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figmentPez -> RE: Gamers (10/16/2007 4:11:46 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: fluffmonkey I set up my new PC Intel Quad Core 2.4 GHz 1066FSB 8MB L2 Cache 64-bit SLI motherboard ^_^ 2gig of ram atm... coolermaster liquid cooling system... 2 x NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT 256MB XFX over clocked Oh yeah ^_^ ya dvd and cd writer and player ... 13 card reader ands such... 19" Wide screen Lcd Hp 1907W mointer... I'm torn. On one hand, I don't really want to criticize your new purchase that you're obviously so excited about. On the other hand, there is an important issue here that I've seen many (on other forums) confused about, and making poor purchasing decisions because of. So, fluffmonkey, if you don't want to hear criticism of your new computer, which still blows my 6 year old clunker out of the water, then please stop reading now. * ** *** **** ***** ****** There we go. The issue here is SLI or Crossfire, using two graphics cards in tandem to improve performance in gaming. The reality of the situation is that a single powerful card always out-performs two mid-range cards. SLI/Crossfire isn't perfectly efficient, two cards don't perform twice as well as one card. In fact, depending on the game and drivers, there may be anywhere from ~10% improvement (or performance decrease, with early drivers) up to maybe 80% performance increase at the highest resolutions with lots of AA and AF. Because of this, a $280 GeForce 8800GTS 320MB will deliver significantly more performance than two $140 8600 GT, and in a few cases, a single 8600 GTS will perform as well as two 8600 GT (depending on the clocks of the two cards, and which game with which drivers). An example from Tom's Hardwdare video card charts. Two 8600GT in SLI get a barely playable 24.5 fps in Oblivion at 1280x1024. A single 8800 GTS gets 31.2 fps. The difference is even more remarkable in some other games. 38.3 fps versus 63.2 fps in Battlefield 2142 at the same resolution. Then there's "Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (which runs on the Source engine, like Half Life 2 and the Orange Box, but DMoM&M is considerably more demanding). One 8800GTS gets 35.6 fps as 1280x1024 4xAA 8xAF, Two 8600GT get 16.2 fps, and One 8600GTS gets 16.0 fps (in the other games, 2x8600GT beat out 1x8600GTS by a larger margin.) A lot of people don't know this, though. I've seen the question posed often enough on tech forums. They spend extra money getting an SLI/Crossfire capable motherboard, and get two mid-range cards hoping to get more performance, but the only time that SLI/Crossfire is of benefit over a single card is when you're pairing two top-end cards, and driving a really huge display to boot. (Using two graphics cards can also be used for running 3 or 4 monitors, but that's not actually an SLI/Crossfire thing.)
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