SLI or not?

You will never have more power with 2 low end in SLI than 1 high end single. Always buy the best single card you can afford. SLI is only useful when you have a high end card but still need more. Even if the performance may be similar, since some games do not support SLI well, you benefit from having a single card in those situations.

I'm not even sure why they enable it in low end cards becuase it makes more sense to buy 1 good card than 2 poor cards. I suppose Nvidia assumes people will buy 1 low end now and maybe again later but if you're buying now, get the best you can afford.

8800GT all the way.
 
Mid-range or lower-range SLi is never a substitute for a high-end card.
SLi is only useful for high-end card users who want more performance.

So... the single 8800GT.
:)
 
Yea, the 9600GT is the only exception to the rule, generally speaking mid-range SLI isn't worth it, get the 8800gt.
 
Hum... then I guess it's settled - Ill get the high end card. I'm not real familar with how SLI works. Does it not use the full power of both cards? sorry if thats a stupid question.
 
Nexrus said:
Does it not use the full power of both cards? sorry if thats a stupid question.
Click to expand...
No it doesn't. I guess it's 'sorta' like a dual core cpu, except the software (drivers) attempts to split the load between the cards. It's not a perfect 50/50 split though just becuase I think the primary card has to be maxed really before the 2nd card can help out. It's more like a 65/35 split.
 
In your case the 8800GT is a much better alternative.
The picture is different in the high end since the GTX 280 is a bit overpriced and it may be a better deal to go with 2 9800GTXs.

BTW, I am not a big fan of SLI and I prefer the single card route.
 
The best way to explain SLi is this.

Say you have two 9800GTX's in SLi mode.

One 9800 is processing the top half of the screen, and the other is processing the bottom. This doesn't require full power from either of the cards, all it does is make the work load a lot less on both cards, and since you are processing half of what you would be with a single card, it allows it run much faster and achieve higher FPS.
 
Another thing to point out, in some instances 2 cards in SLI actually perform WORSE than a single one, because like every evolving technology, it has it quirks and problems. The single card ftw!11111 =)
 
Nexrus said:
Hum... then I guess it's settled - Ill get the high end card. I'm not real familar with how SLI works. Does it not use the full power of both cards? sorry if thats a stupid question.
Click to expand...

There are scaling issues. Its more like a 50-70% FPS boost, depending on the game. Then again, the 8600GT is way less than half the speed of the 8800GT, so even if it was a perfect 2x scaling, the 8600GTs would still lose out to an 8800GT...
 
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