Nvidia G71 - rumours, questions and whatnot

Those 3dmark scores do seem a bit strange. Considering how normally GPU limited 3dmark03
is with little variation from CPU. For comparisons sake. My 7800GTX SLI setup scores 26000+ In 3dmark03.

 

What were the numbers? The pics no longer show.

 

Obviously we haven't seen any benchmarks yet. . .but, err, is it just me or is it looking like 7900GT in sli might be the. . .well, "price/performance" champ in NV's lineup at the top? Which sounds odd at $700, but it seems like it might be. . .

 

Yeah, but only in certain games, we already all know the drawbacks to multiGPU systems

 

Yeah, it looks like SLI didn't "kick in". But then again, I doubt that a single 7900GT will score 8500 in 05 with such a slow CPU. Bit if thats the case, G71 looks pretty good. Feed it with a highend CPU and it's gonna rock in 3dmark-05/06.

 

A 7900GT is basically equivalent spec-wise to the 450Mhz eVGA 7800GTX that I had previously and that scored in the high 7000's in 3dmark05 so either there are some efficiency gains somewhere or those numbers are bogus.

 

Or maybe SLI is working fine, but it's being held back by the CPU.

 

Hey, feels like home!

 

I can't see the scores since you guys sucked all their bandwidth , but with such a slow CPU, definitely.

I'll wait for the official reviews before I put any bets.

 

Nope. 3dmark05 and 06 are heavily GPU bound. It would take a much slower CPU than that to bring dual-GT's down to that level. That 7900GT score is only 9% faster than a 7800GTX - it is obviously from a single card. I think it's been confirmed in the original thread at xtremesystems that there is a driver bug preventing SLI from working in 05/06.

3dmark03 which is more CPU bound than 05 IIRC scaled nicely so it is obviously not the CPU.

 

Then please explain why my 3DM05 scores have almost doubled when I switched from AthlonXP3000+ to Athlon64 35090+? With the 6800GT.

 

That's strange because I had a 6800GT as well and I was maxing it out on 3dmark05 with a AthlonXP @ 2.4Ghz. And it is a bit naive to think that a A64 3000+ is that much of a bottleneck.

Anyway, for comparison -
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/evga-7800gtx_22.html 26258 3dmark03
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/evga-7800gtx_24.html 11321 3dmark05

Link to GT benches - http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1026359

Notice how the 3dmark03 scores are in line (7%) with dual-7800's but the 3dmark05 score is much lower (33%) compared to the same configuration? Don't you think 3dmark03 would have been severely hampered by the CPU as well?

 

Here's a 3dmark-05 test run with an A64 3000+@stock and an overclocked 7800 GTX (535/1350). 7900 points. http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=1611666

NV must have tweaked something, not only shrunk the poor thing.

 

Those scores are definitely not right, the Asus Dual 7800GT scores 27067 in '03 and 11348 in '05.

 

05 and 06 are CPU bottleneck in SLI. ppl at XtremeSystems proved that. Therer is a nice point increce when using duel core CPU in 05 and 06 at slower speeds then a single core CPU. Both are CPU bottleneck now with the newer video cards out now.

 

Are you saying that 3dmark03 is less CPU bound than 05 and 06 in SLI? I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to say.

 

is that all you changed? H/W? and the same drivers? Where both fresh xp installs? and im sure your settings where the same.. default 3dmark?

 

Yeah, that really doesn't make any sense. Consider:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/11/21/the_mother_of_all_cpu_charts_2005/page30.html

The Athlon XP 3200+ is totally GPU-limited on the 6800GT in the test system.

 

Well there were a couple recent patents regarding memory efficiency. One was on partitioning and another was on simulating multi-ported memory using less transistors than "real" multi-ported memory as seen in Xenos/R520. Haven't seen anything to indicate that they beefed up the pipelines though.

Although, those numbers might just be screwy for whatever reason (fake, bad drivers etc) and the 7900GT might simply just match the 7800GTX.

 

Well 05 is cpu bound in GT1 and GT2 for SLi whereas 03 is cpu bound for modern cards in GT1 but not cpu bound for GT2,3 and 4 where the vast majority of the points are.

03 is less cpu bound than 05 IMO. The best test for a video card now in my opinion is nature ( GT4) in 03 and the SM3 tests in 06. Take those together and you get a good indication of gpu performance in shader heavy DX9 games.