SLI question..

Coriff · Nov 28, 2007, 12:59 PM

Hi,
New here and had a question for you guys. I have a P5ND2-SLI Motherboard with a 7600 GT PCI-E card hooked up. I was considering buying another now that the price has gotten pretty cheap, but a friend of mine just told me that basically SLI was worthless for performance increases and just makes sharper images with a second filter. Is is this true? Would it be worth investing in a second card for SLI or would I be better off just upgrading to a better single card when the time comes? Thanks for any help.

kris23 · Nov 28, 2007, 07:12 PM

well, SLi does both, bring sharper images and better performance, but buying another worthless 7600GT isnt good, just buy a better single card.

savo_x86 · Nov 28, 2007, 07:21 PM

SLI is very limited because of a bad driver optimization...it is much better to get stronger single card then couple of weaker ones...you should sell your old card if you can and get that extra few bucks in your budget for a new one...

kris23 · Nov 28, 2007, 07:31 PM

ATI HD3850 is an awesome bang for buck card. cant use sli though....

8800GT is the best though

Skull · Dec 2, 2007, 05:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Coriff

Hi,
New here and had a question for you guys. I have a P5ND2-SLI Motherboard with a 7600 GT PCI-E card hooked up. I was considering buying another now that the price has gotten pretty cheap, but a friend of mine just told me that basically SLI was worthless for performance increases and just makes sharper images with a second filter. Is is this true? Would it be worth investing in a second card for SLI or would I be better off just upgrading to a better single card when the time comes? Thanks for any help.

In short, no. Don't get another 7600GT to SLI. you are much better just selling the card and getting a more powerful single card solution, there are many issues with SLI and unless you are proficient with technology it can be a pain in the ass dealing with driver profiles etc.

Your friend seems to be wandering about in the dark a little. SLI stands for Scalable Link Interface which in laymans terms ia a fancy name for parallel processing for graphics. Without melting your brain and getting extremely technical ill break it down.

When you play a game you are looking at an image made up of numerous lines of pixels. With two cards in SLI each card renders an alternative line, so card 1 would render line 1, card 2, line 2. Therefore in perfect conditions you are getting twice the performance as each video card is doing half the work. This is a very basic view of the technology but hopefully it helps you understand it (it gets rather more complex as there are various methods of rendering in dual card mode, split frame etc)

As for "sharper graphics", this is only true if the extra power given to you by running two cards allows you to increase the resolution or the anti aliasing/antiscopic filtering. You don't just achieve "sharper graphics" in windows by having two cards in your machine.

Judas · Dec 2, 2007, 10:51 PM

IMO, never if you can help it, ever, SLI/Crossfire 2 cards together that are lower then the top end model that is likely to more then outperform the 2 cards..... it's very inefficient and not cost effective at all..... plus it really can be a pain when crossfire/sli don't work in specific games.. where a single card will just run right in no problems.

IMO the only reasons anyone should need crossfire is running high resolutions (1920x1200 or higher).... with max details at playable frame rates using 2 TOP end cards.....

even @ 1920x1200, alot of the top end single card configurations will do plenty fine...

Course top end i don't mean 8800 ultra... that's just rediculious.....

ViRuS2k · Dec 5, 2007, 05:22 AM

IMO the only reasons anyone should need crossfire is running high resolutions (1920x1200 or higher).... with max details at playable frame rates using 2 TOP end cards.....

Thats not exactly true judas m8

im running a 20" TFT with my system in sig with 2x8800GTXs Overclocked.
with a max resolution of 1680x1050

now try telling Crysis that i need a higher resolution ?

some games work better than others on sli resoltions dont really make that much diffrence becuse if a game is going to rape your system resolutions wont make a diffrence games like crysis should tell you that.

even at 1680x1050 in dx10 mode on crysis it rapes my resolution

im waiting on Nvidias new 98xx G92 card then im going to sli 2 of those together aswell with my 20" 1680x1050 TFT.

and you guys above are right about one thing there is no point in sliing cards at all unless you have the highest single card thats out there HIGHEND then its worth sliing for extra power.

starfury6 · Dec 12, 2007, 09:28 AM

I'm planning a major platform upgrade in the new year and have a need for 2 cards since I run 2 monitors and an HDTV from my system. At the moment my plan is (IF I can be patient enough to play Crysis on my X1950XTX) to buy 2 of the 98xx G92 cards also. I expect there will be several models at launch time and I definitely dont plan on going high end ever again after getting 6800Ultra SLI and it being canned by the single card which followed.

Originally i was considering one high end card and a low end for the HDTV output, but if I can switch SLI on and off at will surely thats the best option?

Have there been any announcements about 98xx yet? Are we expecting any this soon?