4 way SLI motherboards

[sausagerules1]

Hi guys.
Could anyone recommend a 4 way SLI motherboard. The cheaper, the better as I am on quite a strict budget, but would like to upgrade to an SLI configuration in the future. Want to spend under £200, but I'm not sure if thats will be enough for this type of motherboard. Currently wanting
I5 3570k Ivy Bridge
Corsair 2x8gb RAM
1x64gb SSD
2tb HDD
I will not be water cooling, so that isn't a requirement for the motherboard.
Thanks

 

[CaptainTom]

Hi guys.
Could anyone recommend a 4 way SLI motherboard. The cheaper, the better as I am on quite a strict budget, but would like to upgrade to an SLI configuration in the future. Want to spend under £200, but I'm not sure if thats will be enough for this type of motherboard. Currently wanting
I5 3570k Ivy Bridge
Corsair 2x8gb RAM
1x64gb SSD
2tb HDD
I will not be water cooling, so that isn't a requirement for the motherboard.
Thanks

Why 4 way? 3-way and 2-way not enough?

 

[sausagerules1]

When I buy a graphics card, I never want to get rid of it, so if I bought a gtx 480 and then 8 months later bout a 660Ti, then another year later buy the more expensive GPUs now, (that won't be that expensive then), if that makes sense. Basically I never want to get rid of a graphics card, no matter how good/bad it is.
But I guess that 3-way would be ok, because I don't think that I'll ever get 4 graphics cards. I sort of want to "future proof" my pc in this way.

 

[DJDeCiBeL]

I sort of want to "future proof" my pc in this way.

There's no such thing as "future proofing" anyway, but just get two GTX 680's (or even 690's) and call it a day. Those will last you for as long as you'll ever need them to.

 

[sausagerules1]

But I won't be able to afford them straight away, thats why I want a 3/4 way sli motherboard

 

[bigcyco1]

There's no such thing as "future proofing" anyway, but just get two GTX 680's (or even 690's) and call it a day. Those will last you for as long as you'll ever need them to.

+1 and i will add two 670's will do the trick as well

 

[memadmax]

Testing shows that adding a 4th card does little for performance.
3 is about the limit.

 

[getochkn]

The problem is adding a 4xx and then a 6xx and then in a year a 7xx or 8xx series card, the 4xx is going to hamper and slow down your system so much compared to what the 7xx or 8xx would offer, you'll be bottlenecking and probably slowing your system down.

Just adding any graphics cards together does not equal better performance, and add's more and more complications and problems with games that increase with every card you add. Sell your old cards, even if it's for a few bucks to help fund a better card when you want to upgrade.

 

[sausagerules1]

Ok so I should only get a 2way sli motherboard, so, which 6xx gtx card is the best value for money. Please, no one say the 690 as that is way, way out of my price range. I might be able to get the 670, but that is really stretching it.
Thanks

 

[ittimjones]

first rule of SLI:
buy the best GPU u can afford and SLI later when you can afford it

also, 1x64GB SSD, prly won't cut it. I had one and had to upgrade. I ONLY put Win7 x64 on it, but other applications (mainly MS Office) store files to the system partition. Also, SSD's REALLY lose performance after they become half full, seriously.

 

[gregaaron89]

When I buy a graphics card, I never want to get rid of it, so if I bought a gtx 480 and then 8 months later bout a 660Ti, then another year later buy the more expensive GPUs now, (that won't be that expensive then), if that makes sense. Basically I never want to get rid of a graphics card, no matter how good/bad it is.
But I guess that 3-way would be ok, because I don't think that I'll ever get 4 graphics cards. I sort of want to "future proof" my pc in this way.

You can't SLI with different cards, they have to be the same. So whatever card you start with you'll just have to keep buying more of, until eventually a new model single card outperforms all of your old cards in SLI. Future proofing is impossible. Just get the best card you can and sell it later for a better one.

 

[CaptainTom]

Ok so I should only get a 2way sli motherboard, so, which 6xx gtx card is the best value for money. Please, no one say the 690 as that is way, way out of my price range. I might be able to get the 670, but that is really stretching it.
Thanks

All of the 6xx are terrible for your money right now (Except a spare few 670's for ~$350). I'm sorry if you want the best for your money this year, get a 7xxx series.

 

[jitpublisher]

When I buy a graphics card, I never want to get rid of it, so if I bought a gtx 480 and then 8 months later bout a 660Ti, then another year later buy the more expensive GPUs now, (that won't be that expensive then), if that makes sense. Basically I never want to get rid of a graphics card, no matter how good/bad it is.
But I guess that 3-way would be ok, because I don't think that I'll ever get 4 graphics cards. I sort of want to "future proof" my pc in this way.

A couple of flaws in your thinking.
First, you can only SLI identical cards, different cards don't work together, and even it they did, performance would be degraded to the lowest level card you had, so buying better cards over time and adding them to an SLI setup would be a huge waste of money because the performance of the setup would be degraded to match the slowest, oldest card.

Second, 2 cards in SLI will give you about a 80% increase in performance, 3 will add another 25% on average, and the 4th most of the time will render 15% or less improvement. Your best bet is to buy the best single card you can afford now, then in a year, when the price of that card drops, and you feel performance starting to slip, buy another one. That is how you budget tight money on SLI.
Buying 2 cheap cards and putting them into SLI will almost always cost more and perform worse than a single high end card, always. Don't let anyone tell you different, its a bad idea to buy cheap cards and SLI them, BAD IDEA. You will not be impressed if you do. Toms sometimes recommends
SLI in their best GPU for the money articles, and I do not agree with them that this is a good thing to do value wise, over time.

SLI is not a budget solution. If your budget is that tight, then you need to look a good, fast single card, and just be happy with that.

 

[Guest]

There's no such thing as "future proofing" anyway, but just get two GTX 680's (or even 690's) and call it a day. Those will last you for as long as you'll ever need them to.

I am agreeing that there isn't really such a thing as future proofing, but three 680's might be an exception. That's a lot of power.
But I still wouldn't sugest quadfire.

 

[keithmfr]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128552

 

[robthatguyx]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157293
id do something like this because 2 670s will last a long time

 

[Aaron Troller]

old post but ill respond. i would go with the asus rampage IV extreme i have been running it for around 7 months and its been wonderful with quad evga 760 4gb. alot of ppl will tell you that you dont gain much from the third to the 4th card and its true you dont but you still gain a little and thats enough for me an avid extreme pc builder. and someone was saying a 64 gb ssd is not enough well my second computer i have a 64 gb ssd with the os on ti and its fine its full and still dont lose performance does just as good as day one so idk what to tell you about yours but me and everyone i know dont have that issue.

specs:
inwin grone full tower
4 evga 760 4gb- quad sli all with nickel waterblocks
rosewill hercules 1600w part. modular psu
16gb g skills tridentx ddr3 2400 with water blocks
asus rampage IV extreme with water block
Intel Core i7-3930K Sandy Bridge-E six core OC to 4.4GHz
14x bluray burner/player
4 samsung 840 pro series 256gb ssd's
complete custom water cooling from xoxide and frozencpu