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Quality

With that out of the way, let's move on to what we feel is a stronger reason to get an SLI setup - quality. We already can see, there's very tangible image quality benefits from using SLI 8x antialiasing mode. So, we took the same games, ran them with 4x, 8xS and SLI 8x antialiasing in single, multirendering and SLI antialiasing configuration. We do expect SLI 8x performance to be faster than 8xS in both single and multirendering mode, but we weren't sure until we saw the results. So how did the GeForce 7800GTX fare?

Call of Duty - Dawnville, 1024 x 768
Single
Multi
Single
Multi
Multi
82 (4x AA 16x AF)
172.59 (4x AA 16x AF)
293 (4x AA 16x AF)
.
79 (4x AA 16x AF)
171.259 (4x AA 16x AF)
290 (4x AA 16x AF)
.
74 (8xS AA 16x AF)
127.502 (8xS AA 16x AF)
246 (8xS AA 16x AF)
.
74 (8xS AA 16x AF)
127.513 (8xS AA 16x AF)
246 (8xS AA 16x AF)
.
78 (SLI 8x AA 16x AF)
143.921 (SLI 8x AA 16x AF)
211 (SLI 8x AA 16x AF)
Call of Duty - Dawnville, 1280 x 960
Single
Multi
Single
Multi
Multi
81 (4x AA 16x AF)
131.306 (4x AA 16x AF)
207 (4x AA 16x AF)
.
82 (4x AA 16x AF)
131.357 (4x AA 16x AF)
206 (4x AA 16x AF)
.
60 (8xS AA 16x AF)
93.292 (8xS AA 16x AF)
165 (8xS AA 16x AF)
.
60 (8xS AA 16x AF)
93.418 (8xS AA 16x AF)
167 (8xS AA 16x AF)
.
77 (SLI 8x AA 16x AF)
100.638 (SLI 8x AA 16x AF)
135 (SLI 8x AA 16x AF)
Call of Duty - Dawnville, 1600 x 1200
Single
Multi
Single
Multi
Multi
70 (4x AA 16x AF)
96.048 (4x AA 16x AF)
141 (4x AA 16x AF)
.
70 (4x AA 16x AF)
96.077 (4x AA 16x AF)
141 (4x AA 16x AF)
.
46 (8xS AA 16x AF)
68.24 (8xS AA 16x AF)
115 (8xS AA 16x AF)
.
46 (8xS AA 16x AF)
67.89 (8xS AA 16x AF)
115 (8xS AA 16x AF)
.
57 (SLI 8x AA 16x AF)
73.334 (SLI 8x AA 16x AF)
95 (SLI 8x AA 16x AF)

Well, although SLI 8x performance is still pretty far from 4x both in single and multi rendering mode, we can see it's faster than 8xS in both modes, albeit by a small margin. There are several plus points for SLI 8x. On higher resolutions, SLI 8x can still maintain a higher minimum fps than 8xS. And overall, the performance difference is around 15 - 25 % across the board.

Richard Burns Rally - Harwood Forest, 1024 x 768
Single
Multi
Single
Multi
Multi
104 (4x AA 16x AF)
149.748 (4x AA 16x AF)
223 (4x AA 16x AF)
.
106 (4x AA 16x AF)
153.801 (4x AA 16x AF)
225 (4x AA 16x AF)
.
64 (8xS AA 16x AF)
93.075 (8xS AA 16x AF)
156 (8xS AA 16x AF)
.
65 (8xS AA 16x AF)
95.4 (8xS AA 16x AF)
162 (8xS AA 16x AF)
.
83 (SLI 8x AA 16x AF)
114.035 (SLI 8x AA 16x AF)
174 (SLI 8x AA 16x AF)
Richard Burns Rally - Harwood Forest, 1280 x 1024
Single
Multi
Single
Multi
Multi
78 (4x AA 16x AF)
118.616 (4x AA 16x AF)
217 (4x AA 16x AF)
.
106 (4x AA 16x AF)
151.905 (4x AA 16x AF)
222 (4x AA 16x AF)
.
45 (8xS AA 16x AF)
64.664 (8xS AA 16x AF)
103 (8xS AA 16x AF)
.
46 (8xS AA 16x AF)
66.949 (8xS AA 16x AF)
110 (8xS AA 16x AF)
.
59 (SLI 8x AA 16x AF)
78.674 (SLI 8x AA 16x AF)
112 (SLI 8x AA 16x AF)
Richard Burns Rally - Harwood Forest, 1600 x 1200
Single
Multi
Single
Multi
Multi
59 (4x AA 16x AF)
86.316 (4x AA 16x AF)
144 (4x AA 16x AF)
.
85 (4x AA 16x AF)
134.558 (4x AA 16x AF)
216 (4x AA 16x AF)
.
34 (8xS AA 16x AF)
48.651 (8xS AA 16x AF)
74 (8xS AA 16x AF)
.
35 (8xS AA 16x AF)
51.072 (8xS AA 16x AF)
80 (8xS AA 16x AF)
.
44 (SLI 8x AA 16x AF)
57.629 (SLI 8x AA 16x AF)
78 (SLI 8x AA 16x AF)

Here, we're seeing a similar situation. Don't let the graph fool you. While SLI 8x performance levels is definitely nowhere close to 4x, it's still significantly faster than 8xS with any mode. Clearly, computing 8 samples antialiasing is still too heavy even for the GeForce 7800GTX SLI.

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