Left 4 Dead VGA performance with 23 graphics cards Guru3D

[Guru3D News]

Left 4 Dead is a game about escaping from different places infested with Zombies. Today we'll look at the Left 4 Dead game and fire off 23 graphics cards at this title to see what performance we get...

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[albion]

Wow that must of took ages to do. Thanks for this.

[mandex]

nice job ;D

thx for article

[Cybermancer]

Originally Posted by Guru3D News

The first thing we noticed was that 3-way SLI was not responding well at all. There seems to be a driver bug. Though 3-way SLI was fully active and visible though the sliders, it would just not perform the way it should.

The 3 x SLI result with the GTX280 is indeed very surprising. LOL
Maybe the 180.60 or 180.70 Beta driver fixed this bug already?

[Year]

nice one Hilbert.

EDIT: how do you timedemo/bench Left4Dead?

is it a built-in thing?

in the page it says

Software benchmark suite

Left 4 Dead.

how do i bench or what software did you use to do it?

thanks.

[cowie]

does this help year?


If you would like to try out our timedemo yourself, you can download it here.

1. Copy the “guru3d.dem” timedemo to your Left 4 Dead folder. Typically this folder is:

x:/Program files/Steam/SteamApps/Left 4 Dead/Left 4 Dead/

2. Start the game.
3. Set all options to maximum as shown below. Disable Vsync.
4. Press tilde “~” to open the console (make sure you enabled developer mode in the options menu)
5. Type “timedemo guru3d” to run the benchmark.
6. Check the results by pressing tilde “~”.


btw this game is like ssII but with zombies

[Hilbert Hagedoorn]

Yeah, page 4 of the article describes all + here you can download the timedemo.

Click

[WhiteLightning]

ah i forgot about the record mode in hl2 engine

[Year]

thanks guys, gonna try this out right now. much appreciated.

lol i missed page 4 and went straight to the benchmarks hence why i missed it i guess. bleah.

btw thanks for providing the timedemo Hilbert.

Edit: worked fine, 1440x900 + 4xmsaa + 16xaa everything to the max = 143fps

[Thehypnotoad]

The thing that struck me as the strangest here was that with 8x AA on the 4850 beat the 9800GTX+ every time but it was just the opposite with 4x AA on.

What would cause this to happen? Are ATI cards at the mid level better at anti ailising or is this just a driver thing?

Otherwise cool article shocking how poorly the 7800 did seeing as it was a great card at the time.

[kylzer]

Originally Posted by Thehypnotoad

The thing that struck me as the strangest here was that with 8x AA on the 4850 beat the 9800GTX+ every time but it was just the opposite with 4x AA on.

What would cause this to happen? Are ATI cards at the mid level better at anti ailising or is this just a driver thing?

Otherwise cool article shocking how poorly the 7800 did seeing as it was a great card at the time.

either left for dead supports dx10.1 or the new HD4xxx series can handle heavy AA better.

[Year]

Originally Posted by Thehypnotoad

The thing that struck me as the strangest here was that with 8x AA on the 4850 beat the 9800GTX+ every time but it was just the opposite with 4x AA on.

What would cause this to happen? Are ATI cards at the mid level better at anti ailising or is this just a driver thing?

Otherwise cool article shocking how poorly the 7800 did seeing as it was a great card at the time.

as far as my experience goes and as a long time nvidia customer, i had various ATI card (8500 64mb, 9700 Pro, X850) and i can say for certain that they handle stuff like AA/AF better if not quicker, something to do with the way they cache textures and do the calculations, in other words ATI cards are that tiny bit more efficient overall.

that doesn't mean the 9800GTX+ is a poor card, far from it, nvidia cards are work horses and able to hold their own in many games if not beat most ATI cards so don't let Left4Dead results sway you.

each game behaves differently on different cards, if you optimize nvidia and ati drivers most of the time you'll find ATI cards will provide that tiny bit smoother gameplay compared to nVidia even if FPS benchmarks are identical.

with all this said, perhaps next driver update or a patch for Left4dead may improve performance on 9800GTX+ cards.

