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Is SLI worth it?

U

usmc4876

n00b
Joined
Dec 28, 2008
Messages
12
I"m currently building my new rig and I'm curious to here from all you guys if SLI is worth it or not?
 
I'm using the 708i FTW SLI board with a GTX 260

But my question is in general, is SLI worth it?
 
My standard quote on SLI:

Markyip1 said:
Just some info on SLI / Crossfire: It's absolutely not worth considering if a) you're gaming at a resolution under 1920x1200 (as you'll see no performance benefit over a single card,) and b) if you plan to buy one card now and another later. SLI / Crossfire as an upgrade path is usually a very poor idea, as by the time you're ready to get that second card, a new single card solution will likely be available that will outperform two of your older cards in tandem. Furthermore, there really is no cost benefit to the SLI Upgrade Route, as any additional cost in getting the new card can be easily mitigated in most situations by selling the original. By avoiding an SLI / Crossfire solution when it will not be of benefit, you gain a cooler running, simpler to maintain system and more importantly, access to a much better (and broader) selection of motherboards.
Click to expand...

And yes it would help if you told us exactly what you were planning to buy, use, size monitor, etc.
 
usmc4876 said:
I'm using the 708i FTW SLI board with a GTX 260

But my question is in general, is SLI worth it?
Click to expand...
well you cant just ask that question in general because it depends on many factors. monitor size and the rest of your specs would be a great starting point.
 
Based on your original post, and then the reply you gave...
I'm going to say no. You don't need SLI.
 
SLI, or dual-GPU cards, will use about twice the power and generate about twice the amount of heat. Unfortunately, SLI will not double your performance. So whether that performance increase is worth it is up to you. I did 6800GT SLI when it came out, costing $800 at that time. Performance was satisfactory, but the cost of extra power consumption and heat, I will never do SLI again.
 
Unless you want to run all your games on high on a 24" or 30" monitor, there's probably no good reason to go with an SLI/Crossfire setup. It's more expensive, runs hotter, and under most circumstances doesn't provide a whole lot of benefit over a single card solution.
 
DanW said:
Unless you want to run all your games on high on a 24" or 30" monitor, there's probably no good reason to go with an SLI/Crossfire setup.
Click to expand...
Exactly why I got mine. After reading many reviews on the games I play (pretty much every one listed in most reviews) I realized that GTX 285 SLI nearly gives 50-100% extra performance on a 1920x1200 resolution (didn't take a look at other cards or resolutions)...you need to be specific, see if your power/case/monitor/budget/setup can handle SLI, and then ask yourself if you want to pull the trigger.

Personally, I used to think gaming on my laptops 9600M on 1440x900 on medium-high settings was the bomb, I was so pleased with the portability and whatnot. After seeing Warhead and Episode 2 on maxed out settings, I couldn't ever go back to shitty setups like that again. I just had geek-frustration over it.

So yeah it's a very personal thing that you need to think about. I know it sounds like a marriage.
 
The only reason you would use SLI is if you were maxing your current GPU with the games you were running, or in the rare occasion that 2 lower end cards are better than the higher end ones, but cost less.
 
with a 22" and over monitor, yes it is "worth it" but right now their are some good dual gpu cards that are worth considering that will take up less real estate than sli, not pin you down to an sli mb, use less power, and leave the option of tri/quad crossfire or quad sli open for the future. i have had sli since 6800, 7800gt, 7900gt, 8800gts 640, 8800gt 512, 8800gts 512, 9800gx2 quad sli, 9800gtx sli and recently had crossfire. i have had good luck (skill) with multi gpu setups,
 
as a general question right now, sli is not worth. My reasons are slightly different then some of those above

first if your not using an X58 chip set your stuck with a nvidia board. not worth it right there. and given the cost vs performance of the i7 it really isn't worth it, esp for game.

seconded. nvidia doesn't really have a good dual card solution right now, GTX260 sli is somewhat overshadowed by the 4870X2, and the GTX295 is undercut by it. The 4850X2 kills the next spot down, really unless your going with xfire 4850 (still the best bang for the buck of anything) or sli GTX280/285 I would be hard press to recommend any dual card solution. GTX280 SLI is still king of the hill I believe.

if you already have an sli board I could see a pair of cheap GTX260, but even then I would be hard pressed to say that it was worth it if you were buying the cards new. If your are looking for the very high end I can see going with a SLI GTX280/285 solution

jm2c.
 
