Battlefield 3 In SLI
Last week, Nvidia called to let us know that Sandy Bridge-E really allowed three-way SLI to shine in games like Battlefield 3. It showed performance results up to 20% higher than Intel’s prior-generation platform, but it didn’t say whether it used the campaign or a multi-player map for testing. I really like the idea of benchmarking a 64-player rush match, yeah. But I just can’t accept that the results are reliable. I even reached out to Johan Andersson at DICE for guidance on testing, and he admitted there aren’t any good deterministic sequences to profile.
It turns out that this sequence does demonstrate scaling at all three resolutions. A trio of GeForce GTX 580s yields great performance from 1680x1050 to 2560x1600. It just doesn’t shine significantly brighter on Core i7-3960X.
So, here’s my interpretation of Nvidia’s findings. It’s not that Core i7-3960X allows three-way SLI to stretch its legs in any particularly unique way. In a purely graphics-bound scenario, it scales almost as well on a $300ish Core i7-2600K or a $1000 Core i7-3960X. However, I suspect Nvidia did its benchmarking in a multi-player map, where processor performance is more influential. Less-powerful CPUs become bottlenecks with so much graphics muscle behind them, inhibiting scaling.
If anything, this serves as a reminder why gamers shouldn’t skimp on a processor and load up on GPUs. In a title like Battlefield 3, there are environments that tax graphics (the campaign) and others that exact a more demanding load on the CPU (multi-player). Balancing the two is critical. So, if you’re willing to splurge on three-way SLI, be prepared to also spend generously on a complementary platform. Today, Sandy Bridge-E, by virtue of its per-clock performance and six-core configuration, is unquestionably the best you can present to a trio of potent GTX 580s.
