SLI, is it worth it?

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the_cheeky_badger

Weaksauce
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I currently own a BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC2 640MB GDDR3 on Windows Vista Ultimate. I'm pleased with the performance but i recently purchased Crysis and my frame rates dropped to an average of 25fps at 1920 x 1200 at medium settings with no AA or AF.

Naturally i want to get better hardware, so, do i go for a £450 GTX Ultra? or buy another GTS 8800 GTS for £250 and SLI them?

Does anyone have any benchmarks or opinions on SLI at high res? i only use 1920 x 1200 and nothing below which i am told is what SLI is for?

Help!

Thanks
 
i have 2 8800 gtx's in sli and i like them, but it takes alot of work to get the performance out of them making profiles for them etc.
Most games never come with a working sli profile out of the box etc and require drivers or patches.
Crysis is one of them, if i was you i would wait for the crysis sli patch that is due out very soon (this week) and then see what performance improvement all of us sli users are seeing.
Right now Crysis sli is kinda sucky it works but not real well. In games like cod4 it works wonderfully as well as bioshock etc.
When using really high rezzes and alot of aa is where sli really shines. I can't game without aa as i think games look like shite without it so i like sli as the performance improvement with aa on is staggering for me with sli enabled in most games, but for alot of people its really not worth the hassle.
Don't trust other people, if you are a tweaker and don't mind fiddling with settings sli will work for you in most games if your not i would pass on it and get a good 8800 gt.
 
£450 for an Ultra is a rip off. For foreigners who don't know what this means (or Americans) that's $930 for one Video Card. :eek:

But yes these are the prices in rip-off Britain.

Anyway, a cheaper overclocked GTX is faster so why bother with the Ultra which is just a tweaked GTX with slightly better memory. Or even better, an overclocked 8800GT. But neither of these is really a massive increase over your current card, and I don't see GTS's in SLI being much faster. In fact, GTS's in SLI will be slower than a single GT/GTX/Ultra in many games that don't support SLI unless you do some serious tweaking.

If you want to pay $930 or more, just wait for the high end next gen cards in 2008.
 
another GTS would offer better performance in the long run over getting a single ultra, imo.. especially when you game at 1920x1200.. you'll see the performance diff for sure... but make sure you have a PSU capable of driving those cards.. 650 or 700W minimum.. hopefully not spread out over too many 12v rails.. and make sure you have the space in your case for the other card. :)

Also, I have been using SLI for years now and sometimes I need to try a different rendering method (AFR / AFR2 / AFR3 ...or SFR, that's never used any more these days) with a game if it seems a little "off", but for the most part SLI just "works" for me.. the game profiles are all built into the new forceware drivers and I rarely have to mess with those.. sometimes to force AF or AA in a game.. but that's about it. some games can be fussy with SLI.. like I guess Crysis is.. I haven't picket that one up yet, but was planning on it this week... but in my experience SLI works pretty well and doesn't need to be tweaked too much.. but if you must, you can tweak it with nhancer to "fine tune" things...
 
In some cases yes, in some no. And even where it does increase performance, do you really think that spending $515 to get a mediocre increase in performance is worth it? My ancient one year old card would still beat his setup in many cases, and for much less (which is ironic considering I supposedly paid a steep premium for getting what was then a new product).
 
well in truth the actual performance is pretty huge when it works in some games its night and day. I like to play with 8xaa and 4xaa minumum. At 1920 x 1200 rez the only way to do that is sli.
In many games at those resolutions and aa the difference is 70% faster and up.
In others its only 40%
But if you can afford it why not, it makes uunplayable settings playable which is what i want.
 
If he could afford it and just wanted top performance, he would have bought a GTX and then upgraded to GTX SLI - "that" makes sense and I could understand wanting to get top graphic performance. But to SLI two value cards? (and yes, the GTS was aimed at value oriented high end customers). I'd wait.
 
odin30 said:
i have 2 8800 gtx's in sli and i like them, but it takes alot of work to get the performance out of them making profiles for them etc.
Most games never come with a working sli profile out of the box etc and require drivers or patches.
Crysis is one of them, if i was you i would wait for the crysis sli patch that is due out very soon (this week) and then see what performance improvement all of us sli users are seeing.
Right now Crysis sli is kinda sucky it works but not real well. In games like cod4 it works wonderfully as well as bioshock etc.
When using really high rezzes and alot of aa is where sli really shines. I can't game without aa as i think games look like shite without it so i like sli as the performance improvement with aa on is staggering for me with sli enabled in most games, but for alot of people its really not worth the hassle.
Don't trust other people, if you are a tweaker and don't mind fiddling with settings sli will work for you in most games if your not i would pass on it and get a good 8800 gt.
Click to expand...

Usually the games don't require anything to support SLI. It's the NVIDIA drivers that don't have the profiles. If you keep your drivers updated, then the SLI profiles will always be added for your games.

You can create the profiles yourself for those rare instances where SLI profiles don't already exist, and that takes some work, but only due to the testing required to find the optimal rendering modes.

Crysis is an unusual game in that SLI doesn't add that much performance, and it may require a patch, but generally speaking it'd driver improvements alone that bring the performance of SLI where it needs to be.
 
Thanks for all your replies, i was wondering if you could help me with some further questions regarding SLI:

  • what kind of time scales do the drivers / profiles become available for new games?
  • Does dual monitor support work in SLI (for games like Supreme Commander and World in Conflict
  • Does SLI work for older games that are not designed for it?

