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Thread ID: 124929	2012-05-28 07:27:00	Is SLI/Crossfire really worth it?	ChazTheGeek (16619)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1277924	2012-05-28 07:27:00	Does SLI/crossfire actually make much difference in performance?? They are very expensive and I am wondering if I should do a SLI setup or not. What do you people think? :)	ChazTheGeek (16619)
1277925	2012-05-28 07:45:00	Newer cards like the 7850/7870 scale amazingly in crossfire, however crossfire just causes issues. I would only go for a crossfire setup if I had the best single gpu graphics card I could get or if a new series of cards have come out and I can pickup an older card on the cheap which will give me the performance of a newer card when cf'ed or better.	icow (15313)
1277926	2012-05-28 07:46:00	Ah ok thanks.	ChazTheGeek (16619)
1277927	2012-05-28 09:08:00	I was tempted to just type no. If you have super high res or like to game multi screen in high def then multi card setups really come into their own performance wise but there are a lot of design concerns to make a good SLI/Xfire setup. Then there are issues with not all games supporting or gaining much from it and the potential for some software not working well . A single 1080P monitor will look awesome with a single good card and that's all you should need. There has been a trend to use 2 mid range cards instead of one more expensive high end card in a lot of builds, I went that way myself to begin with on this machine. To that I say don't bother, it's worth the extra to avoid the hassle and just get a single card. I've posted my woes with SLI on these forums before but a short summary goes like this; I had two GTX460's with mid mounted cooling fans that vented some heat into the case, my motherboard placed them hard against each other and caused the top card to run very hot. No amount of case fans helped more than slightly. I built a whole new PC, determined to make it work, new mb had better slot spacing and fixed the heat issue (my current machine in my sig mostly). I had ongoing stability issues, turned out to be RAM but the SLI setup also caused occasional crashes and black screens. Of the games I play most worked perfectly on a single GTX460 and several gained absolutely nothing from SLI, WoW in particular which supposedly does have SLI support didn't work very well and still had framerate issues at ultra settings. (I managed to get it working kind of but I was never happy with it). In a fit of frustration I sold both 460's (regret not keeping one but oh well) and got a GTX 580. According to benchmarks two GTX460 1GBs in SLI are as good or slightly better than a single GTX580, in practice the 580 kicks their arses all over the place. Sure in some games the 460's performed about the same but the 580 plays everything I've thrown at it at ultra and never gives me issues. An expensive exercise all up, I even had to upgrade my case because a 580 would not physically fit in the old one. In the end I would probably have been happy with a GTX560Ti or GTX570 for the games I play but I didn't want to go backwards from the SLI setup and don't regret my current card at all. I have a feeling I'll skip the 6 series altogether before upgrading again.	dugimodo (138)
1277928	2012-05-28 09:50:00	Ah ok. Thanks for the info.	ChazTheGeek (16619)
1277929	2012-05-29 21:51:00	I have 2 480's running in SLI. My computer is used mainly to run FSX. There is definately a noticable difference with SLI. And FSX is supposed to not recognise 2 cards. I have had none of the problems attributed to SLI. I had them originaly in a DFI motherboard which allows a larger space between cards. However this MB would not hold my overclock so I changed to an ASUS board. The cards are almost touching,but I have had no heat problems and my CPU holds 4.4 overclock without a murmer. So I would say yes to SLI. Jack	JJJJJ (528)
1277930	2012-05-29 22:38:00	I would say it wouldnt be worth it with your current system as any single current high end card would be seriously bottlenecked by your CPU....AMD's best XF series is the 6xxx, 7xxx series is crap, NV scaling is usually not as good as XF, however NV driver generally behave better than XF, and you dont need to wait for AMD to release profiles in order to play new release games.	SolMiester (139)
1277931	2012-05-30 05:31:00	Don't worry I have bought a new MB with the P67 chipset and I am saving for a i7 2600K or a 2700K,	ChazTheGeek (16619)
1277932	2012-05-30 05:57:00	difference between the 2600k and 2700k is hardly noticable for games.	Slankydudl (16687)
1277933	2012-05-30 06:03:00	The difference between a 2500k and 2600k is hardly noticable in games too. You're better off with a ivy bridge i5 e.g 3450(i think thats what the cheap i5 is called). Edit: @Chaz there is no point running an sli setup on your motherboard. Sli setups are really worth it and is almost never if not never worth it when using a 4x slot.	icow (15313)
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