cjl :
Very nice. I'd be interested to see some gaming benchmarks to see how it compares to my i7+4870x2 setup.
Alright guys, I ended up staying awake all night to finish off these benchmarks to give you a taste of a 4850X2 and a 4850 in TriFire.
The benchmarks are taken from the following 4 games: Devil May Cry 4, Half-Life 2, Race Driver: GRID, and Far Cry 2. As much I would like to do this for a living, I did not have all the time in the world to get these benchmarks ran at various resolutions… thus I stuck with 1920 x 1080 with no less than 8xAA. However, they all reflect in-game play experience. Don’t focus too much on tests with close frame rates, there is naturally testing error involved with benchmarking (about + 2% to -2%)
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Devil May Cry 4 is running in DirectX 10 mode with all settings maxed out. I used the built-in benchmarking test for my results. The benchmark consists of four different scenes. Scenes 3 and 4 are less graphically intense, while Scenes 1 and 2 are more busy.
Scene One Average FPS:
This scene is a good match for a 4850X3. Regardless of Phenom II’s processing power, the video cards are almost scaling perfectly. One sees around 2.7 times of the performance of a single 4850 when running Tri-Fire. The 3.53 GHz Phenom II with the overclocked L3/IMC does a little better than “multiplier-only” 3.5 GHz Phenom II.
Scene Two Average FPS
Here we see a little of the same as Scene One, though it should be noticed that there was a little fall off on the 3x Overclocked 4850 setup until you reach the more-tweaked 3.53 GHz Phenom II.
Scene Three Average FPS:
Scene Three demonstrates what happens when you have video cards that are not being completely utilized. This scene is less visually stressful, thus the video cards pass the bottleneck onto the processor. As the processor becomes more powerful, the frame rate starts to increase. A straight overclock from 3.0 to 3.5 produces about a 4.62% gain, while going from 3.0 to an IMC-modified 3.53 gives an 11.86% gain. Pretty impressive!
Scene Four Average FPS:
Scene Four is not quite as simple as Scene Three, though it shows the same tendencies. The 4850X3 setup does well increase with additional processor power, but far less than before. This test is fairly balanced in its CPU/GPU combination. The Tuned 3.53 Phenom II with the overclocked TriFire does succeed in breaking the curse of having a lower frame rate than when paired with a non-overclocked TriFire.
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Far Cry 2 is running in DirectX 10 mode with all settings maxed out. I used the built-in benchmarking tool for my results. The benchmark loops through the “Small Ranch” sequence 3 times and the final average of the minimum, the average and the maximum is taken.
Far Cry 2 Minimum FPS:
At 1920x1080 with 8XAA and 16xAF, anyone playing with a single 4850 silently wishes to jump off a bridge. The processor clock cannot come to the rescue, not even an i7. But if you tag in a fellow 4850, you get some near perfect scaling and some decent minimum frame rates. When running the Phenom II @ 3.0 with two 4850s overclocked, you see an incredible 2.05 times the performance of a single overclocked 4850. As we move into TriFire, crossfire scaling almost seizes to exist. My video cards get starved and the Phenom II starts to show its weakness, but it can be helped. In these conditions, my Phenom II is the weakest link and overclocking shows that this processor still has a little fight left in it. The 3.53 GHz IMC-modded processor steps in and brings the minimum frame rate up by 153% (36.47 vs. 23.76) when running the 4850X3 configuration at their factory clock speeds. Anything over 30 frames per second is a respectable worst frame rate in a game like this or Crysis.
Far Cry 2 Maximum FPS:
Here we see the least meaningful frame rate, the maximum frame rate. It’s usually a burst and it’s usually not useful when gauging a in-game play experience. To further support the aforementioned need for CPU power, you can see the benefits of running a higher clock speed than the stock 3.0 GHz.
Far Cry 2 Average FPS:
The frame rates resulting from overclocking with 2-Way and 3-Way Crossfire see healthy boost when at any CPU clock speed. The test has many segments loaded with visual complexity, which can be better handled by overclocking the video cards. The Phenom II running stock doesn’t have the extra CPU cycles left over to efficiently feed a third card. So you can move up to different levels of processing power and see a noticeable increase in TriFire well. Overall, overclocking the 4850X3 setup and the processor led to about 1.5 times the performance had previously. A stronger processor (A higher clocked Intel Core2 or an i7) would allow for better crossfire scaling, though 246% performance of a single card isn’t too shabby.
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Half-Life 2 is running in DirectX 9 mode with all settings maxed out. It is running the Lost Coast add-on (free download on STEAM). I used the built-in Video Stress Test for my results. Unlike the other tests, I proceeded to use 24xCSAA. Otherwise, none of the in-game AA settings would bottleneck a single 4850. This way, I can atleast show “some” scaling. Obviously, I don’t have the processor power to even touch two 4850’s potential in this game.
Half-Life 2 Lost Coast FPS:
You can see that processor means everything in these tests. The transition from 4850X2 to 4850X3 does practically nothing to the frame rate, because 4850X2 was already sitting on its hands waiting for the CPU to give it something to do. Overclocking the processor better utilizes these video cards, but the second and third cards are greatly under-utilized and could benefit from more processor power (even though we humans can’t tell anything over 60, making more FPS unnecessary). It is noteworthy regarding the boost in performance seen from modifying the IMC on the Phenom 2. When the video cards are not overclocked, the IMC-mod brings an additional 10.06% performance gain over the “multiplier only” method of overclock the Phenom. As a simple observation, one could argue that the IMC overclock has led to performance boost similar to overclocking an additional 200-300 MHz.
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Race Driver: GRID is running in DirectX 9 mode with all settings maxed out. I used FRAPS to record the frame rates from my tests. The benchmark is basically me starting the very first race of the game, waiting for ten seconds after the starting light goes green and then totaling the car into the wall on the first right turn (right around the 20 second mark). The average of the minimum, the average and the maximum are recorded by FRAPS.
GRID Minimum FPS:
The more important frame rate, for those looking for a flawless experience, is a smooth sailing on any 4800 series graphics card. It’s very shader 3.0 heavy, thus making ATI cards have a field day with it. At 1920 x 1080 with 8xAA 16xAF with the Phenom II and a single 4850 running stock, you end up with a minimum of 49 FPS. Pretty ridiculous. There is a decent amount of scaling on the way to 2-Way Crossfire, though it runs out of processor power to really push a second 4850 to its full potential. The Phenom II brings you past the “flawless” barrier at stock clock speed once you run a 2-way or 3-way crossfire, but that’s about it. Get an i7 if you need a minimum frame rate of 100+ FPS (For those Nvidia 3D Glasses-wearing individuals).
GRID Maximum FPS:
Not quite as important of a test, though it shows us what good scaling looks like (something a stronger processor would make clearer throughout these GRID benchmarks).
GRID Average FPS:
You see, more or less, a similar scenario to the “Minimum FPS” results. However, the TriFire setup does make a more noticeable appearance, though it is clear that more CPU power enable higher FPS. Overclocking these 4850s results in NO additional performance, so don’t bother if this game is the reason you did it. The IMC-modded Phenom II makes it clear that there is extra performance to be had at the same clock speed as its 3.5 GHz counterpart (making the Phenom II more competitive with the Core2 architecture on a clock to clock basis).
EDIT: I fixed some typos...