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GTX vs GT SLI

spengos

spengos

spengos

Associate
Joined
11 Feb 2004
Posts
706
Location
UK
Looking for a new graphics solution for my rig. Currently have an 8800GTS 320, which is a nice card but not quite powerful enough for Crysis and future requirements.

I'd really like a GTX but I was wondering if a couple of GT's in SLI would give better performance for around the same price?

I know nothing about SLI having never used it or read about it, so I have no idea what sort of extra performance you would get with 2 cards.

So basically what would be better:

1 of these

Or

2 of these

Thanks for any advice. Sorry if this sort of thing has been discussed already, I couldn't find any specific references.
 
In almost all cases the 8800GT cards will beat the GTX in SLI.

but...
-you do have a SLI board, right?
-what resolution do you ruN?
 
gurusan said:
In almost all cases the 8800GT cards will beat the GTX in SLI.

but...
-you do have a SLI board, right?
-what resolution do you ruN?
Click to expand...

Did you mean "In almost all cases the 8800GTX cards will beat the GT in SLI."?

If so, well 2x 8800GT will beat 1x 8800GTX, but 2x8800GTX would obviously be faster than 1x 8800GT or 2x 8800GT.
 
Yes, that was a funky sentence.

I meant, in almost all cases 2 8800GT cards in SLI will beat ONE 8800GTX.
 
Nvidia will be releasing a patch for Crysis on release, so SLI performance isn't yet upto what it will eventually be. Personally I've had great results with SLI and would recommend it, it can take some setting up if there's not a profile assigned to it though I can't remember the last time that happened tbh. You'll need an SLI capable motherboard and a decent PSU as well. I'd go SLI GT's over the GTX, many others would probably disagree however....hope this helps.
 
I've been talking to someone who has tried the full game of crysis, and apparently with an 8800GT at 1680x1050 all high he is getting 40fps most of the time, big improvement over the demo!, no need for SLi at 1680x1050 unless using Very High.
 
spengos said:
@Willhub: I have a Samsung SM-226BW (22" widescreen)

@Gurusan: I have an Asus P5N-E SLi motherboard
Click to expand...

Well 8800GT sure will work on that mobo, and 22" monitor so thats 1680x1050, just get one 8800GT for now and go SLi if you REALLY need it for crysis or something in the near future.
 
willhub said:
I've been talking to someone who has tried the full game of crysis, and apparently with an 8800GT at 1680x1050 all high he is getting 40fps most of the time, big improvement over the demo!, no need for SLi at 1680x1050 unless using Very High.
Click to expand...

I can run the game now at 1680x1050 with my GTS but with everything on medium. I want to be able to play this game with pretty much everything on max but obviously don't want it to cost the earth.

Hmmm, so its looking like 2 x GT's is the way to go then?

Can someone explain to me how SLI works in terms of adding performance? I know its not as straight forward as 1.5X or 2X one card but is there actually a way to work it out or does it vary depending on the game, your system setup, etc?
 
Are you talking about the propor release of Crysis? If so I would buy one GT and see how it runs, should run fine at your res with one 8800GT, allthough its up to you if you want a second one, I guess in the long run it might be ok but then it'll be annoying when one card comes out that'll blow your SLi setup away.
 
The actual gains from SLI depend on having enough CPU to push out the extra frames with SLI and which SLI method the game uses...

SLI uses 2 main methods for doing its business called AFR and SFR, with AFR each card builds a whole seperate individual frame and usually gives the biggest gains typically around 80% overall but in some cases can give upto double the framerate minus a small amount to overheads. With SFR each game frame is split between the 2 cards - normally one card draw the top half of the screen and the other draws the bottom half - this typically gives gains of 1.2-1.6x as generally the screen isn't uniformly busy all over i.e. in a typical first person game the top half of the screen is mostly the sky box which takes hardly any work to draw at all meaning one card isn't even being used much at all.

Fortunatly SFR is only needed in a small number of games, the vast majority use AFR with an even smaller number than SFR unable to make any use of SLI at all.
 
@ Rroff : Thanks for the explanation, that makes things much clearer. :)

willhub said:
I guess in the long run it might be ok but then it'll be annoying when one card comes out that'll blow your SLi setup away.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, yeah this is what I'm worried about. It's obviously going to happen at some point, but I can delay this further if I get it figured out before hand.

I've just been reading this article which compares the current top cards and their performance in Crysis and UT3.

This part in the Conclusion is interesting:

512 MB

The GeForce 8800 GT is a very fast video card, and even faster in SLI. The 512 MB memory capacity could be a bottleneck for this video card in SLI. It will have a lot of performance to push pixels and textures at high resolutions with AA but it may not have the memory capacity to handle it. We’ve seen that at 2560x1600 the GT in SLI still chokes with 2X AA in UT3, but went on to match the single GTX and Ultra in performance. However, when we took the GT SLI down to 1920x1200 in UT3, where it wasn’t being memory bottlenecked, the framerates in SLI skyrocketed past the single GeForce 8800 Ultra.

If the future of DX10 games benefits from a greater memory capacity, as has been the trend we have seen, this video card could run into bottlenecks with SLI. It is something we will have to keep testing on new games. Once Crysis is out with SLI support it will be interesting to see how it performs.

More memory is obviously the key for future proofing and I think having 2 x 8800 GT's in SLi might be a problem in 12 months in terms of memory. Plus I'd have to replace both cards when the time comes. Ideally 2 x GTX's is the ultimate solution but I can't afford that right now. Seeing as 1 GTX is enough to cope with Crysis in high settings and any other game at the moment, I think I might go with a single GTX for the moment and then buy another in a year or 2 when I need to.
 
spengos said:
Why do you say that mate, have you tried it for yourself? Not being argumentative, just very interested. :)
Click to expand...
I have. :)
willhub said:
Are you sure? another different person reported a GTX rig at 1680x1050, dunno if it was SLi or what, think it had a quad and was getting 60fps, maybe the final game really is better?
Click to expand...
Yeah well the performance is better but it's not THAT much better like. :(

The Crysis demo thread has another guy with a 8800GT who had to drop the settings down to medium because one of the levels at least was unplayable. (full game)

That guy must have had SLi cus there's no way a 8800GTX is running Crysis with 60FPS on High.
 
get the 2 GT's. i have 2, and they obliterate a friends set up with similar specs but GTX as the GFX. saying that, i am at 1680x1050, so is he, maybe at 1920x1200 it wont be such a whooping though...
 
depends on the game, with older DX9 games 2 GT's woop the GTX into next week even with 4xAA.

AA impact isn't as severe with the GT's are some ppl make out - unless you have a 30" display.
 
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