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Dual 6800 speed

Posted: 2004-06-19 07:29am
by Ace Pace
First dual-GeForce 6800 benchmark results

Alienware moves to clear up consumer confusion; releases 6800 benchmark results.
In response to a recent unauthorized leak, Alienware today released its first 3DMark03 benchmark performance numbers from a test system running its new "Video Array" dual-video card technology first introduced at this year's E3.

The document released to press lists 3DMark03 benchmark results comparing an Alienware 3.4GHz Intel Xeon test system running two GeForce 6800 video cards against the same system with only a single GeForce 6800 video card. The released document, a presentation slide dated from June 8th, includes 3DMark results taken from two settings: 1600x1200 with 8xAA (anti-aliasing) and 8xAF (anisotropic filtering), and 1600x1200 with only 8xAF.

The Video Array enabled dual-GeForce 6800 system outperformed the single video card system by a significant amount, outperforming the single card solution by almost 77 percent, scoring 3,105 3DMarks compared to1,758 3DMarks at 1600x1200, 8xAA, 8xAF. In the 1600x1200, 8xAF test, the dual-video card solution showed a 42 percent improvement, scoring 8,538 against the single card system's 5,992.

Alienware plans to release the first Video Array enabled ALX systems at the end of Q3 or the beginning of Q4 of this year, with prices starting over $5,000.

By James Yu -- GameSpot
POSTED: 06/18/04 06:07 PM PST
Holy shit, these numbers are amazing, who has the money for that system :shock:

Title fix - Phong

picture

Posted: 2004-06-19 09:08am
by Ace Pace
+http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/im ... hmarks.jpg

Direct linking is bad, mmkay? - Phong

Posted: 2004-06-19 02:27pm
by Crayz9000
I don't really believe 3DMark benchmarks anymore... I want to see actual game performance...

Posted: 2004-06-19 02:30pm
by Ace Pace
Crayz9000 wrote:I don't really believe 3DMark benchmarks anymore... I want to see actual game performance...
Ignoring the game tests, since they ARE shit, look at the fill rate and the other tests, I suspect Alienware will release more stuff when they actully finsh the entire system.

Posted: 2004-06-19 10:36pm
by The Kernel
Ace Pace wrote: Ignoring the game tests, since they ARE shit, look at the fill rate and the other tests, I suspect Alienware will release more stuff when they actully finsh the entire system.
Since there shouldn't be any overhead with regards to fillrate on synthetic tests, it's not really surprising that the Alienware VA is getting an even 2x the fillrate on 3dMark. The real question is how the shared resources are going to effect such a design.

For example, memory bandwidth in the Alienware VA setup is going to be a serious problem. Texture data is going to have to be mirrored across both boards which effectively halves availible memory bandwidth assuming total duplication of texture data (which isn't always going to be the case, but it can come close in some scenes).

Another potential problem is the load balancing between the two cards and the shared PCI-e bus (these cards use a bridge chip to share the same lanes). PCI-e has plenty of bandwidth, but I'm wondering how exactly the Alienware setup is going to solve the problem of bus allocation (obviously they don't have a snoop bus or anything that exotic).

At a guess, I'd say if Alienware can get 50% improvment on average in real games, they will have made their product a success, but people who think that they will get a 2x performance improvement on any real games are dreaming. The only situations I can think of where double performance would be possible is in games that are heavily limited by the speed of pixel shaders.

Posted: 2004-06-20 12:36am
by Praxis
And people call G5's expensive :roll:

(j/k there, no flames please)

That looks like it'll have some INSANE gaming performance. Of course, with my luck, if I buy that suddenly all future games will require 64-bit processors and it'll be unable to play games in a year :lol:

Posted: 2004-06-20 06:16am
by Ace Pace
Praxis wrote:And people call G5's expensive :roll:

(j/k there, no flames please)

That looks like it'll have some INSANE gaming performance. Of course, with my luck, if I buy that suddenly all future games will require 64-bit processors and it'll be unable to play games in a year :lol:
Well, IIRC you can get a ALX on 64 bit.

Information

Processor = AMD Athlon 64 FX-53+ Processor with
HyperTransport Technology

Before the bored among us try to get the highest price possible
I allready did.
$25,082.00 as low as $752/mo.*

Posted: 2004-06-20 08:55am
by Hamel
Playing doll with your links:

Code: Select all

[url=link here]Text here[/url]
You really should read the BBCode page ~.~

Posted: 2004-06-20 09:05am
by Ace Pace
Hamel wrote:Playing doll with your links:

Code: Select all

[url=link here]Text here[/url]
You really should read the BBCode page ~.~
I do read, I just forget it alot. :oops:

Posted: 2004-06-20 12:31pm
by Praxis
Ace Pace wrote:
Well, IIRC you can get a ALX on 64 bit.

Information

Processor = AMD Athlon 64 FX-53+ Processor with
HyperTransport Technology
Ah cool, I thought it was a P4EE.
Before the bored among us try to get the highest price possible
I allready did.
$25,082.00 as low as $752/mo.*
Pfft. Amateur.
I went to Apple's website and I saved the page to my hard drive, then cracked the code to let me enter something like 9 digits for the amount of computers. It was something like 90 trillion dollars for 999999999 dual G5's with RAID, 500 GB hard drives, fibre optics, 8 GB of RAM, all sorts of goodies, etc, ans 999999999 23" flatscreen monitors and 999 iPods and 999 of each peice of software you could add on ;)

Wonder what I could get with Alienware?

Posted: 2004-06-20 01:17pm
by Ace Pace
Well all you have to do is add billions of these 25K$ to the shopping cart, then billions of the P4 reguler Alienware which ends up 18K.