NVIDIA Quad-SLI with the ASUS EN9800GX2

Name: NVIDIA Quad-SLI with the ASUS EN9800GX2 - Page 4
Brand: NVIDIA

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, March 25, 2008, 09:00 AM EDT

Half Life 2: Episode 2

DirectX Gaming Performance

Half Life 2:
Episode 2

Thanks to the dedication of hardcore PC gamers and a huge mod-community, the original Half-Life became one of the most successful first person shooters of all time. And thanks to an updated game engine, gorgeous visual, and intelligent weapon and level design, Half Life 2 became just as popular. Episode 2 offers a number of visual enhancements including better looking transparent texture anti-aliasing. These tests were run at resolutions of 1,920 x 1,200 and 2,560 x 1,600 with 4X anti-aliasing and 16X anisotropic filtering enabled concurrently. Color correction and HDR rendering were also enabled in the game engine as well. We used a custom recorded timedemo file to benchmark all cards in this test.

The ASUS EN9800GX2 Quad-SLI setup showed significant scaling in our custom Half Life 2: Episode 2 benchmark. At both resolution the Quad-SLI rig was significantly faster than a single GX2, and it was the fastest NVIDIA-based configuration. At 1920x1200, scaling wasn't terribly dramatic, but at 2560x1600 the delta was huge. Also note, the dual-Radeon HD 3870 X2 quad-CrossFireX setup held its own and took the lead at 1920x1200, but it fell behind by quite a bit once the resolution was increased to 2560x1600.

Tags: Nvidia, Asus, sli, X2, 980, N9, id

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com