Running twin cards in SLI involves a little bit of planning in the initial build:
1. Is the case big enough with adequate air flow ? Cases which allow ya to mount a fan on the back side of the 3.5" bays are handy.
2. Has the PSU been sized to handle the maximum draw at stock + 100 watts if you are overclocking and still leave some room to spare ?
3. Did you pick a MoBo that places the two cards in SLI in say Slots 1/2 and 4/5 so you get some space between them ?
While every item above isn't absolutely necessary from the getgo, If you have done all of the above at teh time of original build, then SLI should be "easy as cake / piece of pie".
So the rest of the questions that need to be considered are:
1. Budget .... how often can you upgrade / replace ya rig ?
2. How old is the rest of the system ? If you have a Haswell build for example, I'd expect ya to keep it around a while; if it' Sandy Bridge, then a complete system upgrade may be warranted by the time the 9xx rolls around.
Snostorm8 :
my one is reference, but i'd get a twin frozr if i did sli.
i should note they are the 2gb of vram versions which will be low in a year
MSI has moved on to the N Gaming series ... think of it as Twin Frozr on steroids.....for example the ole Twin Frozr 780 (902 Mhz) is now the N Gaming Series 780 (954 MHz). Of course the 680 is the same but be aware when you SLI them, the speed, RAM and temp limit will be controlled by the slower / hotter / lower of the two.
As for the 2 GB thing, having had access to 2 GB, 3 GB and 4 GB cards, this is what I have observed.
a) Yes, certain games will utilize more than 2 GB of RAM.
b) Other than "using it" I have not been able to observe any visual or performance differences at 1920 x 1080 at both 120 and 144 Hz.
Here's some test results between 2 GB and 4 GB .... sort version....most games vary by < 1 fps.... sometimes 4 GB is faster; sometimes its slower.
http://alienbabeltech.com/main/gtx-770-4gb-vs-2gb-tested/3/
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