Basicly, Ive got the setup below, and Im contemplating getting a second 8800GT for SLi, when this question popped into my head. Will a low speed CPU bottleneck an SLi setup more than it would a single card?
it will effect the performance of the graphics subsystem if there is alot of thing to rander when the resolution turns up.as always to maximise everything as you trying to eliminate bottleneck in your system.
Basicly, Ive got the setup below, and Im contemplating getting a second 8800GT for SLi, when this question popped into my head. Will a low speed CPU bottleneck an SLi setup more than it would a single card?
In some games 'yes' but for the most part with your CPU @2.8 you shouldn't have too many issues, if any at all.
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Forums are like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhoea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it.
Forget Crysis, it's just not coded right IMHO. NFSMW really showed up the cpu issues on my 3800 x2 939 rig Crysis did not.
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Forums are like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhoea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it.
My personal experience leads me to say yes, it does. The system I had was;
Asus P5N
Intel D-805 @ 2.66
2 GB DDR800 Patriot
2 x BFG 8800GT
XP SP2
I cannot say for other games, but for Crysis my FPS nearly doubled once I got my Quad 6600. When I say doubled I mean going from 18-30 FPS on medium settings @ 1280x1024 to 36-60 FPS with high settings @ 1280x1024. Prior to upgrading my CPU, I actually stopped playing Crysis, it just wasn't worth playing to me. After the upgrade I was able to play smooth and finished the game. Just my 2 cents.
Hmm, yeah the cpu will come into play alot more with SLI than with one card. It again depends on the game and settings, but in general you will obviously be more cpu limited than you were with one card. What SLI will let you do is enable or Crank FSAA. Without FSAA or massive resolution you will have a hard time taking advantage of SLI. Crysis for example is both CPU and GPU limited. Same with Oblivion. SLI 8800GT would be awsome out in the lush foliage, but around towns/castles/lot's of NPC's, you will still see low fps becasue of the CPU.
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MSI P6N SLI Platinum, Q6600, 2GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC8000, SLI BFG 8800GT OC 512MB, SB X-Fi Fatality, Antec TruePower Trio 550W, Windows XP pro
