Asus EN7950GX2 - GeForce 7950 GX2
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
Getting quickly to the point, we do not have Quad SLI numbers for you here since quite simply, Quad SLI was not working for this game engine. There was no gain in frame-rate what-so-ever with a pair of GeForce 7950 GX2s but certainly a single 7950 GX2 has its merits with single card multi-GPU rendering.
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;) SC: Chaos Theory |
Based on a heavily modified version of the Unreal Engine, enhanced with a slew of DX9 shaders, lighting and mapping effects, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is gorgeous with its very immersive, albeit dark, environment. The game engine has a shader model 3.0 code path that allows the GeForce 6 & 7 Series of cards, and the new X1000 family of cards, to really shine, and a recent patch has implemented a shader model 2.0 path for ATI's X8x0 generation of graphics hardware. For these tests we enabled the SM 3.0 path on all of the cards we tested. However, High Dynamic Range rendering was disabled so that we could test the game with anti-aliasing enabled (a future patch should enable AA with HDR on the X1K family). We benchmarked the game at resolutions of 1,280 x 1024 and 1,600 x 1,200, with 4X anti-aliasing and 16X anisotropic filtering enabled. |
Once again the Asus EN7950GX2 shows it's the fastest single card in the heat, clocking in as expected right on top of our 7950 GX2 reference numbers. A pair of Radeon X1900s in CrossFire mode turn out to be the fastest dual-GPU configuration all around and the 7900 GTX in SLI a close second. However, we would question the expense of one of these dual card setups, when a single GeForce 7950 GX2 like the Asus card can give you completely playable performance up through 1920 res with AA and Aniso turned up high.
