sli or crossfire?

SLI is better has more support, and you dont need to connect the 2 cards together from the back of your PC and i think it would be cheaper
 
Well you're starting a great debate, nothing no one here likes more than debating nVidia VS ATI technology.

Overall, I would say at this point in time that SLI is a more stable and robust technology. The X1900 series is overall a better performing card, particularly with newer games that are shader intensive, and sometimes X1900 CrossFire will beat 7900GTX SLI.

From reviews and opinions I've read however, CrossFire is just a little more tempermental. As in the case with the game Obvlivion, CrossFire just didn't work right out of the box. The issue has since been fixed. Of course, even nVidia had issues with Obilvion, but SLI seemed to work ok initially.

So my take is that SLI is a better way to go right now. CrossFire will or course get better and more stable. Which I'm sure that SLI will as well. And I am sure that plenty of people here will say that CrossFire is solid, which it has come a long way, but I waited a year after SLI came out because I wanted a solid and mature technology before I spent over $1000 in video cards.

My personal experience with SLI has been great. It's very stable, and my Asus A8N32 motherboard has been rock solid too. I use that PC for recording TV as well as its my main work machine, and its just been the most stable PC I've ever had. I wanted great performance for games, but I also needed uber stability and I got it with the sig rig.

Good luck with your decision!
 
yeah sli hasbeen around longer so it has more expierence i just wanted to know if there was like a big thing sli didn't have that crossfire has (except for like the the newer pixel shader or something)
 
boomheadshot45 said:
yeah sli hasbeen around longer so it has more expierence i just wanted to know if there was like a big thing sli didn't have that crossfire has (except for like the the newer pixel shader or something)
Click to expand...

You don't state whether you currently own an SLI motherboard and capable psu, so I'm going to assume you're building from scratch. Here are the advantages of both:

Crossfire:
1. SuperAA- you can get higher levels of AA with much less performance hit with Crossfire
2. Angle Independent AF- produces slightly higher AF quality
3. Less "shimmer" from undersampled mipmap transitions in the few games that have this
(note: shimmer is highly dependent on game and monitor, it's most noticed on a couple MMORGs)
4. FP HDR+AA in the 3 games that support this
5. Faster in some games

SLI:
1. Far less noise for almost any configuration
2. Far less power consumption
3. Far less heat dissipation
4. Flexibility of render modes- the most important thing currently, IMO. Crossfire does not let you select render method, so if the profile or default that applies to the game you're playing actually makes it slower, you're stuck. Also, Crossfire defaults to tiling for D3d, which does not scale geometry calcualtions at all. With SLI you can set render mode and edit/create profiles.
5. More mature, elegant hardware. Better Southbridges, no dongles, no Master/slave card.
6. Likely more profiles in drivers.
7. In game support for SLI, AFAIK Crossfire does not have this.
8. Faster at some games.
9. Far better Linux support for nVidia cards
10. Higher scaling in some games
11. Slightly better AA quality

I've used 4 different SLI video card sets over the last 14 months, and four different motherboards. With the exception of a motherboard that was defective the first week I bought it, and a few weeks wait for a Riddick profile, I've found it to be a trouble free experience. I don't think Crossfire is at that point yet.
 
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