If you thought the GeForce GTX 280 would suffer the same temperature problems in SLI as the GTX 260 in SLI mode, then you’d be mistaken. However, the powerful two-card solution encounters other problems. For instance, maximum power consumption is 540 watts, but both overclocked cards should fallen between 640 and 710 watts with the test system. The lower power consumption in SLI mode means that the temperature and noise level is lower than for a single card.
Thermal throttling of the graphics chip (as seen on the GTX 260) is not the reason why the GTX 280 in SLI only hits 85 degrees. A defect is also not likely, as the frame rates are slightly higher than the level of the Geforce GTX 260 in SLI. And both GTX 280 cards function normally when they’re running on their own. The loss of performance can only be explained by the lack of CPU horsepower to help facilitate scaling, which can be clearly seen from our overclocking results.
Although both GTX models are overclocked from the factory, the overall evaluation shows a loss of performance. If you average all the games of the benchmark suite, the overclocked GTX 280 in SLI saw a drop in performance of 1.1%, whereas the single card has a 5.8% increase. In Mass Effect (UT3 Engine), the single card at 1920x1200 pixels—with anti-aliasing—achieved an increase in frame rate of around 16%. In SLI mode, it decreased 0.8%.
Here are some highlights: World in Conflict at 1920x1200 pixels with 4xAA achieved 32.8 fps on a single card. With GTX 280 in SLI it hit 45.6 fps (the MSI overclock produced 44.2 fps). Mass Effect at 1920x1200 pixels with 8xAA and a single card reached 60.6 fps, and with the GTX 280 in SLI hit 74.6 fps (the MSI overclock was at 74.0 fps).
As you can see, SLI adds an acceptable level of additional power at the right resolutions, but without the platform to back that configuration up, you’ll actually sacrifice performance. If you look at the individual benchmarks, the worst values come from low resolutions and badly optimized games, which react negatively to SLI if they react at all. An important factor is now also the CPU—with more power, higher frame rates should be possible, and MSI’s factory overclocking should also provide additional gains. But without a powerful processor it is better to stick to a single card for 3D games, as the GTX 280 in SLI requires a little more in the way of system performance.
In 2D mode, the power consumption is 203 watts, while in 3D mode the pair draws 540 watts (from the wall). The GTX 260 in SLI drew 610 watts. According to the manufacturer’s specifications, both 3D cards should lie between 640 and 710 watts with the test system. If you wish to operate the overclocked GTX 280 in SLI mode, you will need a branded power supply with between 530 and 570 watts and 44 to 48 A on the 12 volt rail for a standard system. If the entire system reaches the top value of 710 watts (from the wall) a branded power supply with between 600 and 650 watts on that rail should be sufficient.
- Taxing Modern CPUs With Powerful Graphics
- Comparing The GPUs And Test Setup
- Radeon HD 4850
- CrossFire With Radeon HD 4850
- Radeon HD 4870 OC
- CrossFire With Radeon HD 4870 OC
- GeForce GTX 260 OC
- SLI With GeForce GTX 260 OC
- GeForce GTX 280 Superclocked
- SLI With GeForce GTX 280 Superclocked
- Assassin’s Creed v1.02
- Call of Duty 4 v1.6
- Crysis v1.21 High Quality
- Crysis v1.21 Very High Quality
- Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.4
- Half Life 2: Episode 2
- Mass Effect
- Microsoft Flight Simulator X SP2
- World in Conflict v1.05
- 3DMark06 1280x1024 v1.1.0
- How Overclocking Affected The MSI Cards
- Overall Performance
- Price/Performance Comparison
- How About Graphics Image Quality?
- Power Consumption, Noise, And Temperature
- Frames-Per-Watt For The GTX 200-Series And HD 4800-Series
- GTX 200-Series And HD 4800-Series At 1280x1024
- GTX 200-Series and HD 4800-Series At 1680x1050
- GTX 200-Series And HD 4800-Series at 1920x1200
- All Cards Compared At 1280x1024
- All Cards Compared At 1680x1050
- All Cards Compared At 1920x1200
- Is The Upgrade Worthwhile?
