By Alec Meer on November 17th, 2011 at 1:26 pm.
I worked on a PC hardware magazine for years, and found myself as caught up in the bitter CPU and GPU wars that characterise that industry as much as the next man who cares a little bit too much about expensive circuitry, but even so I’ve never really fancied a multi-card system via NVIDIA SLI or ATI Crossfire. The noise, the expense, the technical potholes…
However, between Rage, Battlefield 3 and Skyrim (particularly the latter, wanting to try out all of the settings tweaks and mods to max it out), for the first time I’m thinking about doing it. I’ve got a GeForce 560 (non-Ti) which more than holds its own, but there are usually a few bells and whistles I need to turn off if I want a solid frame-rate at 1920×1200. The expense of higher-end cards is extreme, but for around £120-50 I could pick up another 560. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. But have you ever dabbled in the dark art of multi-card systems? And was it worth it?
The below poll is hardly scientific – I know that – but I’m interested in getting even a slight sense of whether SLI and Crossfire are still the domain of fairly hardcore PC enthusiasts, or if they’ve also been adopted by normals.
(I’m going to pretty much ignore three and four card systems for the sake of argument, because Jesus Christ that stuff’s insane.)
IMPORTANT – DO NOT PRESS ‘VOTE’ AT THE BOTTOM OF EACH QUESTION. CHOOSE ALL YOUR OPTIONS IN ALL QUESTIONS FIRST, THEN PRESS ‘VOTE’ ON JUST ONE QUESTION. If you’ve already fallen prey to weirdness, refreshing the page may be sort it out. Sorry ’bout that, we can’t find a perfect poll plugin yet.
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17/11/2011 at 13:30 povu says:
The amount of time there is between graphics card purchases for me and the price I normally pay for them means I’m better off buying a single new one every time.
17/11/2011 at 13:45 Shivoa says:
Agreed, I’d rather buy a new graphics card every 18 months (or 2 year) than buy two to SLI every 3 (or 4) years for the same price.
Yes, SLI is a lot better and has far more mature drivers and game profiles today than there have been in the past but I’ll stick to a single card sucking 200+ Watts of juice to provide what 3D it can and maybe scale back the settings slightly rather than having to deal with buying graphics RAM twice (as SLI can’t get over each card needing to have it’s own copies of all the textures etc).
I think those with 30″ crazy monitors (2560×1600 having twice as many pixels as 1080p) or triple screens are basically forced to deal with SLI to get enough 3D performance to paint their crazy pixel counts if they want to enjoy high settings and new games like that. Now the latest revision of FXAA gives us some passable (poly edges, shaders, and transparency) aliasing reduction without pushing up the GPU requirements so that it is quite cheap to have a good sub-pixel accurate 1080p rather than rendering to a lot more tinier pixels with a very-HD PC screen, I’m rather happy I stuck at 1080p rather than investing in more dots on my screen.
17/11/2011 at 14:26 Boozebeard says:
I have a 27″ 2560×1440 monitor and my single 480 seems to do a decent enough job. I don’t think I could go back to using another screen now, it’s just so nice. It’s not so much the number of pixels but the pixel density, it just such a crisp picture. I only need 2xAA for things to be perfectly smooth.
Actually I’m a little confused by my Skyrim performance. It’s not as smooth as I would like but my GPU usage only seems to go up to about 60%, my CPU sits in the 80s and 90s and ram usage is about 80%. I’m not sure where the bottle neck is =/
On the topic of multi cards, I’ve never done it myself but from what I read on forums it seems that the performance is always lacking on new games until they get a driver update. It would really annoy me that I’d have to wait for new drivers every game release to play it at full potential.
17/11/2011 at 14:43 alh_p says:
My monitor only goes up to 1280×1024 so my old (stable) Radeon 4k does fine, especially with win7 and dx10/11. Given the expense of upgrading both card and monitor -and that any new game seems to run well at high/v high on this resolution, I’ve not felt the need to change. Plus the consideration that I’d need to shell out hundreds for a new monitor as well as the same for a new card…
Then again, I’ve not really seen what higher resoltuion graphics look like so it’s likely my ignorance of what’s possible is dampening my desire for improvement. Basicaly, I’m pretty much stuck in about 2006/7 (by my guess), dx10+ improvements not-withstanding.
17/11/2011 at 15:17 zebrastealer says:
It really depends on your needs, for most folks running a single 1080p monitor a single card like the gtx560 will perform well. I currently run a 3 monitor 3d (5980×1920) setup powered by two water cooled heavily overclocked GTX 480′s in SLI, no single GPU could handle those resolutions. For most titles I get near max details at playable frame rates. Aside from AA which always hits a video ram cap at 2x. Dual SLI or Crossfire has outstanding scaling now adays and really is worth the price, especially because two mid range cards like your gtx 560 will generally outperform a more expensive top of the line card for less money. Unfortunately the 3x and 4x sli/crossfire scaling is quite a bit less effecive and not worth the additional cost and power requirements.
Oh yeah, Skyrim purrs along at max details though it crashes regularly for me due to having to run a hack to get the menus usable in multi monitor mode. Of course running multi monitor and 3d is almost always a pain in the butt with hacks and ini editing generally required to work. Despite all that, it’s still worth it because when it does work it is grand.
17/11/2011 at 16:29 Odeon says:
@ alh_p: I went from a *very* old 19″ CRT (max res was something like 2560 x 2048) to an old square 19″ LCD (1280 x 1024 max res) to save desk space and because my hardware at the time couldn’t handle more than 1280 x 1024 anyway. The LCD was getting ready to die on me, so since I upgraded my other hardware in the mean time, I went for a 1080p 19″ LCD. I got a HANNspree from Newegg for right around $100 before tax and shipping. It was on sale, but that’s a common occurrence at Newegg, so do yourself a favor and take a look. The difference is HUGE, both in usable Windows desktop real estate and in games that your system can run at 1080p. Even if you can run games at 1080p, you can always run them in a lower resolution in windowed mode and have your favorite browser, or Wordpad, or whatever you like open right beside it. 8-)
17/11/2011 at 17:01 kickme22 says:
@Boozebeard there seems to be a memory leak in skyrim. It runs perfectly smooth maxxed out with graphics mods (on 1080p) on a GTX 460 but over time slows down because it keeps taking more and more ram (probably why it says 80% usage on your machine) and as it takes ram the FPS lower and lower until you run out of ram and it crashes.
17/11/2011 at 13:30 TormDK says:
The vote button doesn’t work :(
17/11/2011 at 13:31 Dakia says:
Same for me
17/11/2011 at 13:33 Ed123 says:
Yeah :( My RPS experience is ruined.
17/11/2011 at 13:33 Belsameth says:
+1
I used to own an SLI system, home built, overall I don’t find it worth it tho.
A new card generally offers far more benefits with less technical hassle and less prone to problems.
On top of that, the power consumption on single cards is already insane…(running a GTX480 here atm)
17/11/2011 at 13:33 InternetBatman says:
Neither vote nor view results works for me.
17/11/2011 at 13:35 Dasos says:
+1
17/11/2011 at 13:42 Ed123 says:
I voted for one option and it barred me from all of them :(
edit: nvm, refreshed a few times and it works. Hurrah!
18/11/2011 at 10:33 max pain says:
You shouldn’t be here?
17/11/2011 at 13:32 Maurish says:
I took a CF motherboard a few years back just in case I need the extra power boost. Still using one card since it has handled everything very well so far, maybe somewhere in the future? Who knows…
18/11/2011 at 02:14 philbot says:
Save your pennies a little bit longer for a decently powered single GPU. I have had nothing but incompatibility issues with my CF setup.
17/11/2011 at 13:32 Alec Meer says:
BLoody hell. Bear with me.
17/11/2011 at 13:35 HexagonalBolts says:
Alec you can’t even type today, go back to bed! I’m hungover too it’s ok.
17/11/2011 at 13:37 Dakia says:
Bah, I’m hung over as well. Unfortunately, I’m stuck at work pretending to be busy.
17/11/2011 at 13:38 ran93r says:
Phew, thought it was just me.
Best comment of the day though from a co-worker, “you look a bit rubbish”.
17/11/2011 at 13:40 HexagonalBolts says:
My girlfriend yesterday bumped in to me in the street and just said ‘fucking hell you look tired’
17/11/2011 at 16:58 Chaz says:
@ HexagonalBolts
To which of course you replied, “Yeah, I was banging your best friend last night.”
18/11/2011 at 02:15 philbot says:
@Chaz @HexagonalBolts
ZING!
17/11/2011 at 13:32 Jhoosier says:
Haven’t, but am thinking of doing so for the next upgrade. was thinking to get a 560 Ti which is not insanely expensive, and then down the road when I need a better card just get another one.
17/11/2011 at 16:12 Odeon says:
Same thinking I’m using. I’m a broke gamer that was barely able to afford the MSI GTS 250 OC that I’ve been using for a bit over a year now. But when my mobo went teets up, I picked up an SLI board so that when I win the lotto I can pick up a second GTS 250 on the cheap.
