crossfire or sli

[bmoney]

I have heard a great deal about goin nvidia and using the sli modes for which the video cards have better performances. My question is would you recommend going sli or crossfire? I'm a big ATI fan but i am not sure if crossfire is as great as sli or vise-versa. Thanks

 

[joemama]

Personally, Crossfire doesn't sound like a great option to me at this time. Since a single X1900XT draws more power than a dual gpu 7950GX2 I can just imagine the consumption of 2 in Crossfire. I've also heard that some psu's that run SLI fine melt down under the pressure of Crossfire. And then there's the issue of the external "dongle" and the fact that you have to have a special "Crossfire edition" card to get it to work. I think ATI could have done better with this.....but then again maybe I'm biased because I have 2x 7900GT's SLI.

 

[belmicah]

SLI FTW

 

[Apallohadas]

Personally, Crossfire doesn't sound like a great option to me at this time. Since a single X1900XT draws more power than a dual gpu 7950GX2 I can just imagine the consumption of 2 in Crossfire. I've also heard that some psu's that run SLI fine melt down under the pressure of Crossfire. And then there's the issue of the external "dongle" and the fact that you have to have a special "Crossfire edition" card to get it to work. I think ATI could have done better with this.....but then again maybe I'm biased because I have 2x 7900GT's SLI.

I think Brent (maybe) wrote a pretty good article comparing the two.

I'm running X1900s in Crossfire.

Joemama, to be frank, I don't get where you're coming from. My PSU is in my sig, and I have 4 HDD, (2) 120 fans, and 2 optical drives. I don't have a consumption problem. My CPU also hasn't melted down. Heresay doesn't do an argument justice.

As for the dongle. (I wish I was at home right now to take a pic) The Dongle is not a big deal. It just sits there. It doesn't dance, wiggle around, sing, or kick the family dog. You connect it once, and move on with life. If it's causing a delay of some sort, it's not enough to hurt my counterstrike aim apparently, as I do very well. Very Well.

Future crossfire card won't have the external dongle also, so when that's gone, what will the excuse be?

I bought my master card first, and recently picked up the 'slave' card for 289 from the Egg. Totalling 700 for both cards. *shrug*

 

[bmoney9]

alright that sounds good..good to kno that sli might be better than crossfire haha..wow 700$ how do you shrug that off haha

 

[joemama]

I think Brent (maybe) wrote a pretty good article comparing the two.

I'm running X1900s in Crossfire.

Joemama, to be frank, I don't get where you're coming from. My PSU is in my sig, and I have 4 HDD, (2) 120 fans, and 2 optical drives. I don't have a consumption problem. My CPU also hasn't melted down. Heresay doesn't do an argument justice.

As for the dongle. (I wish I was at home right now to take a pic) The Dongle is not a big deal. It just sits there. It doesn't dance, wiggle around, sing, or kick the family dog. You connect it once, and move on with life. If it's causing a delay of some sort, it's not enough to hurt my counterstrike aim apparently, as I do very well. Very Well.

Future crossfire card won't have the external dongle also, so when that's gone, what will the excuse be?

I bought my master card first, and recently picked up the 'slave' card for 289 from the Egg. Totalling 700 for both cards. *shrug*

Not really hearsay (as far as message board chatter) but a performance psu roundup (on a tech site that i can't remember) actually blew a couple of the psu's trying to run Crossfire. I'm glad that your system works fine and I'm sure you're very pleased with the performance....I just prefer the relative simplicity of SLI that is all. To me it seems like ATI went out of their way to not infringe on Nvidia/Voodoo trademarked technologies and ended up with a less elegant solution. I'm sure they will do better with their next gen cards however.

edit- While searching [H] enthusiast for the article you mentioned I came across this multi-site SLI vs Crossfire ongoing article that would help anyone trying to make the same decision. http://www.hardinfo.dk/art/site/multi_gpu_landingpage/index.html

 

[Frosteh]

Last time I read about the Crossfire (admitadly this was ages ago) it could only support a maximum of 1600 1200 in 60hz which is absolutly pathetic really, I'm running in them resolutions with max settings with my 7950GX2 at the moment and expect at least 85Hz.

I read somewhere that it was set to increase and probably has done now (i should hope) what kind of restrictions are there now (if any?)

I've always liked Nvidia for the support, the drivers IMO have always been better feature wise and bug wise, and from what I read SLI setup is much nicer than Crossfire setup both in bugs/features and ease of use.

 

[Kliter]

Future crossfire card won't have the external dongle also, so when that's gone, what will the excuse be?

If you've been following the "The Definitive Multi GPU World Tour," you'll see SLI managed to come on top with Crossfire. Here were the highlights noted by Vengeance, Super-mod of Rage3D:

Highlights:
ATI rendering issues on 3 out of 7 tests. No rendering errors for NVIDIA.
ATI scales on 1 out of 7 tests. SLI scales on 6 out of 7.

Lowlight. No high-end scores yet. Postponed due to Foxconn MB issues….

Tally this section (includes ATI wins with rendering issues:

$1000 PC SLI 41, ATI 0
$2000 PC SLI 30, 19 ATI, 3 ties
Unlimited: SLI SLI DNF

Final Tally for all tests:
$1000 PC
SLI wins 156 to 14, 1 tie

$2000 PC
SLI wins 134 to 4 and 6 ties

Unlimited budget:
High-End: TBD…...NVIDIA Winning 71-18-6

So I think right now, it's more than just the dongle issue, with Crossfire simply not as mature right now.

 

[Kliter]

Last time I read about the Crossfire (admitadly this was ages ago) it could only support a maximum of 1600 1200 in 60hz which is absolutly pathetic really, I'm running in them resolutions with max settings with my 7950GX2 at the moment and expect at least 85Hz.

No, that was only with x800 series cards in Crossfire. Radeon x1K series GPUs are not affected by that restriction.

 

[Apallohadas]

alright that sounds good..good to kno that sli might be better than crossfire haha..wow 700$ how do you shrug that off haha

Work hard, play harder... haha..

Kliter, no I haven't been following that, because after a while, I find the reviews slanted by preference rather than true objectivity.

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/multigpumostplayed/9.html

Although this article series leans towards a heavy slant of comparing ATI performance versus NVIDIA, our particular portion of the series gives us an opportunity also to remark on the overall value and relevance of Mult-GPU. We're looking at the most popular games being played, and many of these games simply don't stress the GPU enough for a very expensive setup to be of much gain. While other articles will and have covered games that put more pressure on the GPU, the only title we tested that really stresses the GPU is Oblivion. While its well accepted now that most gamers buy new hardware to play newer games at higher detail, these results show that alot of the games that people are still playing don't require a new top end SLI or Crossfire setup. Also of note is the fact that LCD monitors are locked at their native resolution, which in many cases works to be 1280 x 1024 and 1600x1200.

With response times no longer a problem, many gamers have moved over to LCD's making this another area of consideration. With the exception of Oblivion, all of the games we tested ran at maximum detail levels just fine at 1280 x 1024 across the entire tested hardware spectrum. Increasingly, gamers looking to spend mega money on a new multi-gpu setup ought to be looking at a new, larger display (assuming they only wish to buy LCD) which supports resolutions that will truly tax the hardware, or else those same gamers really need to re-evaluate whether they need all that horsepower if they tend to focus on games like those we covered.

Both Crossfire and SLi are considered mature by the way. Just that both still have issues.

The chart you quoted, if fairly meaningless to me. Sorry, but I just didn't have it in me to crawl through all the results that were popping up from my googlefuing search.

Joemama, good link there. Thanks!