Test System Setup

Processor(s): Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3.3GHz (366MHz FSB x 9 and 1:1)

Motherboard(s): abit IN9 32X-MAX Wi-Fi (Supplied by Universal ABIT)

Memory: 2 X 1GB Crucial PC8000 5-5-5-15 (Supplied by Crucial)

Hard Disk(s): Hitachi 80GB 7200RPM SATA 2

Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2

Drivers: nVidia ForceWare 97.92 and DX9c

As mentioned earlier, the new test system setup was somewhat of a pain but eventually we got our head around it and had it all up and running quite smoothly.

With the Dell 30" LCD monitor employed into action, we ran most of our benchmarks at three different resolutions which make sense for this particular SLI setup. We tested at 1280 x 1024 for 4:3 17"/19" LCD gamers, 1920 x 1200 for users of a 23" or 24" LCD's and 2560 x 1600 for people lucky enough to have a 30" LCD monitor.

We opted for skipping 1600 x 1200 as from a three resolution point of view, these were the most logical.

Let's find out what happens when we add an extra card to the already powerful 8800GTS 320MB.

3DMark05

Version and / or Patch Used: Build 130

Developer Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com

Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark05/

Buy It Here

3DMark05 is now the second latest version in the popular 3DMark "Gamers Benchmark" series. It includes a complete set of DX9 benchmarks which tests Shader Model 2.0 and above.

For more information on the 3DMark05 benchmark, we recommend you read our preview here.

We can see that SLI gives us a clear performance gain off the bat and that as we move higher up in the resolution (as more stress is placed on the GPU) the percentage that SLI is faster grows quite significantly.