Why not to employ an SLI or Crossfire setup when compared to a single card solution

nickelpat

One of the many crazes these days in computing seems to be dual, tri, and quad graphic card setups. The first dual card solution was Scan-Line Interleave used by 3dfx in 1998. Soon Nvidia bought out 3dfx and used the Scan-Line Interleave technology under the name Scalable Link Interface, or, SLI, introduced to the consumer market in 2004.

A year later ATI threw their hat in the ring with CrossFire. ATI's CrossFire mutli-card solution works much like SLI although they do have many differences. ATI opened it's CrossFire program to Intel, while Nvidia still requires that any motherboard wanting to be marked 'SLI Approved' must have an nForce chip. ATI has no such requirement.

Lately there has been a lot of talk about dual, tri, and quad graphic card setups. Mostly from those wanting the 'Most Powerful Rig' who are falsely led to believe that having two weaker GPUs (eg. two Nvidia 8800 GTX's) is better than one more powerful card (eg. Nvidia 260 GTX). This thinking is logical, but false. This is because not all games utilize both cards. In-fact, many don't. The card's drivers must be updated to support the game before you really see any performance boost.

Many people want the SLI or CrossFire setup to be able to run dual-monitors, which is a terrible mistake. Nvidia's SLI will only support the video ports on the dominant GPU, and there is a known bug which can, in cases, crash when attempting to run two monitors. Dual-monitor support was just recently put into ATI's CrossFire drivers, and is still quite buggy. It is much easier, and safer, to simply buy a card that has two ports, like one of Nvidia's GeForce 200 series, and plug in both monitors.

After reading this, if you are new to computers, you may be wondering what exactly to do then. Upgrade to a more powerful card. One single, more powerful card. If you're using a 9800GTX (you probably don't really need to upgrade :P) upgrade to a 280GTX, even a 285 or 295. And ALWAYS make sure you read the power requirements and try to find the length of the card. I just recently bought a Nvidia GeForce 285GTX by EVGA and failed to read the power requirements when I purchased it. I was left with an unusable card for about a week (one that I paid $430 mind you) until I put out an extra $110 for a Corsair 750W power supply.

When installing your card, also remember to always drop it in as parallel as possible. Otherwise you run the risk of running the copper edges into each other firmly and ruining both the port and the card. Also, if you live in a dry state such as Ohio, always ground yourself before working on a computer. This does not mean touching metal to release the static. You want to reach an equal level of electric potential between both you and the part as the electrons don't move just from you to the part, but also from the part to you and the rapid change either way can kill the part. I recommend using an Anti-Static Wristband while working. They're only about five bucks from Newegg, which is a fine investment to protect that $300 GPU you just bought. Another common mistake (although one that doesn't result in heavy damage all the time) is using a magnetic screwdriver. It's not that serious, although I wouldn't recommend it. It doesn't really have enough magnetic force to screw up your data unless you rub it on the HDD. Better safe than sorry though isn't it?

I hope this helped someone,

Thank You,

- Eric

rage9000

ati is superior

xbellx777

good post op im looking to build my own comp sometime soon in the future so this info was valuable to me. thank you

Stuka1000

Decent original post but just to correct a couple of errors.  The 1366 socket boards for the i7 chips support both SLi and XFire without the need for an NForce chipset.

 

Using a magnetic screwdriver near ANY computer component is a very bad idea.

 

SLi is a whole lot more than what was originally offered by 3Dfx.  The 3Dfx technology was the start and building block but to say that SLi is exactly the same as the original is misleading and just plain wrong.

 

SLi is superior to Xfire ( ok this point can be debated from now till christmas and we still wouldn't get everyone to agree but in my opinion SLi is superior )

 

You are correct when stating that many games do not make use of the SLi setup, however you are wrong to state that the 2nd card is redundant.  Even in games that don't use SLi the 2nd card can be set to increase the performance of AA etc.

 

one high end card is better than 2 mid range cards = correct

2, 3 or 4 high end cards though    ok it's wasting money when 6 months later everything is obsolete but hey, to some people money is no object ( lucky bastards )

 

 

noquarter

Pretty in-depth new article over at anandtech www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx that compares a bunch of SLI and Xfire solutions.  Summary is pretty much, SLI will get you the top performance if you can shell out the cash for the top end cards, Xfire gets better performance per DOLLAR but they don't support as many games as quickly as SLI.  Xfire tended to scale better in terms of % gain over the single card solution at high resolutions while SLI scaled better at lower/normal resolutions.  And they had a special mention for the 4850X2 2gb which did pretty amazing for the price.

 

There's a 3-way multi-gpu article too but performance at that point is all over the place.  Usually 3 SLI 295 does best but in some games 2 SLI 295's do better than 3 SLI, and sometimes 3 HD4870 wins.  But again from a value per dollar perspective.. you'd have to be really wasteful to go with a top end SLI configuration lol.

lornj

i was looking at building my own computer from newegg and a friend told me to go to ibuypower.com. is that site worth it to get a computer from?

Salvatoris

That bit about not seeing any improvement with SLI is just incorrect.  While it's true that not all games support SLI, all SLI systems can perform alternate frame rendering.  I have played several games that don't support SLI and simply setting the profile for alternate frame rendering will boost your framerate close to double what it was with one card.

