So we start over again, but now grab a couple of NVIDIA's finest. Here we have two GeForce GTX 260 cards setup in SLI. Blue line is the old Core 2 Duo 3.0 GHz platform which clearly shows a massive CPU bottleneck.

Then in green, we stumble into a CPU bottleneck, yet nearly double the performance for the X58 platform. A clear and obvious proof that the faster system really works well.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 SLI (2 GPUs - 2 Cards)

When we look at two GTX 280 cards in SLI we see very similar behavior and performance. Up to 1600x1200 we actually run into that CPU bottleneck again on the X58 platform. An impressive difference, but we'll need an even faster processor if we want to push more frame-lovin' goodness from the 2 way-SLI rig.

But heck, let's go nuts and add yet another GeForce GTX 280, 3-way SLI.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 3-way SLI (3 GPUs - 3 Cards)

3-Way SLI. Unfortunately we are so CPU bound, that even a Core i7 965 processors can not drive the GPUs to their maximum performance.

In a later stage of this article we'll proof you this thesis by overclocking the Core i7 processor, and instantly you'll notice an advance in overall GPU rendering performance.

But wait -- that's not it for Brothers in Arms. Let's show a bundle of cards in some charts versus all popular resolutions so you can compare a little:

Multi-GPU scaling overview on X58 Core i7 965 system

Here you can observe various graphics cards versus various resolutions on the X58 platform with Core i7 965 processor. Do you notice the constant ~110 FPS numbers starting at GTX 260 SLI? That's the classic behavior for the game being CPU bound. This is the only title tested where we noticed so much CPU limitation with Multi-GPU rendering platforms.

Let's have a look at Call of Duty 4.