Legacy1785 said:
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Unless you can get a pair of 560 cards at a really good deal, like 20-30 percent less total price wise then the single card solution that they match power with in test and games when running in SLI, then don't bother unless you plan to dedicate one of them to Physx usage a lot. Otherwise at that point it isn't worth it, and you will be better off sticking to a powerful single card solution. Not every game supports SLI or Crossfire, so often you will find yourself having to use disable one of the 560 cards, thus losing out on the performance in some titles you could have had if you'd just went with a more powerful single card.
There is not a single card solution that could keep up with any of those cards listed in SLI/Crossfire 580 single vs 6850 CF the 6850 CF wins IMO... and It's cheaper and consumes less power
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/302?vs=305
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560 TI hands down... Start here, the 560 taked every bench as a single card except Dirt 2 .... in SLI none of the others can compete.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/gefo [...] i-review/4
even jacks link shows that for benchmarks on the sli vs single card and the argument with SLI and Crossfire not compatible with games... the only major vendor that did that recently was blizzard and hopefully some day they will fix that otherwise almost every game is compatible with it...
I honestly did not look at the Guru3d link, mainly due to the fact they only bench the few most popular games that are known to work with dual card configs when running SLI and Crossfire test, and they don't point out what current games have issues with dual card setups. Why Hilbert doesn't ever bother to cover that aspect of things when doing review wrap ups, who knows. In his defense, he isn't the only reviewer who doesn't though. Granted, a pair of 560 cards in those test really does surpass everything else tested, but at $250 a pop, you are looking at spending USD$500 easy to get that performance, its not like you couldn't get great performance from a single HD 6970 anyway as it is, saving $150 in the process.
And no, not every game on the market supports dual card setups still. There are a lot out there that don't, and it is a common problem for games to not support SLI and Crossfire upon release for at least a month or two when a driver fix is available (Need for Speed HP & Shift, Split Second, Force Unleashed 2, Front Mission Evo, Bad Company 2, Lost Planet 2 are some examples of games that got fixed finally or never did). I deal with this issue on both my SLI and Crossfire systems all the time. And sometimes new driver releases will break dual card support on some games and get fixed again next driver release. It doesn't bug me so much because I usually don't buy games on launch anyway and I can always revert back to specific drivers if needed, but just saying, the problems are def there. So unless your dedicated, don't mind doing work arounds or using one card for games that cant use two, and waiting for driver support for new games that may not work with dual cards right off, it may not be for you. If you mainly only play the headliner FPS titles though, you may find yourself pleasantly surprised. But like I said, not like a single 6970 couldn't have gotten you there either. Its no slouch in its own right either.