Richard Burns Rally - Harwood Forest (Transparency AA),
1024 x 768
Single
Multi
Single
Multi
Multi
Richard Burns Rally - Harwood Forest (Transparency AA),
1280 x 960
Single
Multi
Single
Multi
Multi
Richard Burns Rally - Harwood Forest (Transparency AA),
1600 x 1200
Single
Multi
Single
Multi
Multi
Looks like we're limited to 1024 x 768 - those of you who can tolerate slightly lower frame rates might want to consider 1280 x 1024. Those scares might not seem much, but remember this is 8x antialiasing with transparency supersampling. That's probably the best image quality you can get from SLI. Well, there is SLI 16x, but we think the frame rates will be horrendously low even with a pair of GeForce 7800GTX.
Conclusion:
What did we learn from this little experiment? Like we said before, SLI can be considered a gift for those looking to maximize image quality rather than performance. With low end cards such as the GeForce 6600 SLI, you'll experience lower performance penalty when enabling AA and AF than with a single card. However, in most cases you won't experience higher frame rates without AA and AF. So, make sure your SLI card of choice can manage at least 4x AA and 8x AF to gain the most out of SLI, which consequently should be around 30 %.Compared to SLI multirendering mode, we prefer SLI antialiasing mode. Using SLI 8x is more 'predictable'. Image quality is higher, though it's not entirely the same as 8xS. It worked very well with all games we tested today, and it's consistently faster than 8xS with both SLI single and multirendering mode. The same can't be said for SLI multirendering mode - it's very 'picky' in terms of increases in performance. Performance can even be slower in some cases. No such thing with SLI antialiasing mode. The downside: you have to make sure your SLI card of choice can push really high frame rates at 4x AA, since the lowest SLI antialiasing setting is actually two 4x sample patterns blended together.
There are things NVIDIA can do to improve SLI, although we doubt it's possible with the current generation of cards. For one, there should be SLI antialiasing 4x (or even better, 4xQ) mode. Imagine having quality very close to 'real' 4x AA with slightly higher frame rates. At the very least, it should really help transparency supersampling antialiasing Then there's of course the issue of 'forced' antialiasing. We'll have to see in the future whether or not SLI will be more flexible than today.
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