SLI is worth is to a point. I tell u what too, after owning a 30" monitor, I needed it. But if you play 19by10, you're better off with a x2 card or sli imo.
 
I have to disagree with the i7 not being worth it. Going from my q6600 to my i7 920 i can tell the difference in performance. Also, on my 30" monitor, even SLI 260s arent cutting it in a lot of games.
 
veedubfreak said:
I have to disagree with the i7 not being worth it. Going from my q6600 to my i7 920 i can tell the difference in performance. Also, on my 30" monitor, even SLI 260s arent cutting it in a lot of games.
Click to expand...

I agree, the i7 makes a huge difference when running SLI unless you are playing at 2560xwhatever is.

Even if you are playing at 1920x1080 it helps make sure you minimum framerate doesnt drop and lets you boosts AA/AF and other graphics settings if the game allows. CLear Sky is great example of where SLI can help it shine.
 
HUGE jump with a 9600gt in sli at 1920x1200. I have been and SLI fan many people dislike it but I haven't had a single issue and have nothing but good things to say about it.

But I use SLI as a cheap upgrade program I got the 9600gt at launch for $150 and then snagged a second one for 60 bucks. So that extra 60 bucks gave me a huge boost for the money. I don't know the benchmarks of a 9600gt sli but I get better frame rates than my brothers 4870.

So if you use/buy sli wisely yes it is worth it. If I were to get a new system today I would get and Icore7 sli board and a 285gtx, and pick up a second 285gtx when they drop a few hundred bucks.
 
veedubfreak said:
I have to disagree with the i7 not being worth it. Going from my q6600 to my i7 920 i can tell the difference in performance. Also, on my 30" monitor, even SLI 260s arent cutting it in a lot of games.
Click to expand...

that is where I would be looking at GTX285 sli or something. If you have the money I could see trisli being worth it on a i7 but regular sli just doesn't do much better (never have heard a good explanation for that) My problem whit the i7 isn't the cpu but the cost of the memory and the X58 motherboards. as far as games are concerned, for most budgets at any rate, you would be better off putting the money toward better graphic card and or monitor. Now if I really had the budget I could see, then again I am a cheap bastard and tend to see things through those eyes.

and that is one of my points with the GTX260 sli, that setup doesn't really do any better then a 4870X2 but either require for more buck for the bang or having to run on less then stable hardware. GTX280/285 sli does considerably better (and cost lot more) but it take you to another level. (there is a practical difference)

JMO though
 
Ya, i picked up my i7/memory/x58 board when ebay had the 30% cashback so i got everything for around 700 bucks, which at the time was a steal. I'm in the process of looking into tri-sli with 285s actually :p Just waiting for the price to come down a bit.
 
This isnt the first post asking this same question... the guys at MaximumPC agree with me when I say, NO, its not worth it.

I have run SLi 2x now... once with 7900GTX's and again with 8800GTS 512's. The first time, it was overkill, so I got rid of one card. And now, I am stuck with the 8800's. My plan was to upgrade to a x58 with them, but as it turns out, x58's only support 9xxx and 2xx series, so Im SOL. I can upgrade to a newer 780a board... $180 for a minimal upgrade, or get a whole new 790i/intel combo (which costs almost as much as an x58) that is still a dead end as far as upgrading is concerned now that the 1366 has come out. nVidia has announced new chipsets for the AMD AM3 bunch, but still... I bet it wont work with 8 series cards...lol. And even if it did, by the time it comes out, my 8800's will be too old to matter.

