g80 (SLI) vs r600 (XFire) not so easy choice

just leave, now. right now.

Chipset usually does not have anything to do when selecting a graphics card. You could have a 680i board with a Ati Graphics card and see no altercations or flaws with the system. Most of the time, when it comes down to a graphics card it goes down to price, and sometimes availability. If you so wish to spend roughly 1,000 dollars on a Dual Graphics card setup, then by all means go for it if you want bragging rights. Otherwise, these days 1 graphics card is more than enough to drive many monitors and many games on the market these days. Even when DX10 supported games come out, you don't need a vastly large SLi/CF setup whatsoever.

@EnforcerFX.. I know that I can use a 680i board with the ati card, but if someone wanted to go with dual graphics cards, wouldn't the mobo be an important factor in deciding?

watch who you reply to.

first a stupid topic now you cannot even reply to the right person, you are really irritating me now.

like i said, if you want the best gaming performance, you will get the mobo that lets you do that , not some fancy mobo with features you probably won't use.

why don't oyu give some specifics regarding mobo features that you need that crossfire mobo's released and not yet released might not support.

I frankly do not care if I'm irritating you. You must be a sad person. Oh and there's a difference between ignorance and stupidity, you should learn the difference and choose your words accordingly.

it's not a question on which is better. the question was: "Should the platform itself (SLI or Xfire) be a decisive factor in choosing the card"

1: There are no verified R600 benchmarks about yet. It may be faster, it may be slower, who can guess how well/badly that will translate into Xfire performance

2: We are not sure of R600 pricings yet. We are not sure if there will be a G80 price drop on the launch of R600. 1GiB of GDDR4 and a 13 layer 512bit PCB doesnt come cheap.

3: As for motherboards, the 975X chipset supports Xfire, and are not far behind nForce 680i. The RD600 board from DFi is an *excellent* motherboard that is arguably better than any current nf680i board. Intel Bearlake may well have Xfire support, and could easily leave P965, 975X, and NF680i for dust.

Platform availibility does have some influence, after all the options for SLi on Intel were VERY limited at C2D's release. But with RD600 about on an excellent DFi board, and 975X supporting Xfire, with the possibility of Bearlake soon, I dont see an issue here.

thanks to the two people that have actually posted something constructive.

what a waste of everyones time

Let me rephrase your question:

Which is better? Please answer yes or no. Is it the card that is available or the one that isn't released or reviewed yet? Oh, and I am specifically wondering how they will do in games that are over 6 months from being released. Thanks guys.

PS. If you would be so kind as to also fill me in on which stock will gain the most value by the end of 2007, I'd greatly appreciate a yes or no answer to that also.

Whenever I see r600 now I die a little inside.

You're starting to irritate me, Stranger. He asks a logical question, no matter how much you think he might be trolling. If you were new to this and wanted to plunk down a huge sum for a high-end gaming PC, I think you'd ask some questions too. You are not the all-knowing force on these forums, if anyone it'd be Crashman. So lay off.

In answer to your question, the chipset really only should influence your video card decision if you want to go dual graphics. In which case you'll have to find a company and stick with it until you want to hop the fence and try the other side.

The possible exception would be the high-end Intel chipsets like 975x, which run Crossfire with their regular drivers, or SLI with le hacked drivers. If you don't feel like hacking, however, you're pretty much stuck as I said earlier.

As people have said, the platform isn't the most important part in determining performance. If you look at motherboard benchmarks, they're pretty much all identical with the same CPU, GPU, RAM, etc. because the chipset is secondary, possibly even tertiary to the other parts.

Now, if you're overclocking, the chipset will have an impact on how high you can OC. nVidia's 680i is the the new king of the clocks, so hit up those boards (in particular the eVGA one) if you want to OC. That will limit you to SLI or a single ATI card, but I wouldn't worry. Even a single R600 will be fast, even if it probably won't beat dual 8800s.

btw, i thought i would add something.

the OP, made a mistake in this thread. and that was mentioning g80 and r600.

that was severely flawed.

if he had only mentioned whether mobo features should decide nvidia or ATI for a dual gfx card setup then that would have been fine. mentioning the r600 was not necessary and the very fact it does not exist defeated the purpose of the thread.

so, in truth the question was not bad even if a bit pointless IMO. it was the specifics of the cards that was the problem. a hypothetical question would have gotten far more responses and sure as hell more helpful ones than this nonsense.

People who want to game will buy the fastest videocard.

All gamers care about is that the faster videocard will win. Platform is secondary, and won't have nearly the impact a videocard does in games.

One thing I sincerely wish is that AMD/ATI would make Crossfire so that it could be run on the same board that can run SLI. After all, this thing of having to buy a different motherboard just to run a different card setup is silly, probably self defeating as well.

Think of it this way: when I bought my present motherboard, I had SLI in mind. When I decided to get an ATI card, I was forced to either stick with one card only or spend a lot of money to buy a new motherboard as well. And then if I decide to back to a SLI setup, I have to go through the hastle of changing boards again. Guess what I'm most likely going to do if I want to run two cards? That type of thing can't be good for Crossfire sales.

I know. Must come from smoking all that sagebrush here in Nevada, or whatever it is that grows all over the place.

Just wait for the titles to see which videocard card performs the best.

Do you keep this one in a Word document ready to copy-paste., I've seen it from you quite a few time... troll, stupid, etc... you first...