I’m broke to the point of not being able to buy the latest/greatest games anyway, so it’s all a plan for the future for me. At this point my 250 does mostly what I need it to do, but at this point I’m also almost exclusively playing an indie MMO with graphics from 2006. When the game finally goes gold (they’re a VERY small team) in the next 6 months or so, the graphics system will be upgraded immensely and I may need to seriously look at buying that second 250.
17/11/2011 at 18:55 stele says:
Careful with that. I did the same thing and now the board I chose isn’t even made anymore – and they’re rare enough that the ones you CAN find are vastly overpriced. Next time I’m just going to buy two of the best I can afford.
18/11/2011 at 00:26 Odeon says:
That, among the many other problems mentioned by multiple people here, has made me re-think my plan. I’m now going to keep the 250 as a PhysX card and just buy the best card I can when I get the budget. Even if my budget is only around $100 like it was when I bought the 250, whatever I get next is gonna be noticeably better, so that will be my new primary card.
17/11/2011 at 13:33 Giant says:
Might have been worth including Voodoo 2 SLI as that was where it all started, not that its hugely relevant to current discussion though.
17/11/2011 at 14:23 Ross Angus says:
Similar with me: the last time I “rocked” two graphic cards, one was for 2D, and the other was a Voodoo 1. In my day, you had to make your own pixels. Out of Lego.
17/11/2011 at 14:42 Loopy says:
Hehe, yeah, the Voodoo 2 is pretty much the first and last time I rocked an SLI setup (in 1998), and that was only so I could play Thief at 1024*768. :P
I do have a crossfire MB now, and thought about getting a second 5770 a while back, but everything seems to work fine without a second card so I’ve not bothered yet.
17/11/2011 at 15:12 Uglycat says:
They were the halcyon days of a whole 32mb of RAM.
It brought Unreal to a whole new level.
17/11/2011 at 15:29 Matt says:
Hell yeah dual Voodoo 2s! First and last time I ever had an SLI setup. It’s just not worth the expense nowadays, plus I hear of compatibility issues all the time.
17/11/2011 at 17:16 Chaz says:
Yep I had a 4MB Voodoo 1 too, and yes Unreal just looked unreal at the time, that opening scene in the crashed ship, especailly the bit with the icey floor; the reflections and lighting, oh wow! Then when you got outside you were greeted with that stuning vista of the waterfall.
Of course you needed two video cards back then because 3D cards really were just that, for nothing but 3D, so you needed a standard vga card as well.
I think I had a TNT something or other after that.
It’s interesting to note that whilst most technology has been getting smaller and faster, video cards have bucked that trend by just getting bigger and bigger. My current Geforce 460 looks like the size of a house brick when compared to my old Geforce 3. Seriously, when I first got it out of the box I wondered how I was going to fit it in the case; and I thought my old 6800 was as big as cards would get, but they just keep getting bigger.
17/11/2011 at 19:10 stele says:
I bought one of those Voodoo 5 9000 cards before realizing it wouldn’t even fit in my case! Had to saw off the entire front to get it to fit. Pretty fast though.
17/11/2011 at 21:10 Jason Moyer says:
Last time I did SLI was with 2 Voodoo 2′s and getting 1024x768x16 out of them was glorious.
17/11/2011 at 13:35 Ta'Lon says:
You should add “Driver Issues” to the second question.
That’s the main reason I avoid SLI/Crossfire and Dual-GPU-Cards (besides the fact that I don’t need everything turned to “extra-shiny”).
17/11/2011 at 15:40 kael13 says:
This.
Never doing it again. AMD is bad enough but with Crossfire? It’s a nightmare. Driver issues are the bane of my gaming existence.
I’ll be buying a single, powerful nVidia card next time I upgrade.
17/11/2011 at 19:01 LionsPhil says:
The poll also doesn’t really handle that I have experience with a SLi machine, and it was bad enough that I’m glad I’ve never bothered with one of my own. A pair of nVidias which badly underperform my single one, despite being the same generation (8-series) IIRC.
All that heat, noise, cost, instability, and it’s not even any prettier and faster? Just how much would you have to want to empty your wallet over nVidia execs to bother?
(I think apparently SLi can scale to stupidly high resolutions better, so I guess that’s good for people who have the desktop space to fit dual-head 30″ cinema displays?)
17/11/2011 at 13:36 GenBanks says:
I’ve dabbled, but I avoid them now.
Have in the past had 8800GTX SLi, 9800GX2 (itself sli) in quad gpu configuration as well as a 4870X2.
Multi GPU has probably improved with the latest generations, but in my experiences I’ve had bug and compatibility issues, while the tradeoff of performance improvement hasn’t always been what I’d hoped with games that do take advantage of it. I’d rather shell out for a powerful single GPU card.
Using a Radeon 5870 atm and have been very happy with it. Will upgrade once nvidia/amd’s next gen single cards come out, and that’s when I’ll be applying all of the Skyrim visual upgrade tweaks I can get my hands on.
18/11/2011 at 02:06 Quxxy says:
Chipping my in two Australian cents here: my experience with nVidia SLI was absolutely miserable. It caused so many damn problems that it spent 90% of the time disabled. I think the only game where I ever managed to enable it safely was with Just Cause 2 where it provided a modest boost to the framerate and let me turn on some extra stuff.
But it constantly screwed with my two displays and broke games. I remember excitedly turning it on for the first time and firing up World of Warcraft. It’s amazing how much it hurts your eyes when realtime shadows are only rendered every second frame, leaving every shadow rapidly blinking on and off.
Heck, for some games, they wouldn’t even damn well start with SLI enabled. For a while, I had a third party program that would disable SLI for specific games before I got fed up with having to micromanage it and just disabled it system-wide.
Never, ever going back to SLI.
17/11/2011 at 13:36 InternetBatman says:
After one of my SLI cards burned out I didn’t notice an appreciable difference. I would say save the money and use it for a newer graphics card down the road.
17/11/2011 at 13:36 Dakia says:
In relation to the actual question:
No, I’ve never bought a dual card system or built one. I mostly build custom rigs for myself, but have just never seen the need to do so. Sure BF3 was supposed to be amazing in SLI, but it looks pretty damn good with just GTX 470 as well.
There just isn’t a huge need to do such a thing unless you want to push a system to the extreme.
17/11/2011 at 13:37 Juan Carlo says:
It’d be cool, but it seems too expensive. And not just the cards, but you need a decent power supply as well which will end up running you about as much as a whole other card.
Plus, it also seems like most games don’t even work correctly with dual cards. So I’m not sure it’s worth it.
The only time I ever did SLI was WAY back in the late 1990s with the Vodoo 2. I did it specifically just to play games in 1280×1024–as back then SLI was the only way you could. It was awesome!
17/11/2011 at 15:09 anothermike says:
I just did it for the first time, and it’s not just the power supply, but you actually have to worry about airflow in the case. I ended up having to get a new case and fans b/c the airflow was insufficient to keep my second card cool enough.
The two cards sit REALLLLY close to one another – so that airflow is critical.
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/1083/gpuonly.jpg
18/11/2011 at 08:46 Thermal Ions says:
You then also need a motherboard that supports it.
I just can’t see that it’s a cost effective spend. Most games play nicely on medium settings on budget to midrange single cards, with many going well on high. The benefit to my playing experience of “Ultra High” just isn’t worth the expense to me.
17/11/2011 at 13:37 malkav11 says:
There was a point a few generations back, maybe the 6000 series of nVidia cards, where I already had one card, and it was significantly cheaper to buy a second card and SLI it than it was to move up to the next series. It was maybe $100 for another card like I had, vs. $300 plus for an upgrade.
That’s never really happened again, and of course today’s higher end cards are so ridiculously huge that I can’t imagine fitting two on a single motherboard. The difference between one card and two cards in a multi-GPU configuration usually isn’t anything like as significant as the difference between a dated card and a current generation card, so it doesn’t make sense to do SLI unless you’re either at the top end of available cards and still need more (and even the highest end card is usually overkill, so why would you?), or a second card would be much cheaper than any relevant single card upgrade.
PS: I’ve found the solution to a need to eke out better FPS at 1900×1200 is to not bother trying to run at 1900×1200. Sure, a high resolution is nice, but imho the bells and whistles make more of a difference and you can run a lot more at a better FPS for less money if you just go with a smaller monitor.
17/11/2011 at 13:40 Donkeyfumbler says:
Agreed – I’m happy at 1680 x 1050 and see no reason to go any bigger (and thus lose FPS).
17/11/2011 at 13:43 The Tupper says:
Malakav, I agree. I’ve got an ancient-but-working-perfectly 19-inch Samsung SyncMaster 940N monitor that runs at 1280×1024 resolution, coupled with a 2 year-old Radeon HD 4770 and an ancient Core 2 Duo processor. I continue to be amazed at how well Skyrim works on this most humble of systems.
When my face is about three feet from the screen I don’t need any more real estate than that.
17/11/2011 at 14:05 Rao Dao Zao says:
I am also happy on my 1280×1024, though bloody hell finding a non-widescreen monitor in this day and age took quite some searching.
17/11/2011 at 21:09 Hematite says:
I recently snapped up a couple of 20″ 1600×1200 monitors second hand. I lament the passing of the 4:3 aspect ratio and its luxurious vertical resolution.
