Some Q's about SLI

[wirelessfender]

Alright, again. I have been doing a lot of reading on GPU's lately. SLI'ing 2 8800GT is looking very attractive to me right now. I keep asking people who I would think would know something about SLI. So far I consistently get conflicting advice. Some think that SLI'ing is no good, some think that SLI is great. What I hear so far is that some games perform worse with SLI? Huh? Doesn’t make any sense to me. Other than that I don’t understand how most motherboards run SLI in 8x mode. Is that supposed to bottleneck some sort of performance? Should I wait for better motherboards to SLI or is now a good time to do so? Some explanation of the pros and cons would help me (and im sure other people) in a buying decision.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Also, wouldnt 2 8800GT 512mb outperform a 8800GTX 768mb? 224 shaders vs. 128 shaders. I run junk on 1680x1050. Also, you think you can unlock the disabled 16 shaders of the GT like other cards have in the past?

 

[pchoi04]

I think in theory... Dual GPU setups are a GREAT idea but the technology still has a little ways to go. Although Nvidia claims in advertisements that SLI will double the performance of one card; I have yet to see a benchmark that represents this. If I were to pay twice as much on a GPU setup I would expect double the performance (naturally). But... I could see how SLI could make sense at high resolution (1920x1200 and up).

The reason why some games may perform poor even in SLI could be that not all games are optimized to take advantage of SLI.

Most of your newer boards (680i) support 16x on both PCIE slots.

 

[Maziar]

SLI/CrossFire FAQs :
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/245454-15-crossfire-faqs

 

[wirelessfender]

"If I were to pay twice as much on a GPU setup I would expect double the performance (naturally). But... I could see how SLI could make sense at high resolution (1920x1200 and up). "


I see your point but consider this, 2 8800 GT cost less than a single GTX. AND you can clock a 8800 GT to perform better than a GTX I hear. So anyone think it would be dumb to do this? Or do I have every reason to SLI now?

 

[Maziar]

2 8800GT will cost like a 8800GTX and they outperform it in most benchmarks, however they will consume more power and more heat and alsi they will still have 512MB memory (although its enough)