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Worth upgrading from GTX 295 Quad Sli

The options are clear, I think he's going to buy some new kit whichever option he goes with, he's got the 'I must have new equipment' bug and we all know how hard that is to shift even when reason dictates otherwise :)

30" screen is definitely the way to go!
 
Flanno said:
Please don't make unhelpful comments like that.

In fact the guy got the 295's from me, so he didn't pay full price. Neither did I in fact. So he wasn't 'stupid' as you so vigorously pointed out.

As for them being a waste at 1920, I tend to partially disagree. With 2 295's you can max out batman at 1920 and full physx. In other games, you can raise the level of AA. Not possible with 1 295 without incurring drops in framerates. Same can be said for using 5870's in Crossfire. I don't know why people are so against using sli or crossfire because they think 1920 is too low a res to justify 2 cards. From what I can see, it allows you to raise other eyecandy levels at this res. I take the point someitmes you are cpu limited though.
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You are telling this guy not to do it for what reason? as it seems like it was a move you made yourself. At most he should go tri crossfire as that seems to give really good gains. People keep saying wait for fermi but how long are they to wait. In the worse case scenario ati's refresh of this round could be along at around the same time as fermi so maybe he should wait for that or maybe even wait for the 6 series. If he has the money and the patience to wait on a 5 series card then good luck to him. He should be able to get most of the upgrade for free as his gtx295's should fetch a decent price which is another good reason not to wait on fermi as by the time that arrives the money he will get for his gtx295's will have dropped a lot.
 
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LoadsaMoney said:
Just get 2x 5870's, as Quad SLi doesn't scale well at all, so hes getting no benefit, 2x 5870's will be quite a bit faster.
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I'm not so sure to be honest. People have always said quad sli doesn't scale but I think that's not entirely true anymore. You see I flogged my mate my gtx's (there were my brothers really) and got 2x5870's for myself on launch day. The 5870's in crossfire don't seem any faster at 1920 with all the eye candy turned on compared to quad sli. That's why my mate was thinking about 3x5870's or 2x5970's. He now knows he will need a higher res screen to get the benefit though.
 
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TheRealDeal said:
You are telling this guy not to do it for what reason? as it seems like it was a move you made yourself. At most he should go tri crossfire as that seems to give really good gains. People keep saying wait for fermi but how long are they to wait. In the worse case scenario ati's refresh of this round could be along at around the same time as fermi so maybe he should wait for that or maybe even wait for the 6 series. If he has the money and the patience to wait on a 5 series card then good luck to him. He should be able to get most of the upgrade for free as his gtx295's should fetch a decent price which is another good reason not to wait on fermi as by the time that arrives the money he will get for his gtx295's will have dropped a lot.
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That's a fair point. I don't think he minds about the money though. Personally I don't think his quad sli setup is slower/faster than my crossfire setup and going from quad sli to crossfired 5870's is not going to make much difference in todays games. If he really wants to go trifire 5870 or quadfire 5970 or even wait for fermi to get an appreciable gain he should first get a higher res screen as people have pointed out.

TheRealDeal said:
You are telling this guy not to do it for what reason? as it seems like it was a move you made yourself.
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No idea what you mean mate
 
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I'd sell his 295's and get a 5970 and a screen, or just two 5970's, I'm pretty sure he won't have any problems in any way, shape or form with a crossfire solution of 5970's, especially if you've seen the benchies on those things.
 
Flanno said:
I'm not so sure to be honest. People have always said quad sli doesn't scale but I think that's not entirely true anymore. You see I flogged my mate my gtx's (there were my brothers really) and got 2x5870's for myself on launch day. The 5870's in crossfire don't seem any faster at 1920 with all the eye candy turned on compared to quad sli. That's why my mate was thinking about 3x5870's or 2x5970's. He now knows he will need a higher res screen to get the benefit though.
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No doubt that there wasn't much difference as at that res,as I stated earlier, even an overclocked i7 is going to start and bottleneck it in some games.

And all the SLI reviews I have seen shows that 3 x gtx285 is the sweet spot and the the gain from the 4th is not worth the extra cost. What I mean by that is that if you take a single gtx285 as 100% then two in sli might be 190% in games that sli well, 3 might get you another 40% but the 4th might only bring a 10% gain and I have seen that in some games, the 4th card actually is slower than just three.

That's why people say that two gtx295 in sli are not worth it unless runnning on a 30"+ screen.

Hell even two 5870 don't exactly shine as they should at 1920 x 1200.
 
Greebo said:
And all the SLI reviews I have seen shows that 3 x gtx285 is the sweet spot and the the gain from the 4th is not worth the extra cost. What I mean by that is that if you take a single gtx285 as 100% then two in sli might be 190% in games that sli well, 3 might get you another 40% but the 4th might only bring a 10% gain and I have seen that in some games, the 4th card actually is slower than just three.

That's why people say that two gtx295 in sli are not worth it unless runnning on a 30"+ screen.

Hell even two 5870 don't exactly shine as they should at 1920 x 1200.
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I agree. 3xgtx285's is the sweet spot for sure. I think his 2nd gtx295 only gives him a 40-60% gain at best.

Anyway, he has ordered a new 30" screen today.

It remains unclear if trifired 5870's is going to be faster than quadfire 5970's though, as I haven't seen any comparisons yet. I assume it would be over scaling issues with the 4th card, and the fact the 5870 is clocked higher at stock.
 
1920x1200 actually, 24". =D

Managing Dragon Age, CoDMW2 and such with no troubles, it's only the odd game like STALKER and Crysis that really hurt my card.

Still, having even one 5970 is a fleeting dream, 2 would be insane!
 
is he mad?

no unless he sorts those screens out, don't worry about it I know someone that has a 22inch and getting TWO HD5970 :(
 
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