- Swapping Old Chips For New
- Evaluation Of The New Generation
- Conclusions – Radeon HD 4850 Is The Winner

My one complaint? Why use that CPU when you know that the test cards are going to max it out? Why not a quad core OC'ed to 4GHz? It'd give far more meaning to the SLI results. We don't want results that we can duplicate at home, we want results that show what these cards can do. Its a GPU card comparason, not a complain about not having a powerful enough CPU story.
Oh? And please get a native english speaker to give it the once over for spelling and grammar errors, although this one had far less then many articles posted lately.
Remember, the more you know.
but yes the article was off to a great start, maybe throw some vantage in there as well?
Precisely; several other websites tested with 8.7 and 8.8 long before this article was published. Why couldn't you? Look at the 8.6 release notes; it doesn't even mention the HD4000 series cards as supported devices.
Brilliant guys.
This is another reason why the results are tanked, in XP you get 15% more performance compared to these values
After having the Mythbusters appear, you would think this would be the most comprehensive, "scientific," factual, and update article meeting Tom's usual standards.... I didn't finish reading this.
(82 temperature in 2D 69 in 3D with no fanfix)
Also, I can understand why TH didn't have time to use 8.8 since it was released publicly on August 20, 2008 (Although ATI would have gladly released a beta version to TH for testing purposes).
However, AMD publicly released stable Catalyst 8.7(internal version 8.512) on July 21, 2008. That's more than a month ago. It has numerous improvements (for example, CF performance increase, improved stability and performance under Vista). To be honest, most of the improvements range from 4% to 15%. (In CF case, up to 1.7 X scaling)
TH has rarely been unfair and/or inaccurate and they always owned up to their mistakes before, and I trust them to re-test ATI products with at least 8.7 if not 8.8 to continue to uphold their values and integrity.
Now on to my criticism.
I can understand how you want to keep the results homogeneous with previous results but if you already know that a stock QX6800 will bottleneck the system, be proactive in fixing it. At the very least you should have done a small segment of the review showing the newer cards with a quad core overclocked to 4.0Ghz.
Also, if you have ever read any of the older Toms articles, you would know that you can still minimise the bottleneck from a slow GPU bye raising the resolution. Perhaps you should test the fastest cards at the highest resolutions?
I can also understand why you did not use the latest nVidia drivers. It takes time to create a review of this scale and the GF8/9 series drivers have been stable for some time. As the GT 200 series brings no new features to the table, they would needed little optimisation for their newer cards allowing the slightly dated drivers to perform nicely.
What I can not understand is why you would use ATI's 8.6 drivers??
The 8.7 drivers have been out for more than a month bringing quite a few fixes/optimisations with it. I understand it probably took more than 9 days to complete all of these benchmarks (today is the 29th, the 8.8 drivers were officially released on the 20th) but you should have called ATI and asked for their latest drivers. The 8.8 drivers were leaked at least a week before the official release which means, if you could nurture a relationship with the people you review, they could/probably would have provided them to you. There is still no excuse I can see for testing with the old 8.6 drivers. Seriously, it does not even have official support for the 48X0 cards...
From the title of the article,"The Fastest 3D Cards Go Head-To-Head", I would have assumed that you would have been testing the Fastest 3D cards? What happened to your 4870x2? As you have already attempted to review it, we know you have your hands on one. How can you claim to review the "Fastest 3D Cards" and still leave out the fastest card?
In summation, I liked many things from this article. The layout was nice and a little more technical than we have been seeing as of late. I enjoyed the comparison charts at the end and I think you should adopt a similar method for the CPU and GPU charts. I would have thought this was an excellent and well thought out article if it had not been for the glaring and obvious deficiencies in reason. I give you credit for stepping Toms in the right direction. With a little more unbiased comparison, critical thinking and common sense I could come to see reviews such as this in a very positive light.