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NVIDIA GeForce 3-Way SLI and Radeon Tri-Fire Review

hardocp said:
The performance we experienced is a bit unexpected. We figured that GeForce GTX 580 3-Way SLI would compete much stronger with and in some comparisons dominate AMD Radeon HD 6990/6970 CrossFireX "Tri-Fire" performance, especially when you consider that three GeForce GTX 580 video cards cost between $475-$555 more than our Tri-Fire configuration. With that kind of cost difference, GTX 580 3-Way SLI needed to eclipse AMD Tri-Fire gaming performance, but 3-Way SLI did not.

In fact, the best case was that GTX 580 3-Way SLI matched Radeon Tri-Fire performance. In none of these games did the average framerate of GTX 580 3-Way SLI exceed that of AMD Radeon HD 6990/6970 CrossFireX. This is bad news for the GTX 580 3-Way SLI folks, considering the Radeon HD 6990 wasn't even running in its OC performance mode. On top of that, three separate Radeon HD 6970 video cards offering triple-GPU performance will be faster still since those have faster core clock speeds and faster RAM speed than what we tested here.

We have given every advantage to the GeForce GTX 580 3-Way SLI configuration in this evaluation, and yet it still can't compete. We are testing with the "slowest" Radeon 6990/6970 Tri-Fire configuration possible in this $1000 price range, and GTX 580 3-Way SLI just can't touch it.

The Bottom Line
AMD Radeon Tri-Fire is giving you the same or better performance than GTX 580 3-Way SLI for $500 and 200 watts less. You get both a money savings and a power savings using Radeon 6990/6970 Tri-Fire instead of GeForce GTX 580 3-Way SLI.

It just makes no sense to build a GTX 580 3-Way SLI currently. AMD Radeon 6990/6970 Tri-Fire is better in terms of value, efficiency, and gaming performance than GTX 580 3-Way SLI. If you want to utilize that performance, the 2GB of RAM per GPU on the Radeon HD 6970 will allow you to do this and provide a noticeable gameplay experience and visual improvement over GTX 580 3-Way SLI. No other conclusion can be made at this point, AMD Radeon HD 6970 Tri-Fire is a tremendous value compared to GTX 580 3-Way SLI, and Tri-Fire is the better choice for multi-display gaming.

Given NVDIA's history of excellent SLI scaling, we expected to see the GeForce GTX 580 3-Way SLI dominating AMD Radeon Tri-Fire. Instead, this review has only further reinforced what an incredible value AMD's current generation video cards really are.
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For those who don't like link and run posts, Tri-Fire wins
 
Slammed 5-0
Code: 
We are testing with the "slowest" Radeon 6990/6970 Tri-Fire configuration possible in this $1000 price range, and GTX 580 3-Way SLI just can't touch it.
 
Since amd brought out the 68xx cards crossfire scaling has been better than sli. I did think the extra power of gtx580's would still pull them ahead of the 6970 tri-fire though.

Amd has done a good job with crossfire as back when it was 58xx v gtx470/80 these tests would have most likely went the way of nv.
 
It says in the review that they made sure they weren't hitting any vram limitations. If that is indeed accurate that is very impressive from trifire.

One thing that can't be taken away is that crossfire scaling has come on leaps and bound with the 6xxx series and probably currently has the edge on sli.
 
liquidex said:
It says in the review that they made sure they weren't hitting any vram limitations. If that is indeed accurate that is very impressive from trifire.

One thing that can't be taken away is that crossfire scaling has come on leaps and bound with the 6xxx series and probably currently has the edge on sli.
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Xfire has a pretty good lead over SLI, at least with the Cayman Vs GF110.
 
Ejizz said:
^^^
See above. ;)
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LOL, yeah I saw that. Actually I was just being flippant about the numbers. :D

Personally I think it's much more relevant than they make out, we are already seeing some games using almost 1.5gb at just 1080p. Also, they don't go to much trouble to explain how and why they are making that statement. They're just guessing, and that's shoddy reviewing in my book.
 
wolvers said:
LOL, yeah I saw that. Actually I was just being flippant about the numbers. :D

Personally I think it's much more relevant than they make out, we are already seeing some games using almost 1.5gb at just 1080p. Also, they don't go to much trouble to explain how and why they are making that statement. They're just guessing, and that's shoddy reviewing in my book.
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I am pretty sure they done these same tests with 580sli v 6990 and 6970 crossfire. The gtx580 in sli was the fastest solution so memory was not an issue then. Amd have improved performance since then but i think its more down to tri-fire scaling better than tri sli. I would say memory has nothing to do with the results as sli was fine so tri-sli should have no memory issues.
 
well im deffos getting another 6950 to make it three, all i need now is a board with the nf200 chip on it because initially i thought i could run 8x8x4 but it seems like reality is 8x4x4, i could live with one card running at four but not two. will be selling my brand new never been used b3 p8p67 deluxe i guess.
 
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