Damn you, 1080p standard! *shakes fist*
17/11/2011 at 13:39 Donkeyfumbler says:
Nvidia SLI 8800gtx until about six months back. Made some games better, but actually made some games worse. The fiddling with settings, disabling and enabling it depending on the game, plus the extra noise, heat and electric consumed have put me off doing it again for the foreseeable future. I now have a single 560ti and I’m much happier.
17/11/2011 at 17:34 Daedalus207 says:
Interesting, that’s almost exactly what I’ve done. I ran a pair of 8800GTS cards for a bit. The incredible amount of heat and noise produced by the pair, and the paltry performance gains in the small handful of games where there was a noticeable improvement, convinced me to remove one of the cards after a few weeks. I eventually upgraded to a 560 Ti and am quite pleased.
I attended a small Far Cry 2 LAN party with my SLI machine. The fellow sitting across from me leaped out of his chair in a panic when the cards spooled up, as the heat on his leg had convinced him that something had caught fire.
17/11/2011 at 13:39 HexagonalBolts says:
No, of course not, don’t be ridiculous!
17/11/2011 at 13:40 Skeith says:
I can’t vote or view either.
I crossfired 6870′s a while back. No trouble or hassle and it nearly doubled my performance in most games. It’s not like it was desperately needed, just some electronic hedonism to celebrate my promotion. The only problem is that some new releases take ages to get a crossfire profile, like Skyrim. Which since I have the 6870 to begin with is the difference between high and ultra with a stable framerate.
17/11/2011 at 16:44 vecordae says:
Really? I have a single 6850 and run the game on ultra. The game runs nice and smooth at 1920×1080, even after I turned on the additional shadows by modifying the .ini file. I suspect it would have been perfectly playable on my old rig, which was a mere 3 ghz P4 with 2 gb of ram and an HD 4650.
17/11/2011 at 13:41 Alec Meer says:
OK, polls *should* be working now.
17/11/2011 at 13:43 Muzman says:
oh, clicking ‘vote’ in one submits for all of them then.
Well, I answered number one for ya.
17/11/2011 at 13:44 TormDK says:
They do, except if you press “Vote” it will end the vote.
So really you should remove the Vote button beneath each poll as pressing the top vote button will kill the rest of the vote as you don’t get to submit the other details afterwards :)
17/11/2011 at 13:47 SOAD says:
edit – nevermind working now
17/11/2011 at 13:47 Hmm-Hmm. says:
That’s a bit silly. Yeah, I clicked the vote button too after answering the first question.
-edit- No, I don’t have multiple cards. Why not? Cause I’ll need to get a new computer first. And when I do so I’ll consider how much I can upgrade said machine.
17/11/2011 at 13:48 Janek says:
Yeah, same here. Still it’s entertaining to watch the ever-diminishing vote count as you scroll down the page.
For the sake of pedantry, does the ancient machine I have in the Cupboard of Obsolete Hardware count with its Voodoo 2? ;)
17/11/2011 at 14:05 Muzman says:
Refreshing does indeed appear to give you another go, so cool. (if you had some left over that is)
17/11/2011 at 16:12 Rich says:
This may explain why there are almost twice as many votes for the first question than for the second.
Perhaps I could have read more than the title, but how can I be expected to read anything after noticing that there are buttons on the page? Buttons, damn it. Buttons!
17/11/2011 at 16:56 _PixelNinja says:
This poll is a nice idea, however, I think there are some missing options.
For instance, in my case to the question ‘If not, why not?’ my answer would be neither of those provided; I do not use multi-card configurations because of the hassle — SLI/XFire means more heat, more power draw and frequent compatibility issues with games.
17/11/2011 at 13:41 Belua says:
I never tried it, but everything I read about it suggests that the payoff is relatively low and that in most games it does rather little for performance. Maybe newer games support it better and therefore deliver better results with two cards, but afaik, the improvement is too small to upgrade an older system by buying another card, and with a new card, it’s usually good enough on its own.
Edit:
Disclaimer: I have worded this a bit ambiguously, I guess. I’m not stating those things as facts, it’s just that this is what I *think* it is like from what I have read ages ago. If that is wrong or outdated information, I take back everything and will build an SLI system as soon as possible :)
17/11/2011 at 14:52 The Ninja Foodstuff formerly known as ASBO says:
This. I was considering doing it but then just bought a new GFX card. I can max out everything now which makes me wonder what the point of improving anything any more would be.
17/11/2011 at 13:44 Sp4rkR4t says:
I have but not since the 3dfx days.
17/11/2011 at 13:45 Wordtothawise says:
Don’t listen to the nay sayers. Do you want a 100% improvement in framerates? If so xfire and sli are a great option. I have been using high end xfire and sli laptops for 3 years and they are awesome. Ati have seriously improved driver support and nvidia arent to o bad either. Just make sure your power supply has enough pins and wattage and your mothereboard supports dual cards and includes the bridge and your good to go. Go for it!
17/11/2011 at 13:47 Jarol says:
Well even if the votes don’t work I’ll put in my 2 cents.
Built my new computer for over a year with SLI in mind to begin with. The amount of gains you get is insane for a lot of games. It wasn’t for the whole “YO CHECK OUT MAH RIG” bull, I wanted good solid frame rates at all times. It got even more interesting when I bought a new 120Hz monitor to go alone with it. Battlefield 3, even with all the eye candy, plays best when you have that minimal lag between you and the guy in front of you.
So my final thoughts on SLI? I absolutely love it. The performance I’m getting is exactly what I wanted and having it drive a game like BF3 at 120fps on a 1080p display was well worth the investment.
Words of caution: DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT do SLI on a motherboard that has the cards one slot apart. I had one card running at least 30C over the other at all times and they easy reached 90C for even the most basic of games. After seeing the temps, I had to buy another board that features a 2 slot gap. Now they both run at relatively the same temperature (though of course one is still hotter, but its not as bad).
What cards did I get? eVGA 570s SuperClocked.
Motherboard? ASUS Rampage III Formula (the only decent board specifically built to not have 2 cards sandwiched together)
17/11/2011 at 15:38 Jar says:
Yeah, you really have to pay attention to thermals on your system once you go the SLI route. I have EVGA 570s and can use the LCD on my G13 to monitor the temperature using their little utility, and have a hotkey set to kick the fans up to 75% if I see the temps crest 70c.
Definitely find a board that gives you some space between the cards. Those things just radiate heat.
17/11/2011 at 16:15 simonh says:
@jar
The system should be able to take care of that itself. Don’t you have an automatic smart fan setting? If not there are many programs you can download that will take care of it.
17/11/2011 at 13:47 Fierce says:
Yes I’ve dabbled (CrossFire’d 5850s here) and yes it’s worth it.
I’ll explain in much more depth in a bit, but I have to run outside for a few hours right now. Will brb and edit when I can.
Look forward to it, I have just enough details to make me an expert but do I have enough details to disqualify me as a Normals?
TO BE CONTINUED~!
17/11/2011 at 13:47 Milky1985 says:
I’ll put an answer here and vote when the buttons working :p
I do not have an sli system, I do wish to get one but its sooooooo sodding expensive. To get a pre-build would cost far too much (seriously the prices are stupid) and currently i am still using a 5 year old machine for gaming (upgrades to gfx card etc to keep it up to data as much as possible, BF3 is the first game I actively cannot play).
I heard a lot fom mates about having to update gfx drivers more , due to different games needing profiles etc to work properly with it (a friend has crossfire, and it caps the game to 60fps while enabled, can get 200 fps with it disabled)
Its something i do aim to do, but the costi s holding me back, i could probably sli 2 lower end cards, but whats the point if it then causes profile issues?
17/11/2011 at 13:48 mod the world says:
Thanks to the consolization of PC games there is really no need anymore to always upgrade to the best and latest. I play Battlefield 3 on 1680×1050 with high settings just fine on a ATI 5750!
17/11/2011 at 13:48 Dana says:
Nope. Expense. If I would, Id get ATI since its cheaper .
17/11/2011 at 13:49 pupsikaso says:
I didn’t want to bother with SLI because usually the scaling was abyssal and you could usually simply buy a better card for cheaper. But when the GTX 460 (1gb) came out I knew I had to SLI that. It’s a spectacular card in itself, a descendent of the GT 8800 (512mb) in terms of bang for the buck, so I was very pleased when the scaling for SLI for the two cards was so awesome (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-460-sli-geforce-gtx-480,2694.html).
So a year after the GTX 460 got released I bought a second when I upgrading and installed them in SLI.
I’ve got mixed feelings about it. On the one hand it’s very good improvement in performance, however a lot of new games either simply don’t make use of SLI or there are video artifacts.
For example, in the new Deus Ex there are weird square-like mesh across people’s faces with SLI enabled. For Space Marine having SLI enabled makes the game start to feel very sluggish, like in slow-motion. Bulletstorm actually performs WORSE with SLI than single card. Skyrim, until I installed the new beta drivers with the SLI profile simply did not make use of the second card.
So in essence, it’s a trade off between good performance for cheaper versus tons of problems because since SLI isn’t very mainstream most games don’t really bother to make sure it works properly.
