Vista 64 vs XP 32 (SLI vs Non-SLI) Performance

[BMoffa]

In my continuing quest to figure out why my system isn’t performing the way I think to should I have just run a series of 3DMark benchmarks comparing performance of SLI and non-SLI under Vista 64 and XP 32. These are the results:

VISTA 64 in SLI mode: 11983
VISTA 64 in single GPU mode: 11683

XP 32 in SLI mode: 13278
XP 32 in Single GPU mode: 12046

SLI gives me a little 3% boost under VISTA 64 and about 10% under XP 32.

In SLI mode XP 32 is about 10% better than VISTA 64.

Any comments or explanations?

I don’t have VISTA 32 installed on this system. Has anyone run similar benchmarks between VISTA 32 and VISTA 64, or XP 32 and Vista 32.

One other thing. I ran the XP 32 SLI benchmark one more time with my CPU over-clocked to 3.0 GHz and got a score of 16077. Unfortunately I can’t get VISTA 64 to come up with the same over-clock. It gets the BSoD after the time I enter my password and before the desktop appears.

[david.hill64]

3dMark scores are usually lower with Vista than XP. You'll probably get the comment that it is because Vista sucks! It does use more hardware resource than XP.

When you did the benchmarking, did you disable the services that Vista runs in the background by default which are not done in XP? Things like disc defrag? I don't know how that service is affected by your RAID5 set up, but RAID5 takes a lot of processor power and will give you a performance hit. It will affect the benchmark if running at the same time.

I would Google 8800 SLI performance and check the reviews. 3-10% seems small.

Good luck with making the overclock work in Vista. Have you double checked your memory sticks with memtest?

[Methious]

Take a look at our FarCry 2 Review to get an idea of SLI scaling with the new 180.xx drivers that improve SLI Scaling. See it Here (http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1389)

Keep in mind that your probably bottlenecking your 8800's with a lower clocked CPU. I've hit 14,999 with a single 8800gt on a well tuned system.

3DMark Vantage shows SLI scaling better than 3Dmark06. Turn off PhysX and you'll get a true reading of your GPU and CPU. When you get to SLI/CrossFire the biggest limiting factors are Game Optimization, and CPU bottlenecking.

Core i7 has a much more efficient design, and clocks like a demon, even it doesn't eliminate the bottleneck on top end GPU's so you can imagine what the 775 platform is doing to it.

[foxmobouser]

I dont have my comp with me but from the top of my head these were my results.

All in Vista 32

MSI 8800GT OC version at 700core/1000/1750 shader as i recall
Score 3Dmark06 at its defalut resolution (1200x1024 or something ):

13500 ish single gpu

Single EVGA 9600 GSO overclocked to same 700/1000/1750

11000 ish

SLI 9600 GSO with a 8800GS(updated with 9600's bios) at same OC settings

Score 17356.

Now that is a big jump even over the single 8800 GT OC