If you don't like what he ask, just shut up and go elsewhere, ideally in HELL. I'm wondering how many of those 3500+ post are for not being able to keep your mouth shut :?: :?: :?: :?:

To Ghostface: this moron is posting here only to get us angry. Best solution, click ignore beside his name so you won't have any of it's stupidity in your face. Also, write to forum master to let them know about his behaviour that is totally wrong.

Whenever I see a story about some guy kicking another guy ass after a discussion in some obscure forum I think about him. That's how bad this guy is. Don't get me wrong, I'll never do this, but I know some poeple would if they'd have the chance.

The question that resume to something like "is it worth getting a faster card if the ideal chipset for it isn't the best" totally make sense. The answer depends on what you do with your computer. If all you do is gaming and the VPU still perform better for it, I'd get the faster VPU. If you use your PC for encoding video (or any other things), and only occasionnally game at all, go for the better performing chipset.

It's that simple.

To all, ignore the first moron here, StrangeStranger. We'll all feel better at the end of the day.

you think i have stayed on this forum this long to flame and troll, get real. i come here to hopefully learn and help others.

however, i like these forums and like them to be a place of discussion and help. this thread is neither of those things.

his question would not need to be asked if he had common sense and had done some background reading. there is a tonne of info in these forums. hell, 70% of the threads here should not be asked.

if his question was should i go with gfx card speed or mobo features, then how many times over the years has this been answered on toms. i would bet hundreds.

products change but tech stays the same. seriously, take a step back and think. you may say the same to you but i have reason on my side.

i aint no troll. it is an insult to me for you to say that given how many, many times i have tried to help others and engage in a reasonable debate.

that is not to say i do not give as good as i get from some other, IMO less desirable members.

I'll just drop my two cents and leave cause nobody seems to like me on these forums either, so:

Stranger, if you truly were here to help others, you might have pointed out in your first post what the OP was doing wrong and how he could fix it. I understand that trying to help so many people with the same stupid posts over and over gets irritating to the point that you just want to ban them yourself, but everybody was or is a noob at some point and everybody needs helping. A good reason for this would probably be that nobody ever starts out educated on the subject they happen to be asking questions about. Like i know i asked about K8L and whether or not it was worth waiting for or not on here and i got flamed instantly but just because some of us might know why, to a degree, C2D is better than AMD64, or why, to a degree, G80 is now beating everything ATI has on the market, doesn't mean we know the intricate details - and so we ask hoping that someone who does can help us.

Someone might know intricatley the details of vec4 shaders vs stream processors and the effects of 384-bit vs 512-bit busses with only (an alleged) 400mhz effective difference in memory speed. These are the people who we want to answer our threads because they can simply go, yep, i know all about that. This is the clear victor.

So personally in my opinion, from what i've read, even if it's off topic, i think r600 is going to blow away g80. just go look at the VGA charts and compare a regular x1950xtx vs a 8800gtx on THW's min and max available settings. They're both identical (except for oblivion) on the min settings and on avg the 8800gtx is better by 25%. Wait for ATI to evolve and i think it'll blow G80 away, even the G80 refresh (assuming all the refresh is getting is going to be a die shrink and maybe a speed increase).

I wish I could get the raw data behind the THG vga chart in comma delimited format... A spreadsheet would make that comparison much easier.

I wouldn't think that driver version would make much difference in the percentage increase of single vs dual card, as the drivers (usually) have to support both tech.'s. The benchmark used will make a difference, as some benchmarks take better advantage of dual vs single card config's... For instance, using the THG guide, in sli the NV 6800 ultra gets almost a 50 percent boost in 3dmark06... But in one of the games, it fared only marginally better.

This is definitely where the wars start.....with theoretical results based upon specs on hardware that is not released yet!

Gotta wait for the data because their drivers could suck......who knows!

Very good point. Anyone at THG viewing that could make this happen?

I know that... That was just an example of how the reference benchmark used to compare the two technologies, sl vs non sli, xfire vs non xfire on any card would vary more than using a better or worse driver.

I know that you have helped prepare much of the data behind the guides, is there any possibility of getting the raw data in a CSD flatfile?

Then we could politely ask this person to research the message boards before posting a question that's been answered many times over. RobTrevino is new, it looks like. Have a pint and relax a little.

No harm done, Rob--but do try to research topics before asking for answers that are already given. Your poll isn't very logical but your question does have some merit and the fact is, nobody knows what the best solution WILL be, we only know what it IS. And that's that the 680i motherboard with SLI is the best solution that exists now. What may happen later is anybody's guess. So my advice to you would be that if your money isn't burning a hole in your pocket, keep doing your research and wait until this all shakes out. If you need to build a system now, build the 680i SLI solution. In all reality, there's always going to be better six months down the road no matter what solution you go with.

Don't be so ignorant. As the former owner of a heavily overclocked 512mb X1900XT (basically the same performance as a X1950XTX) and now proud owner of a 8800GTX I can tell you for a fact since I have experience with both that they are no where near the same league. The 8800GTX destroys my 512mb X1900XT hands down.

Some of THW's benchies have been unbelievingly stupid lately Why dont you go take a look at some other sites such as firingsquad.com, Anandtech.com and take a look at their benchies. Its not even close.



































Here is my personal experience with Oblivion in some of the most demanding outside places.



1680X1050res 8XAA, 16XAF + HDR All ingame options maxed Completely out.