17/11/2011 at 13:49 KoenigNord says:
I wouldn’t even consider putting another graphics card into my system. The benefits are way smaller to the increased energy costs, investment for the 2nd card, maybe a new power supply…
Anyway, some people like a system with 2 cards. Especially when they don’t use the system for gaming only (video editing, etc.).
17/11/2011 at 13:50 Rhodri2311 says:
I run a 5970 (essentially two 5870′s CFX on one card), and love it. It’s done me proud so far and I hope It’ll keep on kicking out good FPS for at least another year.
17/11/2011 at 13:52 Sic says:
Uh, the poll doesn’t work for me. I used 3dfx.
After that, I haven’t used it, because quite frankly, it’s ridiculous. Unless you’re a benchmarker, or have set up some ridiculous multi monitor gaming theatre, there is never any reason to use more than one video card.
There are so many downsides. Power requirements, noise, micro stuttering. It’s just not worth it.
17/11/2011 at 13:52 Random Guy says:
At 1440p you don’t have much choice but to go SLI for the latest games.
(first post btw! Hello RPS! :))
Positives:
– Latest games playable with lots of eye-candy at high-res
– Mature drivers mean very few issues with dual-card configuration
– Future proofing to a certain extent, and reduced costs as you stay with your generation of cards
Negatives:
– 480s in SLI = one hell of a noise
– 480s in SLI = a lot of wattage
– 480s in SLI = makes me feel like buying a new PSU just to push the cards as far as they can go
17/11/2011 at 14:49 PoulWrist says:
I hate the “1440p” designation. How does that make sense, p stands for progressive scan. There’s not been a interlaced monitor come out in years, or do anyone actually run interlaced anything these days?
Onwards, my single 5870 handles all games at 30-50 FPS at 2560×1440 at highest settings. Plenty for BF3 at high. It’s 2 years old today. I’ll upgrade to the next gen cards coming out early next year, because I can’t run the Witcher 2 at the highest specs at a playable framerate (ubersampling off). Only game I’ve had any trouble running. Multi GPU solutions are not a requirement for anything but nonsense, like 3D, and it’s just too large a hassle to bother with, even today, that I wouldn’t ever recommend it. Except if you like to mess around a lot with driverprofiles, turning it on and off for certain games, and listening to more noisy cards.
One single, powerful card is far preferable.
17/11/2011 at 13:54 T_L_T says:
I’ve been using SLI for years, and there is a massive improvement in most games. However sometimes you have to wait for the drivers to catch up a bit, and it’s only worth it if you’re running high resolutions or running 3D or the like
I’ve gone a bit over board recently and am running a 3D surround setup, for that to work you have to have SLI.
Over the top but completely awesome!
17/11/2011 at 13:54 thegrinner says:
Currently I run off one middle-high end ATI card. My last desktop, however, ran two lower end GeForce cards in SLI. I didn’t start out that way, but found I could get a lot more lifetime off of buying a second (now rather cheap) card than by getting a new high end card.
It definitely had a huge improvement, but given my current card can handle 60 fps Skyrim on one monitor and the internet on the other, I’m set.
17/11/2011 at 13:59 Kipex says:
Got 2×6950 ATI cards running in Crossfire and for the most part it’s great. However recently if I had to choose I would go for SLI as the driver support provided by Nvidia seems to be much better. Nvidia released full SLI support drivers the day before Skyrim was released, but AMD is still taking its sweet time. It’s not even that it doesn’t improve the framerate, it actually drops your fps running crossfire over a single gpu atm.
Then again, Skyrim is such a mess before a patch or two and a bunch of mods appear that I propably wouldn’t play it yet anyway.
At least BF3 runs fine at max.
17/11/2011 at 13:59 rupert says:
ive got one 560ti currently and have been considering getting another, have the psu and mobo that will support it, but everyone i ask says its not worth it… :(
on my i7 2600k ,… bf3 runs fine atm on 2048×1152
17/11/2011 at 14:51 PoulWrist says:
You are GPU limited, but unless you dig messing around with stuff like that, I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s too much of a hassle overall if you play anything but sort of semi-new games. Newest you can usualy forget about proper driver profiles for, so no scaling. Older games you’ll need to disable it.
17/11/2011 at 14:00 Crazy Hippo says:
i did this about 5 years ago with a system i bought, running 2 8800 gtx ultras. the actual performance increase i saw was negligible for the vast majority of games. and when one eventually blew up i wasnt overly bothered, cost of the card aside!
this was a good while ago and i dont know if the performance would be more noticeable now, but i havent paid a great deal of attention to SLI/Crossfire. although if i cant find a 5850 cheap i will get another (not many places seem to sell them anymore)
17/11/2011 at 14:06 Shooop says:
My very first bought PC was an SLI setup. Gradually the entire machine disappeared as I built a new one from the ground up. Now about 5-6 years later I’m about to have a modern SLI setup because it’s cheaper than buying a GTX 590.
According to recent news around the internet, SLI/CrossFire has really improved since its early days, no longer giving a rare maximum boost of 70% but consistently delivering 90% or more. Biggest issue is whether or not your PSU is up to the task.
I’ll get back to you on how it performs when it arrives.
17/11/2011 at 14:09 HelderPinto says:
No.
Not even at work.
17/11/2011 at 14:09 H.P Kraftwerk says:
I used two 570′s in SLI, the time between purchases was about 8 months so it didnt hurt my funds too much. I would stick with SLI, from everything I hear and seen, NVIDiA has much better driver support.
The one thing that made me go SLI this time, never have in the past, was it seems like they finally got the performance scaling to where they wanted it with the 500 series. In the past two cards would only give 1.3x-1.4x the performance over a single card, but now with testing, my 570′s are giving me 1.8x-1.9x the performance over a single card, so it really is like running two card when paying for two card, instead of paying for two and running like one and a half.
17/11/2011 at 14:10 Sn1PeR says:
Absolutely. I run an eyefinity setup so the power of 2x 6950′s in CrossfireX allows me to run most games maxed out. Previously I ran a single 5870 and the 1GB of vram quickly became a bottleneck when trying to apply higher levels on antialiasing to an image of 6048×1080. I’ve run SLI setups in the past, both solutions work great.
With today’s cards at 1920×1080 or less I see CF/SLI as less of a benefit, but as soon as you step up to higher resolutions it quickly becomes a necessity if you want to continue running high quality settings. Be aware that in those setups you want as much vram as you can get. I wouldn’t do it with less than 2GB now days.
17/11/2011 at 14:11 mickygor says:
I’m SLI, but it’s for 3 monitors rather than improved gaming (the most testing game I play is EVE, and I play with WIS disabled…). 3 monitors makes work so much easier, even easier than 2 monitors.
17/11/2011 at 14:43 evilmatt says:
3 monitors is improved gaming for me – the level of immersion with so much more peripheral vision (in FPS and driving games in particular) is brilliant. Currently running just the one 6970 but am tempted to upgrade to crossfire with the 7000 series once I upgrade my motherboard to one that supports it, pushing 5760×1080 pixels stresses the single card too much in some games.
17/11/2011 at 21:32 mickygor says:
I never have a game running on all 3 monitors though :P Unless I’m working, one of my monitors is dedicated to spotify, email and IM/steam. I’m not big on immersion in games really, I don’t roleplay. I’m a guy playing a game, not the character I control.
17/11/2011 at 14:11 Muzman says:
Big fat no from me. I’m not against it per se. But it definitely falls above the sanity line for me, wherein you find nintendo powergloves and guys who build big steering wheel rigs for racing games.
If knew some people who upgraded recently and had some spares lying around the same as my card, or worked in a computer shop or something, I might try it out. But definitely not something I’d set out to build.
17/11/2011 at 14:14 jezcentral says:
No.
I have a GTX570, and a 60Hz monitor @ 1920×1200.
That’s 60FPS with everything turned up, so I wouldn’t get anything more from another card.
17/11/2011 at 14:17 Toothball says:
I didn’t go for SLI with my last desktop because it was a Shuttle, which was barely big enough to house one graphics card let alone two.
I didn’t go for it my current PC as it’s a laptop and didn’t have SLI as an option. It did give me the option of a 3D screen though, but that’s another story.
Next time however, who knows?
17/11/2011 at 14:17 AchronTimeless says:
Actually, I’ve got 2 560s in the rig I just threw together. Was a cost effective choice, and Skyrim looks amazing. Whisper quiet too, although that’s a combined effort with every fan in the system.
17/11/2011 at 14:20 Dcode says:
Personally from experience I will always choose a singe high end GPU over two slower ones.
Most if not all games these days support SLI right out of the box, its not like 2005 any more.
I had a single GTX 295 which was essentially a dual GPU solution, in some games it would microstutter and rendering felt jerky even though it was rendering over 60FPS. I upgraded to a single 580 and the difference was huge. Bad Company 2 doubled in FPS and that was with more AA as well. Although Source engine games hardly made any difference what so ever.
I would not waste my time with pairing up two mid range cards like the 560. I can see your predicament though; you already have one.
17/11/2011 at 14:21 Man Raised by Puffins says:
My single 4850 has been able to handle pretty much everything I throw at it, why would I need two?
