SLI; Good, Bad or Waste of Money?

[Jupiter]

Sooo SLI whats the deal, is it the dogs bollox or a waste of money. If its the dogs bollox will it cost a fortune for any decent return & whats the best set-up...........

 

[cHodAX]

Waste of money, the extra power requirements, heat and bugs do not warrant the performance increase. Better to buy a top end single slot card and save the rest of your money for the true 9th generation cards that are 6-9 months away.

 

[Chronictank]

or if you have a HDTV a 3870-X2

 

[BloodOmen]

SLi is a waste imo, if you've got the best card on the market for what games that are around at that time or you may play you will get MAX and I mean max performance with 1 card.

Crysis was ran by a single 8800 (not oc'd) on max detail/effects on a mid ranged system with 3gig ram/good cpu etc and it was flawless (just an example of why you don't need sli)

Final thought, SLi is for ego tripping gamers with more money than sense.

 

[Chronictank]

Crysis was ran by a single 8800 (not oc'd) on max detail/effects on a mid ranged system with 3gig ram/good cpu etc and it was flawless (just an example of why you don't need sli)

It ran but it was unplayable , no idea where you got that from but its complete rubbish

Even at 800x600 the game goes to a crawl when you apply anything above 4xAA

intel q6600 @ 3300mhz nvidia 8800gtx 768mb @ 576/900/1350 runs at 19.265 when you use
1680x1050 Very high settings, No AA or AF applied

Crysis: Results - www.marc2003.ukfsn.org
More results if you want to have an idea of real frame rates

 

[PewPewAS50.50]

SLI s worth it when playing games with very high IQ where you want resulotions at 1680x1050 and above with af and aa applied.

For SLI you need a SLI motherboard ( with nvidia sli chipset ) that has support for 2x full x16 PCI-E lanes, obviously if you bought one of these boards today you would want PCI-E 2.0 since thats what the new cards are based on ( dubbles the bandwith on the lanes basically, both up and down ).

SLI is worth it if you have a system that can carry it, as in 1680+ resultions, 3 GHZ + c2d/quad ( can easily OC say a Q6600 from 2.4 fhz to 3.6 ghz @ stock cooling with 780i nvidia boards ).

Old games scale bad for SLI, new games scale better, some games scale very good. Then again alot of the semi old games where tested on SLI rigs wich did not have full x16 PCI-E wich obivously bottlenecks the 2nd card alot.

2x 8800 GTX in sli > 1x 9800 GX2, 2x 8800 GTX > 2x 9800 GTX in SLI at the high resolutions and maxed aa/af ( wich is the only reason to actually GO SLI ).

9800 GTX vs 8800 GTS is a toss up, 9800 GTX is slightly faster at very high resolutions and aa/af applied where the 8800 GTS is slightly faster at lower resolutions and also slightly less costly.

P.S If you have a SLI board then getting 2x 8800 GTS's could be a nice solution, cheap and alot of performance vs cost.

 

[BloodOmen]

It ran but it was unplayable , no idea where you got that from but its complete rubbish

Even at 800x600 the game goes to a crawl when you apply anything above 4xAA

intel q6600 @ 3300mhz nvidia 8800gtx 768mb @ 576/900/1350 runs at 19.265 when you use
1680x1050 Very high settings, No AA or AF applied

Crysis: Results - www.marc2003.ukfsn.org
More results if you want to have an idea of real frame rates

Dunno whats wrong with your pc then because it was playable, my mate played crysis with a 2600XT on medium settings fine, its really not that system demanding.

and on a sidenote when I said detail/effects I didn't include high AA or AF, only a spoon tries to turn those upto max.

 

[Chronictank]

Dunno whats wrong with your pc then because it was playable, my mate played crysis with a 2600XT on medium settings fine, its really not that system demanding.

and on a sidenote when I said detail/effects I didn't include high AA or AF, only a spoon tries to turn those upto max.

I can almost certainly say you werent playing on max, by the simple fact it is not just my machine (see the link i posted)

if your on windows XP i can garuntee you, you weren't playing on max

only a spoon tries to turn those upto max.

lol...
So when you say running a game on max it ssome abstract set of settings to proove an argument?
How about we become more specific to save the "misunderstanding"

Crysis on max in game settings (excluding aa and af) is all the options set to Very High
Crysis on max in game settings is all the sliders and settings to very high including AA and AF
neither of which will run on a single 8800 on stock settings (bar possibly a Ultra) at a "smooth" framerate if you attempt to use a resonable resolution (1280x1024 or above, 1680x1050 being the standard nowdays for most mid/mid-high range systems)

 

[Aesgir]

I'd say at the moment its a waste. Not enough games have reliable SLI support, and until the software catches up there's no real need to go SLI. I've left my set up open to go SLI in future when i moved to 64 bit, which i felt was worth beating the software for the tangible benefit of more RAM. Unless you REALLY can't bear to play games in anything less than 1920x1200 resolution with everything on high (i manage just fine with one 8800 GT on 1680x1050) then it'd seem like throwing money away to me.

