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Rated: 80% (1 votes)
Loading ...“…SLI or boobies man. tell me, what is more teasing to see…”
combatus
Well that’s a quote from Hilbert Hagedoorn, Cheif Editor of www.guru3d.com in a recent test involving more than one GTX 280. So are multi-graphics setups just an expensive way of pimping your PC? They have been the source of much controversey recently, and well pretty much since Nvidia launched SLI four years ago. Certainly things haven’t improved significantly as Custom PCs SLI vs Crossfire vs Single card test showed in Issue 58. Value has never been a strong point of either implementation on any of the various motherboards wielding more than one PCI-E slot, nor on Vista or XP, 32 or 64bit even in games that scale well like Call of Duty 4.
Having used Crossfire on my main system for several months, I’m well aware of it’s advantages and disadvantages - the former being an increase in frames per second in most games which is always welcome and it looks pretty good too. The latter being more expensive to buy and run, more expensive and more difficult watercool and less than perfect stability.
I think both Crossfire and SLI have moved beyond the simply aesthetic factor that still seems to dominate some discussions and does offer performance increases. But at what cost? Clearly the “c” word is something Nvidia and AMD ATI have steered well clear of. What is worrying though is the sheer amount of cash that you have to throw at these setups in order to get them working. In the guru 3d test, SLI and triple SLI work quite well which is probably down to new drivers or hardware or both. There is now a more potent arguement for opting for these setups, especially if you game at 1920×1200 and above.
But is this only for the super elite with super fat wallets? Three GTX 280 cards will set you back a minimum of £1200 which is rediculous when you consider you’ll need a epic power supply, and a brand new Nvidia 7xx series chipset motherboard just to get it up and running. You’ll also need to think about getting a seriously fast CPU as well as anything below a 3Ghz Intel Dual or Quad core processor would likely be a bottleneck.
For the rest of us that might just about be able to afford £200-300 every couple of years for the latest high end graphics card, multi graphics is a big no-no. ATI gave a bit of a glimer of hope with Crossfire X and the ability to mix and match different graphics cards in Crossfire. This seemed like a good idea but after a fair amount of testing with a 3870 and 3850 in Crossfire accross a range of games from FSX, Crysis, COD4, UT3 and Quake Wars the setup proved to be less than 100% stable with frequent unexplained crashes, poor minimum framerates (although average and maximum were impressive compared to a single card especially in COD4) and a generally unenjoyable gaming experience. In fact I was spending more time tweaking and trying different driver versions to get things running smoothly than actually playing games. As much as I like tweaking, this just isn’t on.
If you’re on a budget less than £400 for a new GPU, then SLI and Crossfire simply don’t add up. For me stability is everything which is why I’ve ditched my Crossfire setup in favour of an 8800GTS 512MB. It may not have the screaming frame rates of two HD3800 chips but overall, every game I play is smoother and most importantly, far more stable. There is light at the end of the tunnel however. ATI have mentioned hardware issues with previous generations of GPU’s have effected Crossfire performance and stability. If this is true and stability has also improved then the new 4000 series might have the answer for an affordble multi graphics solution that is good value. Infact Shane Baxtor from www.tweaktown.com has stated two 4850’s were faster than a single GTX 280 in many tests yet cost $250 less than the mighty Nvidia card. (see the full article here).
The NDA of the 4850 was lifted early today so make sure you check out this announcement and links to various 4850 benchmarks!
Can’t say I’m interested in SLi or Crossfire. There are just too many performance and support issues for my liking.
The sad thing is, Crossfire with 2 HD3850s *could have been* as reasonable as an older SLI chipset like a pair of 6600GTs, but as Levick says why bother, the replacement single-slot cards are here in two quarters and the 3850 will fine as a backup spare.
I totally agree. What I’m hoping is that this new generation of cards from Nvidia and ATI go some way to solving the issues of SLI and Crossfire in the past. But as you say Ken, the single slot cards will probably be just as quick and suffer less from stability problems.
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