So Im taking it in the pants right now... ditching the 8800's, and upgrading to a single GTX 285 which will match them, if not perform even better. This will open up my motherboard/upgrade options as well, as no longer will I be stuck looking at only 'high end' boards with SLi (or Crossfire).

You pay for SLi all around... even though the 'chipset' or software itself might be cheap, you only see SLi on higher end boards that cost a good $100 more to begin with, sometimes higher. While there may be some out there with 30"+ monitors and a possible need for such graphical horsepower, overall, its a good waste for many of us. You might consider it a 'cheap' upgrade path to use two lower power GPU's, but its not really. You coulda saved money on the board, sold the first card, and just purchased one higher-power card in the first place. As your system ages as well, SLi is CPU limited... so a kick-butt SLi system one year is the next years slug. Upgrading that is much harder than just a single GPU, since SLi depends not only on the GPU, but the CPU/chipset to scale.

Since there are single card solutions by nVidia and ATI on a regular basis now (9800x2, gtx295, 4870x2), I see even less reason to actually need SLi or crossfire. Crossfire is a different story, since its 'built in' to so many mainstream intel and AMD chipsets, not just the premium ones. I dont intend on using it, but I plan on buying a board that happens to support crossfire. Kudos to AMD for spreading their multi-card system to anyone who wanted to include it... nVidia should take notes.
 
undertheradar said:
This isnt the first post asking this same question... the guys at MaximumPC agree with me when I say, NO, its not worth it.

I have run SLi 2x now... once with 7900GTX's and again with 8800GTS 512's. The first time, it was overkill, so I got rid of one card. And now, I am stuck with the 8800's. My plan was to upgrade to a x58 with them, but as it turns out, x58's only support 9xxx and 2xx series, so Im SOL. I can upgrade to a newer 780a board... $180 for a minimal upgrade, or get a whole new 790i/intel combo (which costs almost as much as an x58) that is still a dead end as far as upgrading is concerned now that the 1366 has come out. nVidia has announced new chipsets for the AMD AM3 bunch, but still... I bet it wont work with 8 series cards...lol. And even if it did, by the time it comes out, my 8800's will be too old to matter.

So Im taking it in the pants right now... ditching the 8800's, and upgrading to a single GTX 285 which will match them, if not perform even better. This will open up my motherboard/upgrade options as well, as no longer will I be stuck looking at only 'high end' boards with SLi (or Crossfire).

You pay for SLi all around... even though the 'chipset' or software itself might be cheap, you only see SLi on higher end boards that cost a good $100 more to begin with, sometimes higher. While there may be some out there with 30"+ monitors and a possible need for such graphical horsepower, overall, its a good waste for many of us. You might consider it a 'cheap' upgrade path to use two lower power GPU's, but its not really. You coulda saved money on the board, sold the first card, and just purchased one higher-power card in the first place. As your system ages as well, SLi is CPU limited... so a kick-butt SLi system one year is the next years slug. Upgrading that is much harder than just a single GPU, since SLi depends not only on the GPU, but the CPU/chipset to scale.

Since there are single card solutions by nVidia and ATI on a regular basis now (9800x2, gtx295, 4870x2), I see even less reason to actually need SLi or crossfire. Crossfire is a different story, since its 'built in' to so many mainstream intel and AMD chipsets, not just the premium ones. I dont intend on using it, but I plan on buying a board that happens to support crossfire. Kudos to AMD for spreading their multi-card system to anyone who wanted to include it... nVidia should take notes.
Click to expand...

QFT, being able to run on intel chip sets as well as lesser chipsets all round is a major advantage to ATI. that fact that you can take a 100 dollar p45 board an e8400 cpu, cheap DDR2 memory and a pair of 4850 you can build a gaming machine that will rival a nvidia setup that cost twice as much. why nvidia is still trying to charge as much for their motherboards as the X58 I do not understand. Nvidia needs to do more then take notes, they need to pull their head out of a certain orifice
 
amd has to shop their ati derived technology around. unable to turn much profit on the cpu front, of course they must diversify their business strategy to remain afloat. don't be so naive to think that amd wouldn't try to keep its technology proprietary if it could. nvidia is learning this lesson now. hopefully intel will continue to pressure nvidia to share.
 
undertheradar said:
This isnt the first post asking this same question... the guys at MaximumPC agree with me when I say, NO, its not worth it.

