To Sli or not - that is the Question

[Tinman]

I run 2 HD 4870s in Crossfire and they are pretty epic.

Its difficult to compare to SLI, and I actually have no experience with dual Nvidia cards.

However, I have heard that those 8800GTs offer around 80/90% performance scaling improvements in SLI (in some games), which is very impressive.

I would do it if I were you

[Grimspoon]

I run 2 HD 4870s in Crossfire and they are pretty epic.

Its difficult to compare to SLI, and I actually have no experience with dual Nvidia cards.

However, I have heard that those 8800GTs offer around 80/90% performance scaling improvements in SLI (in some games), which is very impressive.

I would do it if I were you

Yeah I reckon I am going to go for it. I got the board so I may as well take advantage of Sli. Waiting for this chap to decide when he wants to sell it.

[Gradius]

i've been wondering about this aswell.
i have a 4870x2, power hungry bastard. Crossfire works ok for most of the time.

But my question is this, would a 3-way sli rather be the way to go...
for example 3 x 9600GT?
anyone who've tried this, pls give me some advice on this matter too..
The Joker, i've heard u the person to talk to :P

[Maplassie]

I built a Tri-Sli Setup once with 3 GTX 260's, Core i7 920.

Client was in the office while doing so, so I did not have time to bench or run games on it

After windows + Drivers, he took the pc and went

[Gradius]

aaaa Maplassie, i see u also don't sleep... much :P
that Rig sounds totally awesome, the amount that must cost is even too much for myself to spend LOL :P
well, till the prices come down anyways

[Blackhand]

imo, SLI/Crossfire setups are only really useful when you start getting to really high resolutions, 1920x1200 / 2560x1600.

I run at 1920x1200 res with a 4870x2, 6GB DDR3, i7 920 @ 3.6ghz and there really isn't any game that drops below 35-40FPS maxxed out. Its important to note though, that at 1920x1200 and higher aliasing becomes less of a problem, so you can start lowering AA settings which will save you FPS with no visual quality loss.

However, at a res of 2560x1600, some kind of Crossfire/SLI setup is necessary if you want to maintain a playable frame rate. There you will see those setups pull far ahead of single GPU configurations.

[jasong]

Have you considered using the 8800 for physx? Higher framerates isn't everything.

[Grimspoon]

Hey guys, digging up this topic again...Still havent bought my second 8800GT but I think I am about to.

I need to know though from an expert if I mix these 2 cards if it will work.

I have a XFX 8800GT 512 MB alpha dog std edition and I want to add a Asus 8800GT TOP 512 factory overclocked version. I have asked this Q before and most people say it will work fine. Just want to hear from some other peeps on here.

[SpoOkie]

It will work perfectly together although you have to put the XFX version in slot one. Your Asus one's clocks will be lowered to the same as that of the XFX card.

[Grimspoon]

It will work perfectly together although you have to put the XFX version in slot one. Your Asus one's clocks will be lowered to the same as that of the XFX card.

Cool - I have actually manually OC the XFX, will it maintain the OC?