SLI Questions

Hey guys,
I was wondering if SLI is right for me. Right now, I'm building a new system and I've done a lot of searching on the internet (and these forums) to help me decide on a motherboard. I'm torn between SLI or just a single GPU. I game at 1280x1024 (and I might upgrade to a 22" at 1680x1050). This would be the maximum resolution--is an SLI setup even worth it? I think a single $500 gfx card would beat 2 $250 gfx cards in SLI. What do you guys think? Should I buy an SLI mobo so that I can choose to upgrade to SLI if it improves in the future? What are your guys' thoughts? I appreciate any help.

SLI is a marketing gimmick/engine developed by the Marketing guru's over at Nvidia to trick the consumer into buying double what they would normaly buy. It was developed around the dual core hype. They figured they could ride the same train.

Unless you are playing at rediculous resolutions with all the eyecandy and using at least the 8800GTS. its not worth it.

Take this opinion with a grain of salt, I'm a poor college student with no money to spare.

Do you think an 8800 GTS 320 would be able to handle most present games with AA and AF at 1280x1024? Maybe I'll just wait to buy a 9series when I upgrade my monitor. It seems the difference between the 320 and the 640 is pretty slim at 1280x1024.

Even if noise was an issue, the noise benefits would not be worth the severe disadvantages of SLI'ing 8600s or 8500s.

I somewhat resent that statement since it´s a generalization of pre-release marketing hype published by the manufacturer. The information that the new GPU will break the teraflop barrier is interesting but, like a 3dmark score, is not really indicative of gaming performance. It´s like comparing the x2900XT with the 8800 Ultra. The former has 320 shader units while the latter has only 128 which should make the ATI card more than two times as fast... It´s nothing more than picking the most benefical facts and compare them with everything else left out.

Go with the single card. It will be all you need, and provides better upgrade options later on.

That is a total bunch of speculation on your part, both as to the 8800, and the 9800 series.

@mousemonkey, it depends on the card you are looking at for $250.

Yes, I am aware that not all cards are created equal, but for example when I built my rig last year I was at first going to put a 7600GT into it but after a bit a scraping I found that I was able to afford a 7900GT but couldn't quite stretch to a GTX, then a few months later when I had a bit of spare cash I found it impossible to get another 7900GT because they where no longer on sale here in the UK so I bought a 7900 GTO which on it's own is faster and gives higher frame rates than a GT, however I am lucky enough to have a friend that also had a 7900GT which he brought over one evening at which point I had 2x7900GT's and 1 7900GTO and a mobo with two PCI-e slots, can you see where this was going?, I've done a bit experimenting mate,and from that I've deduced two 7900GT's are better than 1 7900GTO but the GTO is a great card on it's own but two GTO's would be even greater not as good as two GTX's but maybe better than a single GTX, you might note that I do not compare to the GF8's as many mistakenly do, if you are going to compare Sli'd cards to non Sli cards you must stay within the same family and GPU.

Those gains are actually pretty weak in comparison to what you'd get if you enabled high levels of antialiasing and anisotropic filtering.

The point of the jpegs was to show the simple increase that one would get if one was to double the amount of cards in ones computer as visual quality settings can be a subjective thing, what one person considers best another may deem unacceptable, FPS however is FPS and more is always better than less IMO.

It is very much a case of 'each to his or her own' but I like options the more options the merrier I say, you can never have too many options, so long as they are optional not compulsory.

I think the 320mb gts would be easily enough for 1280x1024, and the 640mb version for the 1600x1050 screen.

Also, nvidia are quick to say yeh we're going to have a 1tb card woo. That isnt the whole series, thats likely a gtx/ultra equivalent for like $800, and the rest will not get anywhere as near.