Can someone explain to me the attraction of SLI/crossfire?
Looking around at some benchmarks it seems to me as though doubling up the graphics cards gives an increase in performance of somewhere between 0-30%. One article I read suggested that in some games, using sli might even lead to a small performance decrease over a single card. To gain this performance boost, you're obviuosly having to buy two cards and so pay double the price.
So lets say I've got a 7600GT (which I have). It cost me £150. By spending another £150 I can get another card and get me a 30% maximum performance boost. But wait ... that's £300, and for that money I can buy a cheap X1900XT which is going to give me somewhere between 100% and 200% performance boost, depending on the game. So if I've got a spare £300 to spend, guess which I'm going to go for?
So unless you're a millionaire buying a supersytem with twin X1900XT cards, why ever bother doubling up? It seems you'll get much better performance boosts for your money by just buying a more expensive card.
Looking around at some benchmarks it seems to me as though doubling up the graphics cards gives an increase in performance of somewhere between 0-30%. One article I read suggested that in some games, using sli might even lead to a small performance decrease over a single card. To gain this performance boost, you're obviuosly having to buy two cards and so pay double the price.
So lets say I've got a 7600GT (which I have). It cost me £150. By spending another £150 I can get another card and get me a 30% maximum performance boost. But wait ... that's £300, and for that money I can buy a cheap X1900XT which is going to give me somewhere between 100% and 200% performance boost, depending on the game. So if I've got a spare £300 to spend, guess which I'm going to go for?
So unless you're a millionaire buying a supersytem with twin X1900XT cards, why ever bother doubling up? It seems you'll get much better performance boosts for your money by just buying a more expensive card.