SLI or Upgrade

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roghero

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Sep 11, 2012
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I have a MSI GeForce GTX 660Ti PE sitting in my machine right now and it obviously plays everything I throw at it quite well. I have recently been thinking about it buying an identical card and going SLI. I have been having second thoughts lately due to microstuttering. Is microstuttering an issue still with the new Kepler cards or is a thing of the past? I would rather not spend another 300 and upgrade my PSU for another 100 if I am going to experience stuttering. I am also consideing other upgrade paths and putting the 660Ti on Craigslist (yes I know early). I have my choices down below so let me know what you guys think and what your experiences have been.

-SLI 660Ti
-MSI GTX 680 Lightning
-MSI GTX 680 non Lightning
-MSI GTX 670
-Gigabyte Radeon HD 7970 OC (Does Crossfire microstutter as well?)
-Wait for AMD's 8xxx series

Maybe get a 7970 and Crossfire later if MC is not an issue. I have really been entertaining the idea of trying out AMD's best and it is also sounding pretty good in terms of bang for buck but with the choices I have up budget is not really an issue.

My Rig

i5 3570k
MSI z77 Mpower
MSI GTX 660Ti PE
Corsair XMS3 16gb
Corsair ForceGT 90 Gaming
Corsair Neutron GTX 240 Data/Gaming
SanDisk 64 OS
WD 350GB HDD Data
H100
Storm Trooper
 
Solution
I have used crossfire 3870s, SLI GTX 280s and I now currently use SLI GTX 660ti Galaxy 3gb GC cards.

Each new pair of cards has had less micro stutter than the pair before. (the crossfired 3870s were unbearable)

I have yet to experience any stutter from the 660tis. Additionally, I have been able to max out every game at 1080P and get a constant 60FPS. Games like BF3 run maxed out with 50%-60% load on the GPUs and therefore don't require the fans to spin up.

All the other cards you mentioned would give you significantly less of a performance increase than SLI would give you.

remc86007

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Sep 12, 2012
5
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I have used crossfire 3870s, SLI GTX 280s and I now currently use SLI GTX 660ti Galaxy 3gb GC cards.

Each new pair of cards has had less micro stutter than the pair before. (the crossfired 3870s were unbearable)

I have yet to experience any stutter from the 660tis. Additionally, I have been able to max out every game at 1080P and get a constant 60FPS. Games like BF3 run maxed out with 50%-60% load on the GPUs and therefore don't require the fans to spin up.

All the other cards you mentioned would give you significantly less of a performance increase than SLI would give you.
 
Solution
Crossfire can have stuttering, but there are ways to fix it with ease.

Don't waste your money on a 680; it's only 5% more powerful than a 670, which isn't worth the $100 premium.

I have a 3570k and an EVGA 670, both overclocked, and I can max out most games out there at 120fps. The ones I can't are either horribly coded (Like metro 2033), or require selective turn-downs, such as supersampling on the Witcher 2 or shadows on BF3... nothing that makes a noticeable difference, graphically.

You're going to get amazing performance out of either a 670 or 7970.
 
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