17/11/2011 at 14:24 wrath says:
“If yes, what type?”
I’m not a brand loyal kind of guy, it depends on both power and value. Though I hear ATi have pretty bad Linux drivers.
17/11/2011 at 17:14 Shooop says:
AMD/ATI have fairly awful video drivers in general this year.
17/11/2011 at 14:26 Phinor says:
It’s a case of reading topics of just released games and almost every such topic includes some posts regarding multi-GPU issues and having to wait for driver update. Then the driver update comes and reads “Crossfire disabled for game x and y”, great.
17/11/2011 at 14:26 yhalothar says:
I like my computers to be as quiet and cool as possible – the increased power draw, heat and noise footprting of a SLI system is a big con for me. The one card I have (a 570GTX) is loud enough when pushed, the whole system being whisper quiet otherwise.
17/11/2011 at 14:29 Snargelfargen says:
I’m upgrading to a Radeon 6950 in a couple of weeks and one reason I chose that particular GPU is because it is supposed to scale well in crossfire. One 6950 is more than enough for gaming these days, but I plan to pick up a second used one for cheap in one or two generations.
To be honest, even though games are actually starting to support multi-gpu set-ups, it is still more cost effective to simply buy a new flagship gpu every 4 years or so. Crossfire/SLI is meant for hobbyists who like to tinker with their computers and/or brag about their wasted money on forums.
I’m ok with that, but lets not kid ourselves here.
17/11/2011 at 14:29 Colthor says:
Back in the mists of time I had SLI when it still meant “Scan Line Interleaving”. 3D games running fast at 1024×768! Amazing future tech of dreams!
More recently/usefully I had Crossfire X1900XTs, and it was very much a mixed bag. When it worked, it usually made a decent difference, giving 8800GT performance before such a thing existed.
However, it usually took a month or two, or a special driver patch, before it worked in a new game, and until then it would quite often be worse than a single card.
The cards (pretty toasty individually) got so hot, and their coolers were so noisy, that I had to watercool the entire rig to keep it bearable.
It would have been cheaper to stick with a single X1900XT, then buy an 8800GT (or even something faster). X1900s were quite expensive compared to respectable current cards, though.
I think “micro-stuttering” is the buzzword, but I found that tiny differences in frame-times would mean that v-sync could absolutely kill performance if you couldn’t maintain more than 60fps, and often games would feel like they were running a lot slower than they were; 40fps could feel stuttery to near-unplayability.
In the end I was happy to move back to a single-card system. nVidia SLI may well be much better, and possibly even AMD could have improved things in the meantime (although, going by my experiences with their drivers on my 4870, they wouldn’t get the benefit of the doubt), but I don’t think I’ll try multiple graphics cards again for a while.
17/11/2011 at 14:30 AmateurScience says:
I had fully intended to go CrossfireX by adding a 6770 to my hard-working 5770 for Skyrim. Due to some miss-selling I ended up with a card that lacked a crossfire socket which I had to return. As a result I fired up Skyrim with the single GPU and discovered it plays great even on ‘Ultra’ – even with a few tweaks for tree shadows etc. (only playing at 1680 x 1050 though).
Crossfire is still the cheapest upgrade path for me, but I’m going to defer it until I find a game that needs it.
As an aside if I was building from scratch I don’t think I would consider a dual GPU setup. But I would definitely choose a mobo/PSU that would allow me to add one later (that’s what I did with my current box).
17/11/2011 at 14:31 Optimaximal says:
If you’re having issues with the oll even after refreshes, edit the URL to take the query string ‘?simply-poll-return=3′ out.
17/11/2011 at 14:33 djbriandamage says:
Too much electricity, noise, heat, expense, and risk. I’d much sooner buy one fast card. It’s always been good enough for me.
17/11/2011 at 14:37 CilindroX says:
@Alec:
I’m currently running a HD 6970, after experimenting a bit with CFX with a couple of 5850′s and a pair of 8800GTX prior to that.
Aside from the drivers up and downs (specially with those from AMD/ATi) and the current gen of GPU’s being extremely well capable of scaling up to 150% on performance, there’s the issue of micro-stuttering, as incredibly detailed by TechReport here:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/21516/1
I was really considering Crossfire again myself but, without BF3 on Steam and after seeing I’ll end up using a single card of the array in almost half of my games or, inevitably end up having to wait a couple of months to get official support from the drivers (whilst hoping they don’t screw any other previous game supported), I think if you don’t wanto (or, as me, don’t have the time anymore) to fiddle with regEdit & several other BIOS tweaks, the general rule of thumb still applies: the single most powerful graphics card is still the best option for out-of-the-box driver support and no miscellaneous gnomes fucking your Windows install.
I’m currently on a 2500K @4.6, MSI P67-GD55, Sapphire HD 6970 with an Artic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo, Mushkin Chronos 120GB SSD, and 8GB of Mushkin RedLine DDR3 1600 RAM, and really eager to snatch a GTX 580 for Xmas.
Regards,
17/11/2011 at 14:41 onehitter says:
I’ve done it 3 or 4 times and I always regret it.
– Voodoo2 SLI (not ‘real’ SLI but it was still 3 cards (1 2D + 2 3D cards)
– 6800 Ultra SLI
– 8800 GTS SLI
– GTX 580 SLI (current)
Skyrim doesn’t even touch the second card (I’ve got an i5 2500K processer @ 4.2). Crysis and probably FSX are the only games that would even come close to needing it when pusing 1920 x 1080. Pushing more pixels? Then you might get better results.
The system runs hot, your case gets cramped and you are always wondering “is SLI really ‘on’?” because sometimes it’s hard to tell. There are bugs too that affect SLI users (Fallout and Oblivion are weird in SLI).
Save your money. Get a fast processor, an SSD and a good single-card GPU.
17/11/2011 at 14:41 BoZo says:
I had two ATi 4890 once, didn’t like it because of micro-stuttering.
17/11/2011 at 14:42 telpscorei says:
Expense and fear are preventing me, mostly.
I’m currently rocking a card from a few years back, and was thinking of upgrading to a 6950 / 6970 (or maybe if I wait a little longer, a 7xxxx) from AMD. I’d be interested in CF if I could stick the new card in, leave the old card in, and CF ‘em up. And it would run as well as a 6950 at least (rather than going down to the old card).
Without that (and to my knowledge, we currently don’t have that), it just seems a bit too expensive. And new games seem to break it pretty often.
17/11/2011 at 14:44 PoulWrist says:
I did upgrade to 2 8800GTs in the days of yore, but there were entirely too many problems as a result of running two cards. Some games would flicker and act weird, older games wouldn’t run at all, new games may or may not support SLI. Had to go in and turn it on/off all the time, find tweaked profiles and all kinds of other stuff.
As a hardware curiosity, it was fun. As an actual thing to use I don’t recommend it. I don’t want to go back to multi-gpu setups in the future, because it’s just too big of a headache compared to the gain you get, if any.
17/11/2011 at 14:54 akeso says:
System I am using right now uses a AMD/NVIDIA hybrid.
Works like this:
I upgrade my AMD card for graphics.
I have a 9800 GTX slaved to it for physx.
It takes some work, and a little poky-jiggery to get the damn things to play nice thanks to nvidia’s bs stance on such systems, however it means I can use the AMD cards I like without any of the downsides.
17/11/2011 at 14:57 sonofsanta says:
Yes I do – two 5770s in Crossfire – but I won’t ever again, and I wouldn’t recommend anyone else to either. Some explanation…
Firstly, to cater for the Crossfire setup, when I bought my PC I had to bump up a few mobo models and PSU models to cater for my eventual second card (which was bought as a first birthday present to my PC). These seemingly incremental upgrades ended up costing half the difference to a 5850 anyway. So there are hidden costs to be aware of (and running costs, as power draw is often more).
Secondly, of course, drivers. Witcher 2 was a pain. It doesn’t normally bother me too much because, well, Witcher 2 is the only game I’ve bought within a year of release for about three years, but I suspect this may be relevant issue to you, Mr Games Journalist, playing games even before release date (when EA remember to send a copy over, anyway)
Thirdly, most damningly, and most unknown…ingly – micro-stutter. Due to the inherent limitations of two cards communicating over them ickle tiny ribbons, you get a very uneven distribution of frames as the primary then the secondary card produces frames. Although your raw FPS numbers shoot up, your actual experience of the game worsens because there is a constant cadence to frame delivery that introduces a lot of jerkiness into the experience. Video example here, and technical nattering here – although if you have the time, read all of that article, not just the page I linked, as it will open up a whole new world of numbers that FPS charts hide.
In summary, then – it’s not the magical panacea you might think it is from FPS numbers alone. Better to just upgrade a single card and sell your current single card to make some money back, perhaps.
17/11/2011 at 15:11 sonofsanta says:
And now due to slowness, other people have beaten me to mentioning microstuttering, although the fact it took so long shows how little known an issue it is, and I’d warrant most didn’t realise until TechReport did their bit on it. I know I didn’t.
Seriously, read into it before you commit. Both AMD and nVidia seem to suffer from it equally, even within a game – TR’s recent BF3 article showed both parties having the edge in different levels.
