Pixel-filling power
No review of Quad SLI would be complete without putting its staggering performance specs into perspective. To do that for us, we turn to a table of reasonably recent graphics cards and see how Quad SLI compares. In the table below and throughout the rest of the review, by the way, we're referring to our Quad SLI config by its proper name: "GeForce 7950 GX2 SLI."
| Core clock (MHz) | Pixels/ clock | Peak fill rate (Mpixels/s) | Textures/ clock | Peak fill rate (Mtexels/s) | Effective memory clock (MHz) | Memory bus width (bits) | Peak memory bandwidth (GB/s) | |
| Radeon X1650 Pro | 600 | 4 | 2400 | 4 | 2400 | 1400 | 128 | 22.4 |
| GeForce 7600 GT | 560 | 8 | 4480 | 12 | 6720 | 1400 | 128 | 22.4 |
| All-In-Wonder X1900 | 500 | 16 | 8000 | 16 | 8000 | 960 | 256 | 30.7 |
| Radeon X1800 GTO | 500 | 12 | 6000 | 12 | 6000 | 1000 | 256 | 32.0 |
| GeForce 7800 GT | 400 | 16 | 6400 | 20 | 8000 | 1000 | 256 | 32.0 |
| Radeon X1800 XL | 500 | 16 | 8000 | 16 | 8000 | 1000 | 256 | 32.0 |
| GeForce 7800 GTX | 430 | 16 | 6880 | 24 | 10320 | 1200 | 256 | 38.4 |
| Radeon X1900 GT | 575 | 12 | 6900 | 12 | 6900 | 1200 | 256 | 38.4 |
| GeForce 7900 GS | 450 | 16 | 7200 | 20 | 9000 | 1320 | 256 | 42.2 |
| GeForce 7900 GT | 450 | 16 | 7200 | 24 | 10800 | 1320 | 256 | 42.2 |
| XFX GeForce 7900 GS 480M | 480 | 16 | 7680 | 20 | 9600 | 1400 | 256 | 44.8 |
| GeForce 7950 GT | 550 | 16 | 8800 | 24 | 13200 | 1400 | 256 | 44.8 |
| Radeon X1900 XT | 625 | 16 | 10000 | 16 | 10000 | 1450 | 256 | 46.4 |
| XFX GeForce 7950 GT 570M | 570 | 16 | 9120 | 24 | 13680 | 1460 | 256 | 46.7 |
| Radeon X1800 XT | 625 | 16 | 10000 | 16 | 10000 | 1500 | 256 | 48.0 |
| Radeon X1900 XTX | 650 | 16 | 10400 | 16 | 10400 | 1550 | 256 | 49.6 |
| GeForce 7900 GTX | 650 | 16 | 10400 | 24 | 15600 | 1600 | 256 | 51.2 |
| GeForce 7800 GTX 512 | 550 | 16 | 8800 | 24 | 13200 | 1700 | 256 | 54.4 |
| Radeon X1950 XTX | 650 | 16 | 10400 | 16 | 10400 | 2000 | 256 | 64.0 |
| GeForce 7950 GX2 | 2 * 500 | 32 | 16000 | 48 | 24000 | 1200 | 2 * 256 | 76.8 |
| GeForce 7950 GX2 SLI | 4 * 500 | 64 | 32000 | 96 | 48000 | 1200 | 4 * 256 | 153.6 |
I haven't included other SLI or CrossFire setups in this table, but you can double up the specs yourself if you'd like to see how they compare. However you slice it, though, a Quad SLI rig has astounding theoretical peak graphics throughput—48,000 megatexels per second of fill rate and over 150 GB/s of memory bandwidth. Nvidia's fastest single-GPU solution, the GeForce 7900 GTX, has roughly one-third the potential of Quad SLI.
These simple synthetic tests bear out the raw pixel-pushing capacity of Quad SLI. Nothing else comes close.
