The “Kepler” Rides Out – The Benchmarks.
Test 6 – Aliens Vs. Predator.
Another extremely demanding DirectX 11 game peppered with enhanced FX and tessellation. The settings for this benchmark are applied in a txt (config.txt) file prior to running. All options were enabled or set to the highest allowed, tessellation was left on and anisotropic filtering remained at x16 since there is no way to disable it.
No 6990 data this time around, so its Aliens vs. Predator and Nvidia vs. Nvidia! The 680 provides a notable improvement across the board, rising at times to 50% , though surprisingly, the margin is consistently wider when anti-aliasing is disabled. Additional cards allow the 680 to extend its lead further with very little evidence of a CPU generated pile-up. Two 680s are again trade blows with three 580s (a little faster with no eye-candy, a little slower with) and triple 680 setup keeps frame rates above 60fps, even at 5760×1200 with maximum visual quality applied, nothing if not impressive.
If somebody wants to try and justify investing in a 3 way SLI setup but only has a single screen on which to run it, these scaling results would be a good place to start, at least, for those who can’t settle for frame rates under 100fps ;). A possible driver-related oddity is that three 680s scaled more effectively than three 580s, a first in this series of tests.
Test 7 – Batman: Arkham City
There is a very good reason why I chose to include this particular benchmark on the same page as the preceding one, becuase this is what happens when scaling goes spectacularly awry. Not since Grand Theft Auto 4, a game which was largely considered to have next to no support for SLI or Crossfire, have I experienced such a meagre return for the hardware invested.
With all of the latest patches installed and no matter how many runs were completed, the only notable, though still small, performance gains occurred when moving from the 580 to the 680, either in a single card mode or in three way SLI running on a triple screen setup at 5760×1200. Incidentally, three 580s choked when attempting to run the benchmark at this resolution with 8x applied, hence no result was posted. A lack of video RAM, 1.5gb per card compared to the 680’s 2gb, is almost certain to be the cause.
A second 680 actually resulted in a performance decrease in two of the three tests at 2560×1600 and only when AA was cranked up to 8x was any benefit observed when a third card was added . Switching off the game’s dx11 enhancements did nothing to improve matters. On the bright side, the game does at least now run smoothly with DX11 in action and even a single card will ensure perfectly acceptable frames rates.
As if any further proof was needed….try not to laugh! Any chance of another patch to sort this out?