I have run SLi 2x now... once with 7900GTX's and again with 8800GTS 512's. The first time, it was overkill, so I got rid of one card. And now, I am stuck with the 8800's. My plan was to upgrade to a x58 with them, but as it turns out, x58's only support 9xxx and 2xx series, so Im SOL. I can upgrade to a newer 780a board... $180 for a minimal upgrade, or get a whole new 790i/intel combo (which costs almost as much as an x58) that is still a dead end as far as upgrading is concerned now that the 1366 has come out. nVidia has announced new chipsets for the AMD AM3 bunch, but still... I bet it wont work with 8 series cards...lol. And even if it did, by the time it comes out, my 8800's will be too old to matter.

So Im taking it in the pants right now... ditching the 8800's, and upgrading to a single GTX 285 which will match them, if not perform even better. This will open up my motherboard/upgrade options as well, as no longer will I be stuck looking at only 'high end' boards with SLi (or Crossfire).

You pay for SLi all around... even though the 'chipset' or software itself might be cheap, you only see SLi on higher end boards that cost a good $100 more to begin with, sometimes higher. While there may be some out there with 30"+ monitors and a possible need for such graphical horsepower, overall, its a good waste for many of us. You might consider it a 'cheap' upgrade path to use two lower power GPU's, but its not really. You coulda saved money on the board, sold the first card, and just purchased one higher-power card in the first place. As your system ages as well, SLi is CPU limited... so a kick-butt SLi system one year is the next years slug. Upgrading that is much harder than just a single GPU, since SLi depends not only on the GPU, but the CPU/chipset to scale.

Since there are single card solutions by nVidia and ATI on a regular basis now (9800x2, gtx295, 4870x2), I see even less reason to actually need SLi or crossfire. Crossfire is a different story, since its 'built in' to so many mainstream intel and AMD chipsets, not just the premium ones. I dont intend on using it, but I plan on buying a board that happens to support crossfire. Kudos to AMD for spreading their multi-card system to anyone who wanted to include it... nVidia should take notes.
Click to expand...

While you are correct that buying an SLI set up at full price is not worth it, but for the people who got the 8800GTX 2 years ago can now upgrade to sli for about 120 bucks or so. SLI is completely worth it as an upgrade for when the price of the card falls.
 
I think the dual GPU on a single card is the way to go for NV or ATI as you don't have to have any specific chipset. Thats why I am stepping up to a BFG 295 instead of buying another 260 + mobo.
 
veedubfreak said:
I have to disagree with the i7 not being worth it. Going from my q6600 to my i7 920 i can tell the difference in performance. Also, on my 30" monitor, even SLI 260s arent cutting it in a lot of games.
Click to expand...

I agree... my 920 totally smokes my old e6850 in games... granted two more cores and a much faster platform in general (mobo / mem / pci2.0 / etc) but it's damn fast...

for the GTX260s, yeah, with 896mb of mem on each, I think the 30" res is too steep for them memory wise.. you're prolly doing some mad texture swapping... that's just a guess tho.

I think SLI makes sense if you:
(1) have the $ for it
(2) game at 1920x1080 or above
(3) want to max the eye candy out

if you do go SLI, make sure you get a good power supply.. something 1kw or so... those aren't too expensive these days and should allow you some breathing room on power in case you want to load up the machine later with other goodies.. like 3-way or quad SLI and such.. but if you were thinking about two GTX260s, don't bother.. just get a GTX295.. it's got more shaders and in a smaller more efficient package..
 
JayteeBates said:
I think the dual GPU on a single card is the way to go for NV or ATI as you don't have to have any specific chipset. Thats why I am stepping up to a BFG 295 instead of buying another 260 + mobo.
Click to expand...