 

[Hawkwind]

Well I'm extremely happy with my SLi'd Leadtek 8800GTS TDH cards. Runs everything hi res, max details in Dx 10 (Vista 64 Ultimate). 4Gb (Corsair Dominator) Ram with Q6600 Processor on a Asus P5N32-E Premium Sli Mobo. All water cooled with Zalman Reservator II.

 

[cHodAX]

Well I'm extremely happy with my SLi'd Leadtek 8800GTS TDH cards. Runs everything hi res, max details in Dx 10 (Vista 64 Ultimate). 4Gb (Corsair Dominator) Ram with Q6600 Processor on a Asus P5N32-E Premium Sli Mobo. All water cooled with Zalman Reservator II.

Don't forget to charge the flux capacitor professor or we will never make it back to 1986!

 

[Bahumat]

For SLI you need a SLI motherboard ( with nvidia sli chipset ) that has support for 2x full x16 PCI-E lanes,

I'm so glad they got that problem sorted lol

 

[PewPewAS50.50]

I'm so glad they got that problem sorted lol

Well you can also SLI with x16 and x4 PCI-E lanes, wich obviously is bottlenecked and a big waste of money. Thats why it is mentioned as an introduction, but I'm sure you KNEW that right.

 

[Binky the Bomb]

Don't forget to charge the flux capacitor professor or we will never make it back to 1986!

Cheezy bastard...

 

[Hawkwind]

Cheezy bastard...

It made me laugh +1.

 

[Hawkwind]

I'd say at the moment its a waste. Not enough games have reliable SLI support, and until the software catches up there's no real need to go SLI. I've left my set up open to go SLI in future when i moved to 64 bit, which i felt was worth beating the software for the tangible benefit of more RAM. Unless you REALLY can't bear to play games in anything less than 1920x1200 resolution with everything on high (i manage just fine with one 8800 GT on 1680x1050) then it'd seem like throwing money away to me.

One concern I had was with Sli'd Cards was the following:

I went for the 8800 GTS as I thought it was good value, plenty of RAM and good speed tests. What If I had only purchased one, then 18 months down the line games start becomming a problem for it, FPS lowering etc. Could I 18 months later go out and buy a card the same or that would work 100% with the one installed. I kinda treated it like Raiding Drives or RAM Modules, better to have two from the same batch.

Have enough problems with game bugs without introducing possible complications.

 

[Aesgir]

If you could get hold of another 8800 GTS, long as they are the same basic model/clock speed you can SLI them. As long as its the same model it doesn't need to be from the same batch or manufacturer. They all use the same basic spec to make the cards, so to call it a 8800 GTS they have to adhere to a standard. If one has a higher access speed however its better to put that in the secondary slot, so your slower one can set pace. One of the annoying little niggles of SLI, your secondary will work at same speed as the first, so you need to make sure its capable

 

[old.Whoodoo]

Well I'm extremely happy with my SLi'd Leadtek 8800GTS TDH cards. Runs everything hi res, max details in Dx 10 (Vista 64 Ultimate). 4Gb (Corsair Dominator) Ram with Q6600 Processor on a Asus P5N32-E Premium Sli Mobo. All water cooled with Zalman Reservator II.

Apart from the water cooling my machines the same, both hardware and vista ulitimate, Crysis runs a lot smoother when SLi is enabled, in fact most games run much sweeter with it. However for the average gamer, save your money and wait for the real next gen, unless ofc you have too much money burning holes in ya pockets then go blow a wad if you fancy it.

Dont get me wrong I like it, but unless you really want to see how well your toon mows her lady garden, you really willbe wasting cash.

 

[Cromcruaich]

Well you can also SLI with x16 and x4 PCI-E lanes, wich obviously is bottlenecked and a big waste of money. Thats why it is mentioned as an introduction, but I'm sure you KNEW that right.

Actually thats not the case, only ms flight simulator comes close to become limited at x8. Things will change in the future i expect though.

 

[Cromcruaich]

but unless you really want to see how well your toon mows her lady garden, you really willbe wasting cash.

SLI - youve now sold it for me - most convincing argument ive heard.