PCIe And CrossFire Scaling: Does Nvidia's NF200 Fix P55?

Features
By Thomas Soderstrom
published

Benchmark Results: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky

Clear Sky requires a great deal of GPU power in order to generate high frame rates, but usually differentiates for bandwidth only at its highest settings.

At 1920x1200 with 4x multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA) enabled, we finally reach a point where the single GPU simply isn’t good enough to achieve 40 frames per second (FPS). For that, we needed two graphics processors, and it didn’t matter which motherboard we added them to.

At 2560x1600, a reason to buy a more expensive X58 or NF200-equiped P55 motherboard finally emerges. Three Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards were required at this setting, but only the top-three motherboards could take advantage of the added computational power to produce playable frame rates (above 40 FPS average).

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
62 Comments Comment from the forums
  • liquidsnake718
    Score One for the X58. The NF200 should help the P55 however but at an added cost. ALl in all interesting to see that Nvidia has been busy making this for the onboard and motherboard vendors instead of focusing on the GF100. I am sure they are really strategizing and letting AMD/ATi get the upper hand for a short time as their target market for business is also reaching a wider market in motherboard vendors. Then when GF100 comes out, ppl will see the type of quality GPUs that are meant to please the eye and take on the best and most demanding apps/games/HD content.
    Reply
  • outlw6669
    With dual CrossFire/SLI (where it really matters most) it is kinda hard to fix something that ain't broken.

    Nice gains with three way though.
    Pretty sure if you have $1200 to dump on GPU's you would have gotten the proper platform in the first place...
    Reply
  • falchard
    MSI wins again.
    Reply
  • apache_lives
    well there you go, high end x58/1366 systems with a high end price offer the higher performance, and pushing a mid-range 1156 platform to high end performance requires extra exotic equipement/chips to do it - no new news here
    Reply
  • apache_lives
    outlw6669With dual CrossFire/SLI (where it really matters most) it is kinda hard to fix something that ain't broken.Nice gains with three way though.Pretty sure if you have $1200 to dump on GPU's you would have gotten the proper platform in the first place...
    Exactly my point +1000
    Reply
  • elmo_gr
    Testing should have been done with 5670's
    Reply
  • mfarrukh
    Just Give us the Dman FERMI already
    Reply
  • 2shea
    It proves again that the x58 is stock the best performer albeit not very much in comparison with the buffed up p55 gf200 chipset. But in practical mode, I don't see the big wins with triple vs. dual gpu's. Moreover I probably won't even go dual videocards because of the relative high fps which don't matter much, 60+ is more than enough for any game on a flatscreen monitor. 30+ is mostly enough for most single player games.
    It DOES however prove that the chip gives a reasonable gain if games are going to demand more then they do now. The only games available that can really max out anything are crysis, WIC, total commander and that's pretty much all.
    For the rest pretty good article though
    Reply
  • Hupiscratch
    I prefer to use the remaining 4x PCI-e 2.0 lanes of the X58 for a Fusion-io Duo drive. Can you imagine?
    Reply
  • a4mula
    I bow to you Crashman. This was the granddaddy of all p55 reviews and I openly admit to standing corrected. I honestly didn't believe the NF200 could pull it off, but I was obviously wrong.

    I wish this review had come a week earlier, I would have gone 1156 over 1366 but at least it finally showed up. The last vestiges of X58's hold over P55 have been erased in my mind.

    Now you can move on to figuring out SATA 6Gb/s for us. I know, I know I'm never pleased. Great work.

    Reply