SLI vs. Crossfire

hey guys, im going to be building a new computer soon from scratch, im a total n00b at it, and I was wondering what you would reccommend for video cards. SLI or Crossfire. I'm not looking to spend a lot of $$$, but i still want a kickass machine... please help me

Neither, unless you are gaming at insanely high resolutions there is zero point. Hell, even if you are right now IMO there is zero point in it. With the approach of Vista and DX10, paying for a single high end GPU could be costly, let alone two. Right now the best bang per buck in the high end GPU section IMO is the X1800XT @ $300ish.

Do yourself a favor and go dual core, or wait out Conroe's release. If you go SLI / Crossfire on a stock current gen Intel, I will personally drive to your home and kick your ass

go for an SLI, get a GeForce 6 or 7 series card, that'll do the job nicely. Gotta love GeForce

I definitely agree with the dual core suggestion. I'm currently running GW, posting this message, and running a virus scan with no visibile impact to performance. My old P4 2.5ghz would be on its knees now if it tried to do all of the above at once.

As for SLI vs. Crossfire -- I also suggest single card for now, since both ATI and NVidia turn out new GPU's every few months that completely outperforms their previous offerings by a huge margine. Just get the best single card you can and stick with it until it no longer performss at acceptable frame rates.

1 thing before suggestions are popped up; what games do you plan on running?

Hm...+$ for good SLI mainboard, +$ for beefier PSU, +$ for more cooling, +$300 - $400ish for 2x 6 Series cards...and for? Not much of anything really. A single 7800GT will outperform any two six series cards sans the 6800GS, when its volt modded and overclocked its a good deal more powerful. Though I ask you, $300 X1800XT or 7900GT vs the extra money for all the above + cost of 2x cards for a lack of performance, or performance that isn't anywhere near the cost of the heat, space, and actual cost.

Dual card setups are best used as they were designed, using two (or more in the case of quad cards) of the highest GPU available in order to achieve near or at next gen qualities. Then you must factor in the bottleknecks of CPU and the performance gains are even less noticeable. As that much GPU power requires a very very fast core speed to scale up the actual performance.

Or new releases *coughVistacough* requires you to shell out even more money to use all their features.

As of the last time I looked into the subject, the only game taxing enough to really even come close to utilizing that much GPU power, was fear. Not to mention that was on a screen almost twice as large as my television....

ive read on a few sites that the crossfire is supposed to be rediculously faster than sli

Not really. And crossfire is limited to low resolutions, because it uses dvi to communicate between cards. Dual cards only makes a big difference if you run at a high res.

Almost every reputable hardware site I've seen (THG, Hard-OCP, Anandtech, etc...) gives a slight edge to SLI from the performance standpoint. However, the game title usually has more to do with whichever comes out on top.

NVidia's don't do HDR + FSAA, thus giving the edge to ATI Crossfire from the image quality standpoint, but that's another topic all-together.

Googled, and this showed up. Though its not based off the newer cards.

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Revi...rticleId=14474
http://www.amdzone.com/modules.php?o...tid=197&page=3

What other game would I be playing? Guild Wars Of Course

depend on what kind of game you're playing and going to play

FPS = Crossfire
Others = SLI

Lol...a single 7800GT runs this game completely flawlessly. I'm at 1280 x 1024 (maximum for my monitor) w/ everything turned to absolute maximums and get zero system lag, ever.

System Specs:
AMD Opteron 144 @ 2.8Ghz
DFI nF4 UT Ultra-D
G.Skill 2GB DDR500 @ 3-3-3-6
Enermax Liberty 500w
EVGA 7800GT OC @ Stock

EDIT -
Care to post some benchmarks or otherwise to authenticate those claims?

the only thing nobody asked which is the most important question of all.

WHAT IS YOUR BUDGET.

a good dual anything will run you 1500-2500 bucks.

are 2 video cards worth that bread?

For the performance? No.

Just Guild Wars? Heh, I was running GW just fine at 1680x1050 on a 24" LCD with an AGP 6800GT, with everything at max settings, 3xAA (LOVE my Quincunx!). I'm going to get a new mobo and video card this weekend though so I can go PCI-E, since a 7800GS is NOT worth $300, when a 7900GT is the same price and about 50% faster across the board. Fortunately Epox maxes a Socket 754 SLI board, so I can keep my A64 3400, which is a damn fine CPU and is in no need of replacement. Unless I get stoopid and nab that new 30" Dell LCD, I doubt I'll need SLI (most people really don't), but the option is there if I have another of my "more money than sense" fits. But if a 6800GT was fine, I fully expect a 7900GT will be insane.

So, get a motherobard that's capable of dual GPU's, but don't buy 2 video cards unless you've already seen for yourself that 1 is not enough.

I'm currently running GW at 1920x1200 using an NVidia 7900GTX-512MB video card on my laptop

I'd like to also see URL's supporting this.

THG just put out the 1st part of their 2006 video card buyer's guide list:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/...s_guide_part1/

...listing mostly ATI cards. The 2nd part should have more Nvidia based cards, but we'll have to wait for it...

SLI and Crossfire IMHO is completely worthless unless your shelling for 600$ cards per piece. Right now at 150$ range still pick up a 7600gt, and if you were willing Unlock x800gto2 to x850xt.