17/11/2011 at 15:01 Nehacoo says:
I did have 2 9800GTX+ in SLI before. Never again. Performance gains were okay, I guess, if you just look at the numbers but the practical performance, due to increased input lag and horrible, horrible microstuttering made it very not worth it. Also it caused lots of minor glitches in games (often with water for some reason).
17/11/2011 at 15:01 Kloreep says:
Never used either.
As others have already pointed out, it’s typically not that cost effective. It’s getting moreso, especially as the scaling rate for a second card has improved over the last few generations, but it seems to me it’s still not a great buy unless your budget is high enough that you’d already be looking at the top-tier single GPU card. Not everyone has that much money to spend; even if they do, these days, a single 560 Ti, 6950, or 570 will still get you plenty of bang for your buck.
There also seems to be more hassle with a dual-card set-up – additional points of failure for the drivers and all that. So, everything else being equal, single GPU seems preferable for convenience.
17/11/2011 at 15:08 attica says:
Having two different systems I can say SLI/Crossfire is a very subjective thing. Performance depends on the resolution you’re playing and then the cards you try to run in sync. I
17/11/2011 at 15:09 stretchpuppy says:
I Crossfired two 1GB 5770s – only to find out most games ran worse and LOWERED my performance than running a single card. I’ve since removed the 2nd card. It now collects dust while the system and all games run great on High or Ultra @ 1080 (with tweaks) with a single card.
i7-920 (Quad @ 3.7), 6GB Corsair, XP-64.
I’ve contemplated re-installing for Skyrim, but based on the previous performance I’ve been hesitant.
17/11/2011 at 15:20 NeuralNet says:
You have a real bug there mate, have you tried fully removing your drivers before installing the second card? You shouldn’t have to, but it seems like something became corrupted somewhere.
That or it could be a power delivery issue. Also check to see that flash isn’t running in the background and forcing one of the cards to clock down to 2D clocks. With a single card it isn’t too much of an issue (you just get half the fps) but with 2 cards it can make it unplayably jerky.
17/11/2011 at 15:14 Devrey says:
My dedicated Dos-machine has a Tseng Labs ET4000, coupled to two Voodoo2 cards, so I had three GPU’s :) It used 2 VGA-cables to connect them all together, outside of the pc-case itself. It was a fun experiment (and cheap too, the total cost was €15) But it was rather buggy in Dos, so I went back to a single Voodoo1 card.
17/11/2011 at 15:16 NeuralNet says:
I have used both crossfire and SLI systems and I have to say the most impressive one I have used so far is my current setup. I have 2 6950s in crossfire and the scaling is superb – in BF3 it is over 95% so it never dips below 60fps.
I have to say however that it isn’t without its problems, GTA IV doesn’t run properly in crossfire mode so I have to turn it off (which is weird because it worked very well with my 4870 X2), and the cards I have are noisy buggers, which I will have to silence with aftermarket coolers or replace them with 28nm cards later.
SLI doesn’t quite achieve the same scaling as crossfire, so AMD cards always provide a better bang for your buck when you use a multiple card solution, however the performance gains to be had in general are far better than they were a few years ago. Now the minimum gains you should see are around 80%, that is unless you are CPU bottlenecked or if there is a driver issue.
17/11/2011 at 15:17 Srethron says:
I wouldn’t mind multiple cards, but the cost doesn’t make sense for my situation even though my motherboard supports it. Especially since my BUS speed and pokey dual core are my bottleneck right now. Planning to upgrade my PC next spring when Intel’s next-gen processors come out, which will involve replacing far more components than I like. When I do, a motherboard that supports SLI/Crossfire will be something I’ll be keeping in the back of my mind, but I’ll probably have to stick with a single GPU because of price.
17/11/2011 at 15:28 Strife212 says:
I currently have two 1.5GB GTX 480s in SLI mode.
I find the performance increase is huge and these days there are zero driver or incompatibility issues. This setup leaves a GTX 580 for dead and was the same price.
17/11/2011 at 15:29 Raff says:
I buy whatever the popular £100-150 card of the day is that goes on all the recommended specs(e.g. 8800GT, ATI 4870), and I ALWAYS have enough problems with stuttering, inability to force v-sync or triple buffering, overheating, newest drivers breaking games and ludicrous card size, without having to worry about any parallel shite.
17/11/2011 at 15:37 ssbowers says:
I haven’t had to sacrifice any settings. When I build I always get a cutting edge gpu, and I reckon due to consolitus a gpu that was cutting edge two years ago is still seaworthy today.
17/11/2011 at 15:39 jonfitt says:
I have said for the past several years that when my current card starts to feel the strain I’ll double up with a (now cheap) duplicate. However everytime that happens the next generation of cards have offered significantly more performance for marginally more cost. It has never made sense for me to SLI.
I blame consoles slowing down the graphical increases in games, but my cards are lasting so long I’d have to go to an antiques shop to find a duplicate by the time I need to upgrade.
17/11/2011 at 15:42 OJSlaughter says:
I’m completely out of rig building and the rest at the moment (poor student), the concept always just seemed to be a novelty to me: clearly one card would be superior and probably wouldn’t cost nearly as much!
Then again, if you already own a card and just want to bung on another: if it generally cheaper then I might consider such a thing!
17/11/2011 at 15:44 bill says:
This will sound rude to a lot of the lovely people here, but I always assumed that people with SLI cards were, kind of, gits.
it sounds like the sort of thing that’d only be good for bragging and e-peen* waving, and that’s one of the things i hate most about gaming. So I don’t think I’d buy it even if I had the cash….
*please don’t ban me and take away access to all my games!
17/11/2011 at 15:48 S.T.A.L.K.E.R. says:
I run Crossfired 6950 2GB cards.
For the most part I love it. I can crank things way up and in certain games, even run at 6048×1200 in Eyefinity.
There is one major problem though, and that is AMD Drivers. On average, they are late, full of bugs and general make the process a pain in the ass. I have never used Nvidia cards in SLI (I have used just one though) so I can’t comment on if the Nvidia SLI drivers and profiles are any better
17/11/2011 at 15:52 Mxmlln says:
I’m going to wait until games are actually properly coded to make the most of two seperate cards.
It’s still a waste of money in my opinion, your paying for something that wont even be used to its full potential.
As for people with 3 or 4 card systems, it’s pointless and you’re pissing your money away!
17/11/2011 at 15:52 QuackingPlums says:
I don’t think the driver issues of old are as applicable these days. I’ve been running dual cards for a while (in fact, you need a third option for question 3 for those of us who have used both SLI and Crossfire) and while I remember the pains I had with my old rigs, lately they’ve been more or less good to go as soon as you plug them in.
As for cooling, it’s relatively easy these days to find boards with two spare slots between each of the PCIE slots, leaving a whole slot of space for airflow. I’ve done the comparison, and this can have a hefty impact on the operating temps, especially with the right type of case and fans.
My current rig runs at 5760×1080 across three screens (6030×1080 with bezel compensation), and with all the games I currently play I can still whack up the sliders to max. There ain’t a single card solution on the market that can handle that right now, and that’s why I chose to build this.
17/11/2011 at 15:52 nootron says:
So much misinformation in this comment thread. My advice to anyone considering SLI: Don’t read any comments here.
17/11/2011 at 16:31 sonofsanta says:
Well thank you for your helpful and constructive comment! It was certainly much more useful than just posting snark would have been. Thanks!
Seriously, if you see a problem with the information being posted: post better, or link to better. There’s no point in just declaring “my god, you’re all morons” as it achieves nothing except making you look a dick.
17/11/2011 at 17:05 Odeon says:
I can’t help but to agree with sonofsanta. I’m considering SLI down the road for budgetary reasons since it’ll be cheaper to buy an “old” match for my “old” card than to shell out more than I payed for my current card to get the same performance.
So why should I *not* read the comments? Why are they wrong? Have you read all of the comments, or just a few before deciding that they’re all wrong? Is all of the information misinformation or just some of it? What’s your own experience with SLI and with which games?
17/11/2011 at 15:57 2PartReturn says:
I have multiple cards, but purely for more monitors. I’d consider SLI if I could afford it. Even if I could, right now I’d need.. two matching cards, a new motherboard.. and therefore new RAM and CPU, which seriously pushes the price up. Also it would have to be compatible with having 3 or so separate displays without having to spend on extra expensive display splitting hardware or keep switching it on and off. Admittedly a while since I’ve investigated so I may be wrong there. That and I find a single card (I’m still on a 9800 GT) is handling the current games (DXHR, SR3, ..) I care about in more than enough detail.
17/11/2011 at 15:58 MerseyMal says:
I’ve done both types of SLI (Voodoo 2, 6600 GT and GTX 460) as well as Crossfire (HD 6870).
I’ve noticed more of a difference with Crossfiring my HD 6870 cards than any of the Nvidia ones
Definitely was an improvement with the original Voodoo 2s which I’d bought to take over from a Nvidia Riva 128-based card that came with my Pentium II 400MHz PC.
