
Once anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are enabled, Gigabyte's 3D1 comes into its own, not only leaving the 6600GT in the dust but also outperforming the 6800GT by a handful of frames per second until 1600x1200, where the 6800GT gains the lead.