Crossfire/SLi have nothing to do with the Genre of game. If a FPS was built solely to give off 10 more FPS due to nVidia Core Structure, I would doubt Crossfire would suprass it...... Also, no the name "crossfire" doesn't magically give it more fps..

i agree with blade, inless u willing to pay out vast amounts for SLi or Crossfire, dont bother. Just get urself a GeForce 7 series card for a gd amount, as Lurid said earlier, it will run all games perfectly. Had mine a few months now, works great

My PC Specs
Intel P4 3.2ghz 800mhz FSB
Gigabyte IPE1000-G/L
1gb Corsair XMS4400 550mhz (2x512 at Dual Channel)
Jeantech 500W
XFX GeForce 7800 GS 256mb GDDR3

Neither is worth it now. However, plan for the future and get a Crossfire compatible (...yeah... or an SLI one) motherboard. I recently finished building another CPU and that is how I planned its future. However, currently, you should be spending that money on dual core processors. A couple of nights ago I was burning a DVD, playing GW, posting on here, and editing some simple Java code...

As for the card, I would personally suggest ATI x1800xt 512 version. While the 7900GTX has more pipelines, the 512 allows for a higher capacity of texture storage for quicker recall and paint. I'm also an ATI-fanboy, so, to counter the negative conotation, I will admit you can't go wrong with either *crosses himself*.

However, if you are just playing GW, then even something like a 9550 256mb will serve you. One of my computers is currently running that card and I play GW on full w/ 4x AA and the highest screen resolution (1200-something... don't remember for this guy).

As far as a $300 dollar range GPU is concerned I would pick an X1800XT hands down aswell, and i'm not a fan boy for either company. I'm using a 7800GT right now, it at the time was the best in its price range, which is as far as i'm concerned the only way to buy hardware.

The 7900GTX in my laptop came with 512MB DDR2 video memory.

ATI x1800 and x1900's do have the advantage of being able to run HDR + AA simultaneously. The current NVidia product line cannot do the latter. HDR + AA looks absolutely gorgeous.

If you're just playing Guild Wars, anything past the 9800-series runs the game flawlessly.

Guild Wars is the type of game that runs the cataract / blurry type of shading (ala the first Prince of Persia).

RAM is more important then graphics, as far as Guild Wars goes.

I didn't know they started 7900GTX's with 512's. Thats pretty impressive. Did it retain its pipeline numbers?

From Notebook Reviews Forum:
7900GTXgo = 24 pipes, 8 vertex units, 256 bit mem (500/600)

So the answer appears to be "yes" -- the notebook version has the same number of pipes (24) as the desktop version.

In general:

SLI is better than Crossfire
SLI is more expensive than Crossfire

You don't need SLI or Crossfire to run Guild Wars, but if you're planning to play next gen and current gen games cranked up, you might want them.

It all depends on how much money you have. In order, the things you should be spending your money on are:

CPU
RAM
GPU

The CPU will give you the largest increase in speed for the lowest amount of money. RAM is all important for everyday operations AND gaming, and a good GPU will blow games out of the water.

Yes, the only difference in laptop GPU's vs desktop GPUs are:

Some are clocked slightly less, to decrease heat.
They are made differently, in various ways.
They are made to use less energy / produce less heat in various ways.

You cannot use a laptop GPU, in any (that I know of), desktop motherboard. The same is true in reverse.

Many people like SLI better than Crossfire for various reasons, or because they have a (slight) advantage in GPU's right now, but I personally like Crossfire for the multiple rendering mods it offers, to get the most performanceout of the card per game graphics/physics. Btw, NVidia is supposed to have a MUCH better shader.
<-----Biased towards ATI

Well, it's not really about Crossfire or SLi

ATI makes cards that's better with physic accelerating (high frequency), and only FPS games really uses physics.

Nvidia's 7000 series uses 24 pixel pipeline, which accelerates 3D graphics. So it's good for all games in general. (Just leave all the physic accelerating to CPU)

I'm using GeForce 7800GTX, which has less frequency as its ATi counter part. But Nvidia's 7900 pumped it's processor's frequency to make it better.

I have to say currently sli takes the lead, but there's no telling what the future holds.

In term of value, I really recommend Sli GeForce 6800. Because 2 of these is better than 1 7900 or x1900, and it's cheaper.

"ATI makes cards that's better with physic accelerating (high frequency), and only FPS games really uses physics."

I'm relatively uncertain of this information, clock speeds have little to do with performance. Its more about how the data is processed than how quickly it is done. Otherwise Intel would be an obvious winner due to its higher clock speeds.

"Nvidia's 7000 series uses 24 pixel pipeline, which accelerates 3D graphics. So it's good for all games in general. (Just leave all the physic accelerating to CPU)"

No, it doesn't. Nvidia's 7 series uses a range of pixel pipelines, ranging from 4 to 24. Again, the sheer numbers aren't as important as how efficient they are.

"I'm using GeForce 7800GTX, which has less frequency as its ATi counter part. But Nvidia's 7900 pumped it's processor's frequency to make it better."

Yes, it is faster in sheer Mhz, but thats the least of the performance upgrades that make it better. The different die sizes and upgrades to known issues made it produce less heat and use less energy. Which is a big plus in almost every aspect.

"I have to say currently sli takes the lead, but there's no telling what the future holds."

Meh, perhaps. Though thats atleast partly due to the lack of good chipsets for ATI.

"In term of value, I really recommend Sli GeForce 6800. Because 2 of these is better than 1 7900 or x1900, and it's cheaper."

How that makes sense to you is beyond me. Lets pay for two $200 GPU's, that produce more heat, then pay for a SLI motherboad, and possibly a more powerful PSU.

Raw performance values shows us that SLI'd 6800GS lose to a 7800GT. In order to beat the 7800GT (stock) at any real margin we must first volt mod the 6800GS's and overclock them well beyond spec. Which often requires more cooling (more money) Thats _without_ factoring in the 7900GT and X1800XT, I have no clue if the 6800GS's would beat them. My guess is not.