Should I sli or get a better card?

tomandsarahome · Jul 7, 2018

I currently have a EVGA gtx 660 in my PC, I only have around $105canadian to send on a new card. Would sli work fine with the 660? Or should I save up for a more powerful card? I have an i7 2600 in my PC right now, I got the CPU for free so maybe I can sell it and put my i5 2500k in it again? The 2600 was in an dell optiplex 960 and is basically brand new. Would it be worth selling the 2609? The 2500k should be fine for every game I play, been using the 2500k since I bought it brand new

bmockeg · Jul 7, 2018

Save your money for a 1050ti or 1060 6GB. SLI may not give you much benefit. One of those cards will for sure.

Greeko85 · Jul 7, 2018

^what he said. SLI/crossfire is unfortunately dead technology these days as less and less games seem to properly support it.

Karadjgne · Jul 7, 2018

Sli/cf support ended with DX11. There is no sli/cf support in DX12. So any game ran will have to be DX11.

SLI only adds power according to the optimization of the game engine. This can result in 0%-@70% added boost. In games with 0%, it's often where primary card puts out its frame, the secondary card puts out nothing. End result is 50% of possible fps if running just 1 card. Assassins Creed: Origins is a perfect example.

SLI might double the cards, upping power and fps, but! It does nothing for ram size, which remains. So basically if that 660 is a 1Gb card, even with sli, all you get is 1Gb of ram, which will kill any high intensity games fps.

SLI is pointless really.

Save up for a better single card, it's well worth the difference. Even a used 970/980 would be a serious upgrade for 1080p gaming.

Keep the i7. The Hyperthreading on that cpu will open up options not available on the i5, namely multiple thread games. With a 4c/4t cpu, you will take a sizable hit to performance there as threads become choked. The HT will alleviate that somewhat.

kraelic · Jul 7, 2018

Do you have a P67, Z68, or Z77 motherboard? You can do a limited overclock on the I7 2600 by adding 4 to the turbo bins, base is 3.4 GHz and 3.8 turbo, you change the 38 to 42, and you should see 3.9 to 4.2 GHz if 4 cores to single core is in use. Sell the 2500K to add to the budget and save a little until the next generation cards are out.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/274624-29-2600-overclocking-model

tomandsarahome · Jul 8, 2018

Hey, thanks for all the replies, I appreciate it! I have a few more questions,

I have an asrock z68 extreme 3 gen 3 motherboard, I haven't been able to lock the cpu at max turbo so I just locked it to 4158 all cores which is 39x I don't know how I can lock max turbo on all cores with my mobo. With the bclk I have on clocks would be at 4458 on a single core. Its stable and runs good with the bclk at 106.7, only reason I suggested to keep the i5 was I was able to hit 4.7/4.8ghz with it, but loads on the i7 are way lower than the i5 and let alone way more stable the the i5.

Is it possible with my mobo to lock the i7 at its max multiplier on all cores? I tried turning c states off and spread spectrum off, clocks still lowered as soon as more than 30% load was on the cpu. Temps maxed out at 56c on the long dark after an 4 hour session.

Yes reading up on sli, I'll save up for a better card. What I have now runs mostly every game on near max settings at 1080p at around 50fps. Its the 2gb evga sc model. It runs witcher 3 with mostly everything on max with hair-works on low at 30 to 40fps which is better than most 660s lol. Better than an 660ti -----I think.

http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/8701548
My ram is low, as its in single channel mode, the last 2 slots don't work if you seen my last thread. bclk seemed to lower its performance, its in xmp mode with a slight voltage bump to keep it stable.

I overclocked my 660 and modded it so it ran everything at the settings I wanted, sure its nosier and hotter which I don't mind noise as I cant hear my fans with my speakers on. I have the fan on a custom profile, it never hits 80c. Maxed out at 77c in the long dark, never power throttled or vrel throttled. Kept a stable 50-60fps with nearly everything and every slider on max.

The main problem I have with my system is just the low vram. It has the power to do what I need, just not enough memory for it.

Karadjgne · Jul 8, 2018

Right on very first page of bios should be the option for manual settings of core speeds, instead of auto. Should be able to set all 4 cores at 42 multiplier. In another tab is max turbo speeds, you'll need to bump that up as well to account for any BCLK. Personally, I'm not a fan of BCLK adjustments as the Sandy-Bridge/Ivy-Bridge cpus had no back end stoppage like later cpus, so BCLK affected everything on the buss from cpu to ram to gpu clocks, even affecting transmission of hdds. Getting accurate stability across everything, without corrupted data was a pain as you have to account for increased ram speeds etc, often ending in dangerous voltages when set to auto.

Single channel ram doesn't usually affect much of any game as the games themselves don't use enough bandwidth. At most there's @20% difference between single and dual channels, but unless you can come close to saturating it's bandwidth there's enough room that the ram will have more data backed up than the cpu can use in any given time period. The loss of performance you saw was due to the BCLK increased speeds that didn't have corresponding timing and/or voltages applied to the ram. Kinda like tripping over your feet when running flat out, down a hill. Setting XMP overrides the BCLK and forces the ram to operate according to the jadec profiles stored in the ram bios.

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Should I sli or get a better card?

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