17/11/2011 at 16:00 LintMan says:
None of the “why not” reason poll options fit me. I’ve never bothered with it because:
a) I expect it would cause an increased amount of hassle getting at least some games working right. If you have a buggy game that crashes, SLI/CF is yet another thing you have to worry about causing the problem.
b) I’d rather save up longer and get a single high-end card when I upgrade
17/11/2011 at 16:01 Brun says:
My old laptop was SLI with dual 8700Ms. It worked okay, but this was back in 2008 and SLI was a much younger technology then, so few games really supported it at a deep level. There was a noticeable improvement in performance if you enabled the second card, but there were also a lot of SLI-related rendering issues (shadows in some games would flicker horribly with SLI turned on).
For now I’m committed to a single-card system with a GTX 480. The 480 seems to be beefy enough to run pretty much anything at high to ultra specs by itself. If the prices of 480s ever drop below the current $500ish, I may invest in a second.
17/11/2011 at 16:02 Shandrakor says:
I’m running a 28″ 1920 x 1200 on a 6870 atm; I was chugging along quite happily on a pair of crossfired cards that were a ridiculous value back when I built the thing; upgraded to the ATI 6870 because suddenly I couldn’t run WoW. >.< It just had an issue with my cards; going down to 1 card didn't fix the problem. Big problem is the single card sounds like a flipping leafblower; gotta get that fixed soon. Crossfire is a good option in some situations; just depends on your needs and wallet. ;)
17/11/2011 at 16:08 fishy007 says:
I’m in the same boat. I run at 1920×1200 and I upgraded to a GTX460 SLI setup about 3 months ago. The cost of the cards was relatively cheap and it gave me a significant boost. I think that it also depends on which games you play and if they’ll benefit from the setup.
World of Warcraft ran fine with a single card and I had no real reason to upgrade. However, Civ V and Dungeon Siege III showed great improvement with an SLI setup.
Unless you’re hurting for cash, the cost really isn’t a huge factor for most mid-range cards like the 460 and 560. It’s when you get into SLI on the higher end models like the 570 and 580 that you start to ramp up the cost a fair bit.
17/11/2011 at 16:13 simonh says:
I used to run two 9800 GTX. Never had any technical problems or extra hassle really, and usually a 70-100% performance increase. Now I just run a single 570 though. The reason is primarily Moore’s Law, it just seems like a better strategy to buy single cards twice as often. For my next upgrade maybe I’ll get another 570 though, if they’re really cheap by then it might be worth it.
17/11/2011 at 16:15 Zyrxil says:
Technical reasons: 1 card will produce a smoother minimum framerate than 2 cards, even if the two cards together are 40% faster. HardOCP had one or two articles showing this. SLI/Crossfire introduces microstutters.
17/11/2011 at 16:18 CaLe says:
I have the money for it and still wouldn’t. Just seems like overkill really.
17/11/2011 at 16:19 mmrik says:
Oh yes.
It nearly doubles my performance in the games that support it.
At the time, a year ago or so, I bought two 460 GTX OC, rather than one big 480, and it kicked that cards performance while still being cheaper.
The fact that I needed a core i7 with the more expensive motherboard in order to support it is besides the point.
17/11/2011 at 16:27 Anarki says:
It doesn’t seem to me like SLI even works at all. Every single time a game comes out the forums are filled with “Oh but I have SLI and it doesn’t scale, only one card is being used”. Well if you’d ever read a game forum you would know that and not bother trying to use a technology that is barely supported by anyone.
Basically, no.
17/11/2011 at 16:31 DrGonzo says:
You need more options mates! I would, but I don’t have the space in my PC for it.
17/11/2011 at 16:43 schnydz says:
For those who are worried about energy consumption consider the following for SLI/Crossfire setup:
Mother board with Z68 chipset w/LucidLogix Virtu + CPU using Intel Sandy Bridge platform + SLI/Crossfire configuration of your choice.
LucidLogix Virtu on Z68 chipsets allow the motherboard to seamlessly switch between your PCIe GPU’s and the integrated graphics on the Intel CPU. Essentially putting your power hungry GPU’s to idle on low intensive visual environments and allowing the CPU to handle the easy day-to-day stuff. Works quite well and saves power.
17/11/2011 at 16:44 Mijit says:
I’ve been using a crossfire setup for a while now & honestly, it’s garbage. Stuttering issues galore, generally speaking it results in all manner of weird performance issues ( for example just looking at the barrels of fire in Stalker with crossfire enabled will drop my framerate from 60fps to single digits, single card, fine) terrible TERRIBLE driver support, it can take weeks, sometimes months just to get crossfire support…..and then it suffers from all of the above, I find i’m having to disable crossfire for 70% of my games just to avoid all the performance problems & when crossfire DOES work, the performance increase is negligible at best.
I’ll be selling both my cards & buying a single Nvidia GPU very soon.
17/11/2011 at 16:49 You rebel scum says:
Whilst SLI / CFX is probably overkill for gaming in 1080p, at 2560×1600 it’s pretty much mandatory if you want to run modern engines above medium detail.
The potential downsides are many (increased power + heat, buggy drivers for new releases which take a while to mature, potential compatibility issues with older games) the performance gained at these resolutions is in almost all cases worth it.
Also I’ve found that moving from 2x 5870s to a 6990 has removed a lot of the headaches I suffered with two cards (in fact I bought the 6990 with the hope that this would be the case). Although the 6990 is essentially 2x 6950 GPUs stuck on a single PCB it does seem to have less compatibility issues than a two card solution.
17/11/2011 at 16:50 Rahabib says:
Heres the issue I have had.
generally I buy one card and it works fine by itself for 3-4 years. By that time you cant get the same card and pairing chipsets are the best way for stability and speed. Also by then, two of your older cards arent as good as one new card. On top of that you need to plan ahead with a more expensive MOBO, and a more expensive PSU. So once you add all of that up, its cheaper and even more effective to just go with one card, unless you are buying two at the same time – which is a waste of money since many games have issues with SLI/CF anyway.
17/11/2011 at 16:57 Kato says:
Adding some personalised info–I didn’t use SLI proper, but instead used a powerful-at-the-time card (my GTX285 which I still rock) and a less-powerful card (an 8800GT at first then a 220) to run dedicated physics on. Only a few games support hardward PhysX, but boy did Arkham Asylum look pretty!
17/11/2011 at 17:20 Odeon says:
After looking through the comments, I think I’m going to have to change my plans. I have been planning to SLI my current GTS 250 with a second one down the road (when/if I’m not flat broke anymore in the future), but after seeing so many people with micro-stuttering, driver, heat, power, and other issues, I’m going to have to go the same route as you, but in the other direction.
I doubt that my 250 will be worth much more than squat by the time I can buy a new card (making it more hassle than it’s worth to sell), so I’ll just move it down my mobo and use it for PhysX. I’ll buy the best card I can for my budget and use that as my main card instead.
17/11/2011 at 17:06 Gunsmith says:
I’ve 3 570 GTX’s wearing liquid coolers under the bonnet, before that I had 3 8800 GTX’s
to me PC gaming is a hobby and hobbies deserve some love :)
17/11/2011 at 17:12 mmalove says:
Well… I fail at reading. Shouldn’t surprise too many people, really.
Anyhow no, I’ve never done the SLI/Xfire thing. Years ago I purchased a single Nvidia 6800 card with the intent that down the road I could buy a second one and upgrade it. As some above have mentioned, by the time an upgrade was necessary technology had progressed to where it would make more sense to just buy a new graphics card (and in fact, a whole new machine).
From my experience, the greatest weakness of my systems (especially laptops, but not exclusive to them) is heat. 2x cards = 2x power and 2x heat. I’d rather have a single card running more efficiently than twin cards of an older generation.
And as it is, CPUs and GPUs have advanced to where multi core is now the norm, which is like having multiple graphics cards without trying to figure out where to put it and how to power it.
17/11/2011 at 17:18 lafinass says:
In the days of Windows XP I did. But until SLI gets friendly with dual monitors, I’ll be sticking to one card.
17/11/2011 at 17:38 MattM says:
I though that they had that pretty well worked out now.
17/11/2011 at 17:36 MattM says:
I have two GTX 570s in SLI that replaced two GTX 260s. When I upgraded I was able to sell the 260s for about $100 apiece. Cons: There is a bit of a hassle associated with a SLI system and you really can’t be a day 1 gamer. Price is higher. Rare non-sli games need you to disable SLI altogether to run properly. Pros: Lets me play new games with anti-aliasing and high framerates. I try to keep my minimum fps at >60 in most games and playing online shooters like tf2 at a constant 120 fps is nice. Price/Performance is pretty good compared to a single more powerful card.
17/11/2011 at 18:01 SoggySilicon says:
I run two custom water cooled cards in SLi… so the noise is nonexistent, as there is no fans on the cards… due to the layout of most motherboards one will find that card 0 will tend to run considerably hotter on air than card 1 due to “sucking” the air from across the back of card 1′s pcb.
As far as SLi in general, in many instances it does provide some nice performance increase, expect somewhere around 80 percent of an increase in most titles. Triple and Quad solutions will generally run a diminishing return trend as well.
Unfortunately nothing comes without a cost, and multi cards have there own issues to work with. Also if using different vendors for the cards (which is possible in SLi so long as the core is the same) the clock frequency will, of course, be set to the lowest card. Overclocking bust be done to each card simultaneously.
