16 - CrossfireX Performance: Mass Effect | Race Driver GRID
Going Quad - Multi-GPU gaming
Here's the point where we startup a little Crossfire testing and try to find out of gaming with 4 GPUs and a fat wallet of 1100 USD will get you some additional lovin'
CrossfireX: Mass Effect
Mass Effect Settings:
- Noise Filter on
- Textures: Extreme high
- Filter: Anisotropic
- Everything maxed out
As you can see CrossfireX kicked in, though please take this result with a grain of salt, as out of three tries all results differed. At one run we even got lower performance opposed to a single X2. None the less, if this is what we can expect .. lovely. But .... that's a lot of dough for a 20% additional gain in performance.
CrossfireX: Race Driver - GRID
Codemasters has released Race Driver: GRID, offering many Race events to compete in. Description is: "Charge a Ford Mustang GTR muscle car through the iconic streets of San Francisco, race a BMW 320Si in the Jarama Touring Car Race and drift around the docks of Yokohama in a Nissan Silvia S15. Race against 11 friends on your favorite track and test your metal online or prove yourself in the single player game." GRID is a stunning game with a great racing feel, but most of all excellent graphics.
Same settings again, 4xMSAA. As you can see we either ran into a CPU bottleneck, or quad GPUs do not kick in whatsoever. In fact providing 4 GPUs with enough geometry requires more CPU cycles. And with CPU bound game .. performance can be lower than the 'typical' two GPU solution. In the condition that you are CPU limited of course.