Thanks for all your help
 
Dual monitors are not supported when you are in SLI mode IIRC. You will have to change to single card mode (whatever it's called...) when you wish to use dual monitors.
Apparently this is a pain in the rear as you have to retart your machine when you do this.
 
the_cheeky_badger said:
Thanks for all your replies, i was wondering if you could help me with some further questions regarding SLI:

  • what kind of time scales do the drivers / profiles become available for new games?
  • Does dual monitor support work in SLI (for games like Supreme Commander and World in Conflict
  • Does SLI work for older games that are not designed for it?

Thanks for all your help
Click to expand...

SLI profiles are added to drivers all the time. Everytime there are new versions of a driver, additional SLI profiles are usually added. In many cases SLI profiles are put into the beta drivers before a game is actually released.

No, you can not use multiple monitors with SLI mode enabled.

Remember, games aren't designed for SLI. SLI is designed to accelerate games. Older games can bennefit from SLI and usually do so because many older games have SLI profiles in the NVIDIA drivers. If they don't, it is a simple matter to do this yourself.
 
Crysis doesn't benefit as much from SLI because SLI works best at high resolution combined with high AA - and you can't run any level of AA with decent frame rates in Crysis using current video cards.
 
Matrices said:
Crysis doesn't benefit as much from SLI because SLI works best at high resolution combined with high AA - and you can't run any level of AA with decent frame rates in Crysis using current video cards.
Click to expand...

Interesting theory but I don't think that's 100% correct. Depending on the rendering method used, the performance bonus is simply more pronounced at higher resolutions and when the performance is excellent, you can add AA and AF into the mix without any noticable performance hit. At the lower resolutions the games are CPU limited and the cards aren't really getting a work out. At higher resolutions the video cards do the work, the difference is that you become CPU limited at higher resolutions with SLI than without. So instead of being CPU limited at 1024x768, you become limited at 1600x1200.
 
Well i havent been playing crysis because the patch is suppose to be out soon, but i do disagree about games not having to be coded for sli. They do not have to be but there is a big improvement when they are.
Crytek has a patch coming out which adds extra support for sli and its needed. Many games are made with sli in mind and there is a lot of extra performance when they do so.
It comes down to rendering paths, if the game is built to take advantage of 2 rendering paths etc sli sees a bigger improvement.
Crysis at the moment has crappy sli support as it runs better in single card mode.
Go to the nvidia sli forum or incrysis to see what i mean.
The game runs faster in sli (frames wise) but is a choppy jittery mess.
Crytek has acknowledged the problem and has said the patch should fix it.
 
odin30 said:
Well i havent been playing crysis because the patch is suppose to be out soon, but i do disagree about games not having to be coded for sli. They do not have to be but there is a big improvement when they are.
Crytek has a patch coming out which adds extra support for sli and its needed. Many games are made with sli in mind and there is a lot of extra performance when they do so.
It comes down to rendering paths, if the game is built to take advantage of 2 rendering paths etc sli sees a bigger improvement.
Crysis at the moment has crappy sli support as it runs better in single card mode.
Go to the nvidia sli forum or incrysis to see what i mean.
The game runs faster in sli (frames wise) but is a choppy jittery mess.
Crytek has acknowledged the problem and has said the patch should fix it.
Click to expand...

The Crysis demo generally runs better with one video card, but the full version runs better in SLI mode. I had to use the setting r_multigpu=2 in order to make it work properly. It definitely performs better now. I get about 33% more performance than I do with only one card enabled.
 
I thought r_multigpu 1 turned sli on. The 2 option doesnt put sli on does it?
Only 0 and 1
 
Nope, looking at it from a financial point of view it's a bad investment.

40% increase for 100% more in cost? No good.
 
odin30 said:
I thought r_multigpu 1 turned sli on. The 2 option doesnt put sli on does it?
Only 0 and 1
Click to expand...

0 disables it, 1 enables it, and 2 allows the application to autodetect a dual card solution and set the flag automatically.
 
Leon2ky said:
Nope, looking at it from a financial point of view it's a bad investment.

40% increase for 100% more in cost? No good.
Click to expand...

Usually SLI provides much more performance than that. It really depends on the game to a degree. You also have to consider that some games run so well on a single 8800GTX for most users that the performance improvement probably wouldn't be noticed. It's really only needed for 1920x1080 or higher resolutions. This is especially true if you want to run any level of AA and AF.

Today I can run COD4 and UT3 at 2560x1600 pretty much maxed out and get great performance out of them. However I can only do this thanks to SLI. Even then I can't enable AA or AF in very high levels without the performance taking a huge dive. Is SLI expensive? Yes. Is SLI worth it? For some people, absolutely, for others not at all.
 
SLI can be considered a decent solution for gamers without massive pockets when you do both of the following:

1. You buy a new generation card or the newest revision of it.
2. You buy a used version of that card off these forums when a new card comes out, so long as that card is not of a new generation.

Ergo, getting 2 7900 GTXs over 1 8800 GTS is not a good idea. Miss out on DX10 compatibility and better AA modes.

However, getting one 8800 GTS when it came out and then buying one later - say, now, when you can get them on the forums for $150 less their retail cost because everyone is snagging the GTs and dumping "old" hardware - is a decent idea. It's certainly going to perform better than a single GT or GTX.

Then again, you could sell a GTS yourself and get two GTs for a bit more, but inflated prices, poor cooling solution and the memory limit on the GT make me wary of doing that personally.
 
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