3D Vision Performance

To test the performance hit 3D Vision brings to the table, we setup a Core i7-965 Extreme Edition testbed with 3GB RAM, Windows Vista 64-bit, and NVIDIA’s 216-core GeForce GTX 260 and 9800 GTX+. Let’s look at the results:

Notes

As you can see, enabling 3D Vision slashes performance roughly in half for the GeForce 9800 GTX+ and GeForce GTX 260. The single GeForce 9800 GTX+ configuration is unplayable in every game except perhaps Left 4 Dead, in our opinion you’ll need a pair of 9800 GTX+ cards to deliver acceptable performance with 3D Vision. The GTX 260 is also barely able to average playable frame rates in World at War, Left 4 Dead, and Fallout 3.

Going from one card to two for SLI brings performance up quite a bit, but the SLI 3D Vision setups still frequently fall behind the single card equivalent setup running with 3D Vision turned off: the single GeForce GTX 260 card with 3D Vision off outran the GTX 260 SLI 3D Vision rig in World at War and Fallout 3, while performance was dead even in Left 4 Dead.