DOOM 3

DOOM 3 is arguably the most hardware strenuous of all games to come out this year especially on the video side. Even though DOOM is largely CPU bound at 1024, the SLI setup manages to pull up ahead. As the resolution increases the gap continues to widen. For the ultimate DOOM experience, a SLI set up is a necessity.

We did three runs each with Fraps on a single 6800GT and the 6800GT-SLI setup on the CPU Core level. Basically all the enemies in this one area have to be cleared up before a door turns green and the player can continue on. We played this sequence through until the door turned green and stopped the benchmark. The pie charts above show how the framerates were distributed - red being under 30fps, orange being 30-40 fps, yellow 41-50 fps, blue 51-55 fps and green 55+ FPS. I think the results pretty much speak for themselves as to how much smoother gameplay is with the SLI setup compared to a single 6800GT.

Half-Life 2

Half-Life 2 is heavily CPU dependent for much of the game also. Again we do not see much of a difference between the 6800GT and the SLI rig until we start hitting the high res, high AA settings. The X850 XT PE deserves a special mention here as it manages to stay ahead of the SLI rig until 1600 with 4x AA / 8x AF. The SLI rig manages to keep up very high framerates throughout practically all resolutions with the exception of 1600x1200 with 8xS / 16x AF.

* Note that the custom setting is not a direct comparison between the NVIDIA and ATI card as the antialiasing setting is different - 8xS mode on the NVIDIA and 6xAA mode on the ATI.