SLI/Crosfire should I?

[compnewb_12]

Hi I am building a comp for decent gaming, mainly planetside, saints row, maybe bf3 etc, I want to run the games at highish settings. I am looking at some $200 cards and wondering if I could sli or crossfire two lower end cards, because I foubd out my mobo has 2 x16 pcie slots. I have about a 220 dollar budget on a single card, and I am willing to pay up to 125 dollars per card if I crossfir or sli. Is it worth it? Or do I stick to a singly card

My build as it will be when finished
I5 3570k
gigabyte z77 ds3h mobo
8 gb maybe 10 of 1600mhz ram
a 1tb hdd, probably Seagate barracuda
coolermaster elite 430 black
either a liquid cooler for my aftermarket cpu cooler, or a coolermaster v8 or v6gt
an optical driver thngermabob
600-750w psu unless I need more
the graphics solution determined by this thread

 

[lt_dan_zsu]

I would get one card for the time being. Two of those lower end cards will get ram bottlenecks. I would get a 7850 if you want to be way under budget. A 660 if you want to be right on the money. And a 7870 if you are ok with being a few dollars over budget. All of them are good choices for the price. So you can't really go wrong

 

[Lord Tumnas]

Personally i have a 7850 and love it to bits, overclocks like a champ and you can crossfire it, or sli a 660 down the track for performance higher than a 7970 although as It_dan_zsu said, at stock the 660 and 7870 are both slightly faster and you pay fairly for the extra performance, if you do plan to overxlock hpwever, make sure you get a card with powerful cooling, such as the asus cards or a gigabyte windforce

 

[compnewb_12]

Thanks for the info. Would a HIS iceq 7870 do well in terms of thermals? I can pick one up for around 200 dollars. And I think my mobo has triple spacing btwn my two x16 slots, so I should be able to crossfire it later on as I will have the room

 

[lt_dan_zsu]

That card has very good cooling. Newegg has a review for it in the description. I almost got one of those myself, but opted to get a 7950 instead.

 

[compnewb_12]

So if I get that I will have good single card performance, and then whan I crossfire I will still have good thermals, I like it. Thank you guys

 

[lt_dan_zsu]

It will be a good single card. It will run a little hotter when you crossfire it. The card is about 2.5 slot so there should be at least some room between the cards.

 

[compnewb_12]

Makes sense, I will just throw a lot of fans in my case, or water cool the top one when I get it to keep the thermals down.