NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX/GTS

[no-X]

Haste: To by byl texture-fetch, ne vertex fetch

If there's one thing that defines 3DMark05's performance, it's that it's heavily geometry limited in a couple of ways. With over 1M vertices per scene most of the time, that's a whole lot of big (which seems to be the key) vertex buffer objects to be locked in memory and pushed over the graphics interconnect bus to the card, as geometry changes during the game tests.

Secondly, when those buffers get to the card, the IHVs are seeing usage patterns that put the buffers all over card memory, not just in one place. So the cards become vertex fetch limited, as the vertex engines wait for vertices to be streamed out of card memory and into their input buffers, by the driver which points to locations in card memory for the vertex engines to work on.

The limitation in 3dmark05 isnt exactly that its CPU process limited. But vertex setup limited. Since 3dmark05 pushes so many polygons. The Graphics cards are now having to wait on the CPU to setup vertex data. So yes this is a CPU limitation thats going to become more and more common as graphic setups continue to get faster.

If your CPU is fast enough to feed the vertex setup. It will become a GPU limitation again. But at the rate GPUS are progressing and the rate CPUS are progressing. It seems likely that single cards will be limited by the CPU shortly. Also keep in mind Game Test 3 does not have this problem and does scale with fillrate. While Game Test 1 and 2 do not.

http://www.rage3d.com/board/archive/...-33820422.html

Hi Canyon is fill rate limited whilst GT1 and Gt2 are vertex fetch limited , in other words Gt3 is still limited by the video card clocks more.

Regards
Andy

3DMark05 is pretty vertex (or rather, vertex fetch) limited.