It's no longer an issue going forth from this point. Almost all x58 boards support both crossfire and sli.

Where did you hear that x58's dont support 8800 cards btw. First i've ever heard of that.
 
stevedave said:
While you are correct that buying an SLI set up at full price is not worth it, but for the people who got the 8800GTX 2 years ago can now upgrade to sli for about 120 bucks or so. SLI is completely worth it as an upgrade for when the price of the card falls.
Click to expand...

Or is it just better to sell the old card, and buy a new single slot solution? Consider how much extra you had to spend 'back then' for a SLi board, or how it may have limited your mobo decision at the time.
 
veedubfreak said:
It's no longer an issue going forth from this point. Almost all x58 boards support both crossfire and sli.

Where did you hear that x58's dont support 8800 cards btw. First i've ever heard of that.
Click to expand...

All over the place... its not exactly 'unknown'. x58's only support 9xxx and 2xx series.
 
From my past sli exp. No its not worth it!! (Coming from days of BFG 7800GTX 512MB for $999.99 x2) :(:(
 
revenant said:
I agree... my 920 totally smokes my old e6850 in games... granted two more cores and a much faster platform in general (mobo / mem / pci2.0 / etc) but it's damn fast...

for the GTX260s, yeah, with 896mb of mem on each, I think the 30" res is too steep for them memory wise.. you're prolly doing some mad texture swapping... that's just a guess tho.

I think SLI makes sense if you:
(1) have the $ for it
(2) game at 1920x1080 or above
(3) want to max the eye candy out

if you do go SLI, make sure you get a good power supply.. something 1kw or so... those aren't too expensive these days and should allow you some breathing room on power in case you want to load up the machine later with other goodies.. like 3-way or quad SLI and such.. but if you were thinking about two GTX260s, don't bother.. just get a GTX295.. it's got more shaders and in a smaller more efficient package..
Click to expand...

You really dont need that much juice... unless you have a 1000 watt power supply that really is just a smaller one in disguise. A good 750-850 watts is really all you need unless you are going with triple cards.
 
undertheradar said:
You really dont need that much juice... unless you have a 1000 watt power supply that really is just a smaller one in disguise. A good 750-850 watts is really all you need unless you are going with triple cards.
Click to expand...

yeah, true.. I guess I just like knowing I have some extra if needed tho...

as for the comment on buy another 8800GTX or get a good single slot, just for the sake of better power efficiency I think getting a better single slot would be best.. GTX260 with about the same power consumption as one 8800GTX (maybe even less for the 55nm one) and way more gpu horse power..
 
veedubfreak said:
It's no longer an issue going forth from this point. Almost all x58 boards support both crossfire and sli.

Where did you hear that x58's dont support 8800 cards btw. First i've ever heard of that.
Click to expand...

True for x58 but a lot of folks are still in the Core2 arena and will be for the next few months. I still prefer the idea of a single card with 2 cores over 2 cards with 1 core each for space and other reasons.
 
Heh, I suppose I forgot to add the 'additional cost' of a higher wattage PSU as well to the 'SLi cost'. So its the higher cost mobo AND PSU which are 'hidden costs'. Also, adding in another older card for SLi may only give limited returns from the longevity department. Newer cards support newer features that two of an older may not. DX10 being one example, but there are others.
 
-There are SLI / Crossfire benefits @ 1680 x 1050. I've had both...there are gains to be seen and appreciated if you want to spend the money.

-HD 4850 Crossfire 512 MB or any other 512 MB dual GPU solution is not a viable option for newer games due to low framebuffer. (That's per [H] in their newer reviews, albeit indirectly, where they state that they "cannot recommend" the HD 4870 512 MB anymore)

-HD 4850 X2 2 GB can be had as low as $260 USD (cheaper than any 4850 1 GB crossfire that i'm aware of), and takes up only one PCI-e slot (great for just one 16X PCI-e lane if you have a P45, P35, etc.)
 
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