Gaming benchmarks with G80!
So how does the rootin', tootin' wallet-sappin' GeForce 8800 GTX 768MiB stack up against twin GeForce 7900 GTX cards in SLI and a standard GX2?
Evaluated with a trio of older titles that don't exploit the G80 architecture to the fullest, which is the case with practically every game available right now, the XFX card in the SCAN Triad can't quite match the throughput power of 7900 GTX SLI. It's still faster than the 7950 GX2 in the trio of high-resolution, high-quality tests.
NVIDIA would rather us show comparative performance in massively shader-limited games, where the G80 would no doubt trounce even 7900 GTX SLI. The fact of the matter is that those kind of games/engines will be pervasive soon enough, but the true potential of GeForce 8800 GTX (single card here, remember) won't be fully realised until the likes of Crysis hit the shelves.
Check out our full review for further analysis and more gaming benchmarks!
SLI?
We managed to get our hands on another GeForce 8800 GTX card and were able to run a couple of benchmarks in SLI mode, albeit bridge-less. The reason for running bridge-less lies with the 16x PCIe slot configuration on the nForce 680i board, which requires a multi-GPU-forming card to be situated in the bottom 16x slot, stopping us from using a regular SLI bridge connector. We're waiting on NVIDIA to supply the extra-long connector required.It was interesting to note that G80 runs SLI without insisting on an inter-card bridge, with traffic sent through the PCIe bus. Far Cry average framerate went up to 118.31FPS and Splinter Cell's to 106.84, both run at 1920x1200 with 4xAA and 8xAF. We expect performance to improve further once the cards are correctly bridged together.