I agree that people need to understand they can get more out of one top end card than they can out of two "lesser" cards... but 2 8800s in SLI is ALWAYS better than one 8800.  Furthermore, you can get really close to the performance of a $400+ top end card with two slightly lesser cards for around $200.  Either way, there isn't a lot of downside to SLI, assuming your budget isn't unlimited.

nickelpat

Originally posted by lornj


i was looking at building my own computer from newegg and a friend told me to go to ibuypower.com. is that site worth it to get a computer from?

 

I wouldn't. One of my friends bought a computer from Ibuypower.com and, not to insult their quality as the computer was well built, but it doesn't include much and the price was otherworldly. If you don't want to build your own, I'd recommend Cyberpower.com, their rigs come wired very nicely and working great, with everything setup already and, best of all in my option, they include the motherboard box. Which really helps end much of the hunting for model numbers.

Otherwise, build your own. Cheaper, easier, and best of all, you know what's in it!

Now, when I say "No Improvement" I refer to very minor improvements. That which won't really make you excited nor justify the money. To me, an improvmement means a raise in profermance that justifies the money spent.

Thank you Eric, for the polite corrections. I must agree with them all. And thank you all for the compliments, contructive criticism and lack of flaming.

hvc801

Originally posted by nickelpat

Originally posted by lornj


i was looking at building my own computer from newegg and a friend told me to go to ibuypower.com. is that site worth it to get a computer from?

 

I wouldn't. One of my friends bought a computer from Ibuypower.com and, not to insult their quality as the computer was well built, but it doesn't include much and the price was otherworldly. If you don't want to build your own, I'd recommend Cyberpower.com, their rigs come wired very nicely and working great, with everything setup already and, best of all in my option, they include the motherboard box. Which really helps end much of the hunting for model numbers.

Otherwise, build your own. Cheaper, easier, and best of all, you know what's in it!

Now, when I say "No Improvement" I refer to very minor improvements. That which won't really make you excited nor justify the money. To me, an improvmement means a raise in profermance that justifies the money spent.

Thank you Eric, for the polite corrections. I must agree with them all. And thank you all for the compliments, contructive criticism and lack of flaming.

 

I agree.  You should really look at putting your own rig together yourself.  I purchased an iBUYPOWER and when I went to upgrade video card / ram for the first time, I opened it up to find a wire mess!!! It looks like it was put together very sloppie and half assed. I had to clean it up properly before I was able to install any new hardware.  Turns out they had 3 extra power splitters in there that were un needed and totally unnecissary.

I totally recomend you put together your own PC.  You get a great feeling of success when you first boot the computer on to find no problems and everything runs smoothly.  And you know exactly how your computer runs, because you configured everything.  So its a huge bonus.

If you dont have time to put one together yourself, like nickelpat said try cyberpower.  I havnt really heard much about them, but people seem to recommend them frequently.

lornj

thanks for the recommendations. never built a computer before and was looking to do one of the other.

Katrar

 I totally agree on the single card solution for now. I've done a couple of SLI setups (8800 GTS SLI and 8800 GT SLI) and the performance benefits in some games were in my opinion vastly overshadowed by the general stability hit and strange problems in other games/apps.

A single high end card will probably always drive games pretty much just as well at normal gaming resolutions, and the benefits of a stable system really are priceless. 

So +100 for the single card solution. At least until SLI+ finally gets taken seriously and becomes stable.

Perdition_uk

Originally posted by Katrar


 I totally agree on the single card solution for now. I've done a couple of SLI setups (8800 GTS SLI and 8800 GT SLI) and the performance benefits in some games were in my opinion vastly overshadowed by the general stability hit and strange problems in other games/apps.
A single high end card will probably always drive games pretty much just as well at normal gaming resolutions, and the benefits of a stable system really are priceless. 
So +100 for the single card solution. At least until SLI+ finally gets taken seriously and becomes stable.

 

My experience is exactly the same, and i couldn't agree more. Unless you are going to run at really high resolutions (i.e. 1920x1200+ ) then SLI just causes more problems that it solves. For the moment at least putting more money into a high end single card is the way to go.

I really hope that one day scalable systems take over, but that day isn't here yet.

facehugga

at my point of sight the ATI 4870x2 is a really nice solution at this moment.

Im glad i took it hehe

 

nickelpat

Originally posted by facehugga


at my point of sight the ATI 4870x2 is a really nice solution at this moment.
Im glad i took it hehe
 

 

Definitely one of the better ones, although, being a Nvidia fanboi, I had to buy a 285 GTX. :P

grimboj

Crossfire and SLI are not supported by most major MMO's. The ones that claim to support it show no difference when it is enabled. Don't waste your money, buy a high end graphics instead of two inferior cards.

nickelpat

Originally posted by grimboj


Crossfire and SLI are not supported by most major MMO's. The ones that claim to support it show no difference when it is enabled. Don't waste your money, buy a high end graphics instead of two inferior cards.

 

Exactly.

Someone said one 8800 is always better than two, most of the time. Although on some games, very few, running two cards can lower the framerate. Although this is usually a bug in the code of the drivers and game.

noquarter

Yup my buddy bought a gaming laptop with SLI 8800gs or something in it back when lotro came out and it performed no different regardless of what SLI setting you used or if you had it disabled.