[Denial]

Not that it really matters, but why vista 32bit? How much memory does 32bit actually recognize with 3 gtx280's in there?

[Year]

Originally Posted by Denial

Not that it really matters, but why vista 32bit? How much memory does 32bit actually recognize with 3 gtx280's in there?

xp/vista 32bit has a limitation of 4GB of total ram (more like 3.5GB), 3x GTX280 are 1GB each so 3GB total which is below the limit and remember that 4GB of ram is one thing and 3dcard vram is another thing they do not mix so the OS has no problem dealing with it.

32bit usually is more compatible with software than 64bit that may be the reason why they went with 32bit instead of 64. i might be wrong though (probably am).

[Denial]

Originally Posted by Year

xp/vista 32bit has a limitation of 4GB of total ram (more like 3.5GB), 3x GTX280 are 1GB each so 3GB total which is below the limit and remember that 4GB of ram is one thing and 3dcard vram is another thing they do not mix so the OS has no problem dealing with it.

32bit usually is more compatible with software than 64bit that may be the reason why they went with 32bit instead of 64. i might be wrong though (probably am).

Memory mapped devices use address space. A video card is a memory mapped device, which is why it shows 3.5gb's instead of 4 max on most systems. With three video cards, I'm assuming it will show even less.. ~2.75gigs.

But yeah i guess compatibility is a good reason.. i dunno though. I'd still think a 64 bit platform would be better.

[Year]

Originally Posted by Denial

Memory mapped devices use address space. A video card is a memory mapped device, which is why it shows 3.5gb's instead of 4 max on most systems. With three video cards, I'm assuming it will show even less.. ~2.75gigs.

But yeah i guess compatibility is a good reason.. i dunno though. I'd still think a 64 bit platform would be better.

you are right and i was wrong, it's a 4GB total, so adding more videocards = less memory because it's not 4GB per device, but 4GB as a whole and as such if you have 4GB of ram (3.5gb) and add a second video card it will still some of that ram because it's not being addressed.

http://www.gpgpu.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3449

64bit would definitely be better at this point indeed.

[Cybermancer]

Originally Posted by Year

adding more videocards = less memory because it's not 4GB per device, but 4GB as a whole and as such if you have 4GB of ram (3.5gb)

In colloquial terms that is correct.

[Dr4kE]

hi, nice website, good work. gratz !
i discovered 3d Guru 2 weeks ago, and i am really impressed.

So, concerning this article, i think you should use 2 colors like red (Ati) and green (nvidia), to show us more easily how MSAA & Anisotropic filtre impacts Nvidia or Ati Cards.

Hope you will notice my advice.

thx, c ya.

dK

[r3s]

I really like this game but i am sorry .....

that review and the time spent timedemoing all those cards is completely USELESS, it doesn't go anywhere near the level of strain that will be put on the graphics card when you have a massive horde of zombies swamping you.

Quite simply it is showing cards performing better then they will as a whole playing through the majority of the game.

[proFits]

So that's where Hilbert been hiding all that time XD

[Klementh]

The timedemo does no longer work with the patched version of the game. Can we have a new one? or, is it possible to make our own timedemos?

[Aura89]

Originally Posted by r3s

I really like this game but i am sorry .....

that review and the time spent timedemoing all those cards is completely USELESS, it doesn't go anywhere near the level of strain that will be put on the graphics card when you have a massive horde of zombies swamping you.

Quite simply it is showing cards performing better then they will as a whole playing through the majority of the game.

the point is any decent modern and fairly cheap GPU can run this game just fine, my gf's computer with a 9600 GT and (which is a modern and CHEAP gpu) can play this game with the massive amounts of hords on 1680x1050, all the way the highest (though 8xaa) and not get bothered by lack of fps

[eat@joes]

My hd 4670 runs through this game without any problems...and most other games. Passive cooling too which is great.

Who needs good graphics when you're just focusing on blasting away zombies? A fantastic time sink. I wish more games focused on the game play and not the scenery.