All in all, they are a headache, and I would simply not suggest it for a reviewing games on a regular basis, or for a casual user. If one finds that the latest games have been “buggy” imagine the same video buggyness with twice the cards… it’s about 80 percent more buggy per card. You’ve been warned… that said, when it works nothing comes close bang for the buck.
17/11/2011 at 18:18 BobsLawnService says:
Way back in the mists of time I bought an SLI capable motherboard and a 6600GT with the intention of buying a second card when games started getting jittery and I could justify buying the second card. By the time I could do that a 9600GT provided much better performance than an SLI setup with that card for a small amount of cash so I just didn’t bother. My next motherboard had one GPU slot.
17/11/2011 at 18:31 jon_hill987 says:
No SLI for me but I did put my old 8800GT back in alongside my GTX275 to run the PhysX in Batman Arkham Asylum.
17/11/2011 at 19:18 PopeJamal says:
I’m running the following:
-I7 2600K @4.3
-16GB RAM
-GTX 560Ti x 2 (SLI)
I run everything at my native/max resolution of 1080P (1920 x 1080)
My experience so far:
It seems to depend alot on the game.
The biggest practical improvement I’ve seen is having a max framerate of anywhere from 150 – 260 FPS while tooling about in WoW with just about everything maxed out. Only drops below 50 when fighting off a full raid of Alliance coming into town for Garrosh. Average is about 130 or so overall.
Everything else I’ve run seems smooth as silk: Fallout: New Vegas, Crysis, Metro 2033, most old games seem fine with SLI. Rift was mostly OK, but I think my problems were more engine than hardware related there. Not sure. I generally have more issues with using Win7 for older games than with using SLI.
One bit of inside info I’ll share though is the electrical usage. Under full load during benchmarking, the highest usage I’ve seen is 677 Watts. That’s pretty crazy.
I’m no expert, but looking forward, considering how everything seems to be heading the “parallel processing” route, I only see Multi-GPU istalls increasing over the next few years.
I’ll also state that, as an SLI user(owner? advocate? victim?) I do look for, and appreciate, reviews that explicitly talk about whether or not there are any SLI issues.
17/11/2011 at 19:38 MythArcana says:
The latest desktop computer I built has SLI capability, but I just don’t see the point in having that setup. Heat, power consumption, and cash drainage aren’t my favorite things I’m afraid.
17/11/2011 at 20:12 Zyrusticae says:
I run SLI with two GTX 260s, and I gotta say, it was completely worth it all the way.
I will note that I bought the second 260 months after the first from Ebay at a huge discount, so the cost-effectiveness was pretty much through the roof. The scaling is excellent, and the added noise is really little different from what it is ordinarily. I will admit that the added power draw is a negative, as is having to buy a bigger PSU to supply said power, but most every mid-to-high-end motherboard nowadays has SLI/Crossfire support built right in, so there’s really no reason not to splurge if you’re looking for a cheap way to upgrade your performance (even if you have to go to Ebay to get a second card).
My plan for the future is to get a single new card when it finally outstrips the performance of my two 260s (from the looks of things, the 600-series will be that series), and then, a year or two down the line, get a second card to augment the first at a really impressively low cost to myself. (I can use a spare GTX 260 for physics processing in the meantime).
And for the record, I don’t notice any micro-stuttering. I may not be as sensitive to such things as others, however.
17/11/2011 at 20:20 rottenspiel says:
Considered it but would be too much of a hassle. Besides, I’ve got a bigger 22″ monitor now but went back to my old trusty 19″ one until it died and now I’m stuck with this one. But if it ever goes bad I’ll go back to 19″. Easier for older games which I play most of the time, requires less horse-power and is great all-around.
Single card it is for me!
17/11/2011 at 20:21 Dave says:
Bought a setup a few months ago with 2x 560 Ti cards, and have not regretted it since. Every game performs really well and I have yet to experience my first issue with an old or a new game.
guru3d.com was a huge help in making a choice. They have nice comparison tests with performance graphs.
17/11/2011 at 21:15 leahcim says:
I think SLI/Xfire is an ugly kludge to solve the problem that has wins for the manufs but not the customer.
One that doesn’t work in most cases I see, and causes more problems than it solves.
I think some fat nvidia and amd execs got drunk one night and when asked how they could increase sales one said “sell enthusiasts 2 cards” – and they all laughed. But the joke is enthusiasts were really that dumb to fall for it.
i.e, they don’t have to make different cards, they make more money overselling PSUs and motherboards.
But I think, like multicore processors it’s probably inevitable that multi-processing is the way they will increase future performance.
But SLI/Xfire doesn’t scale, you need 2x, 3x, 4x, 8x, 16x and so on. Unless computers are going to be 6′ long, they have to do it properly before long.
I’d much prefer the GPU vendors started to think like intel, and created multicore GPU chips, rather than ugly ideas like putting 2 or 3 Graphics cards in a computer.
I’d also prefer game developers to start writing good, well optimised, games again. Rage, despite suffering from AMD’s moronic opengl driver development, managed it.
Others, like skyrim, should easily hit constant 60fps on my system, but don’t.
I suppose, failing that, the x2 cards from ATI are a bit of a compromise, but only just.
I certainly don’t intend to get SLI/Xfire though.
17/11/2011 at 23:59 Solidstate89 says:
Rocking two 470 Twin Frozr II’s in SLI.
I’ve been able to max every game and then some that I own. I like not having to worry whether I have the GPU power to run a game. And quite frankly, the issues that used to exist with Multi-GPUs just don’t exist for me anymore. Especially now that nVidia updates its SLI profiles in the background completely separate from the drivers.
18/11/2011 at 00:27 Moraven says:
I buy with the thought I will buy a 1 good card now then crossfire it in a couple years with the 2nd card cheaper.
Never have the money, or I end up having to do a complete overhaul anyway and just get a new good single card that would just be as good or better.
18/11/2011 at 01:19 blitzpapaya says:
Found the poll a bit limiting so I’d like to share my experience with SLI/Crossfire.
Back in the day I had 2x 8800GTs and 2x 8800GTXs set up in SLI. This was around the time Crysis came out and the performance boost was welcome, in general. I had a high end dual core (e8600 CPU) OCd with water at this time.
More recently, I had 2 4870x2s (now I’m just using ONE 4870×2, due to limited space since I dropped watercooling), again, the performance boost was also quite welcome. I was using an OC quad core at this time (Q9550- but now using OCd i7 on air)
I stopped playing Bad Company 2 for a long time because I just couldn’t get my single 4870×2 to stop flickering when trying to generate water textures. Tried a multitude of different catalyst drivers and tweaked the hell out of BC2… no success at the time. Furthermore, some games lean more towards one multi-GPU option vs the other (I feel Nvidia has better driver support for multi-GPU with newer games these days, but it still sucks.)
Ultimately, in retrospect, in both instances SLI/Crossfire is NOT WORTH the $$$. IMO you’re MUCH better off buying a newer-gen beastly SINGLE chip graphics card. The most important aspect of stable and beautiful gaming, IMO, is minimum FPS. SLI/Crossfire does very little to improve minimum FPS, and opens you up to a multitude of other (most driver-related) problems.
18/11/2011 at 03:52 Bart Stewart says:
I used single cards until I read the article at The Tech Report that did an in-depth comparison of cards, including in 2- and 3-way SLI/Crossfire mode.
The benchmarks showed a couple of really useful things. One was that the increase in performance from one to two cards was significant, while going from 2 to 3 was almost trivial. And the second fact was that two 8800 GTs in SLI outperformed nearly every other card available at the time, at a remarkably low price point.
I bought two of those puppies, hooked ‘em up with zero difficulty, and enjoyed great performance since then. The twin 260 GTXs I’m using now make Skyrim look and play very well.
I don’t think I’ll ever go back to a single card.
18/11/2011 at 05:55 Specials4uc3 says:
Always a lot of people having bad experiences with SLi, I have had the opposite. I currently run 2x gtx570 and this is an upgrade from 2x gtx 260. When I bought the two cards I bought were cheaper than a 580 and out perform it every time. The thing is I’m into the whole tweaking, overclocking and benchmarking thing as a side hobby to gaming so it’s the only way to go really. That said every game that comes out my only setup concern is squeezing out more visual quality, the framerates aren’t an issue.
18/11/2011 at 08:20 Catweasel says:
The poll doesn’t have an option for two Voodoo 2′s.
18/11/2011 at 15:56 Wisq says:
I’m in a rather funny situation. I bought what I thought was a single card — it’s a single-slot multi-GPU ATI card — and it turns out that effectively, as far as games are concerned, that makes it Crossfire.
The good news is, it’s enough to power my 27″ LCD at the rather large resolution of 2560×1440. The bad news is, I get to suffer all the Crossfire bugs in games that don’t support it properly, even though I only have a single card. Certain older titles (or titles that don’t expect high-end hardware, like the Sims 3) will actually crash and lock up my entire computer if I try to run them in fullscreen mode.
Also, unlike an actual Crossfire user, I don’t have the ability to turn it off. So I guess the moral here is, be careful when picking up multi-GPU cards.