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Crossfire and SLi, is it worth it?

ACESHIGH said:
I wont say the 7800GT cards are not a good buy, but for heavens sake, youre actually going to buy a card based on one picture you have seen, for one game based on one specific resolution, which shows these cards are good performers. There is no link to any site. You probably dont even know where that pic came from. Do you know how the cards perform in any other games, or at other resolutions. You do realise often one card will perform better in one game & possibly worse in many others. At least go do some research yourself then. Thats a n00b decision in my books.
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I agree look at some more reviews and benchmarks.
But what you will find is that two 7800GT cards will trounce a single x1800xt

Two 7600GT's will trounce an x1800xt

So go for it.
 
Ok then. I think that the best option would be to go for the X1900 XT-X as it would be a bit cheaper that the 2 7800's. What X1900XT-X would you guys recomend?
 
You have a SLI mobo.

So you would be mad to get an x1900 and be stuck with a one card solution consuming nearly the same power on its own as a two card nvidia setup.

if getting one top end card with your SLI mobo then the 7900 GTX is the clear choice.

you want to leave options open for yourself.

The 7900GTX consumes 50% less power and runs so much cooler than the x1900.

The 7900 is just an all better designed card IMO.Who wants a power hogging heat emitting noisey GFX card in their pc.

getting an x1900 is not giving you an upgrade path.The performance you get now with one is where you will be stuck at until you get a new card.

however get a 7900 GTX and in SLI (you can choose this option down the line) will blow the socks off any current gfx cards.

even two 7900 GTX's in SLI destroy two x1900's in xfire!
 
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In my books, if you're looking to buy a system, you either go SLi immediately and buy 2 current generation graphics card to fully exploit the benefits of the games (dual X1900s or dual 7900s) or buy a single high end graphics card which will last a good period before another video card upgrade.

I never go SLi as I'd never be able to afford it going by the rule above, hence I often go for the higher end graphics card. 2x 7800GT 512MB may seem nice in your system but it will cost more than a single high end graphics card like the X1900XT-X or the GeForce 7900GTX... with the new batch of 7900s, it might be worth looking at a single card solution... as opposed to SLI. You're better off reading up some more reviews and taking into account the resolutions you will be playing at before considering...
 
Quick, lets all go SLI, because we have seen 1 Quake4 Benchmark!
A Fear Benchmark might be slightly different for example.

But I do think Nvidia offers the better 2 card solution. Most people also have Nforce4 Motherboards and they are proven to be great. Where has there have been issues with the early Crossfire motherboards. But you cannot beat a single ATI card for price/performance.
 
With already having an SLi board I think its best that I stick to nVidia. There is some difference in the ATI and nVidia cards but its so slight that where one fails the other picks up and so on. I have decided, money permiting, that I am going to get a 7900GTX with the hope of getting another in the upcoming weeks/months. I just have to decide who's 7900GTX to go for and which model.
 
xknight2000 said:
With already having an SLi board I think its best that I stick to nVidia. There is some difference in the ATI and nVidia cards but its so slight that where one fails the other picks up and so on. I have decided, money permiting, that I am going to get a 7900GTX with the hope of getting another in the upcoming weeks/months. I just have to decide who's 7900GTX to go for and which model.
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Good choice.It makes sense in the long run.
As for the GTX just get the cheapest.
:)
 
iamgud said:
Quick, lets all go SLI, because we have seen 1 Quake4 Benchmark!
A Fear Benchmark might be slightly different for example.

But I do think Nvidia offers the better 2 card solution. Most people also have Nforce4 Motherboards and they are proven to be great. Where has there have been issues with the early Crossfire motherboards. But you cannot beat a single ATI card for price/performance.
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SLI 7900s beat X-fire x1900 in prett much all games, espeically FEAR.

The ATI camp are saying to wait for the 3200 board, but I don't see how this is a solution buying another £150 mobo just to get X-fire to perform on par.
 
egt said:
I can't see how that benchmark is Nvidia biased as it shows the x1900 beating a 7900 (in that benchmark at least)
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OpenGL / TWISMTBP. Its even less fair than that since nvidia optimise the hell out of it (oh noes - the shimmering). Default settings for nvidia chipsets should be on hgih quality with ati on normal.

Yeah yeah... im sure that slipped your mind.
 
Goksly said:
OpenGL / TWISMTBP. Its even less fair than that since nvidia optimise the hell out of it (oh noes - the shimmering). Default settings for nvidia chipsets should be on hgih quality with ati on normal.

Yeah yeah... im sure that slipped your mind.
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OpenGl should make no difference, if ATI are slower at a certain API then ATI are slwoer at it, doesn't make it Nvidia Biased.
Nor does the fact that Nvidia pay to put a slogon on the game, ATI will have paid just as much money in development support.

If Nvidia optimise its drivers so what, maybe if ATI did that they would catch up.

ATI should hjave its Cat A.I. turned off to equal out IQ, and Nvidia scan have its IQ turned to high quality, but thats makes almost no performance difference (typically less than 1%).
 
1) AI on standard does not have an impact on image quality
2) Its well known that to get rid of the shimmering you need to turn the nvidia quality to high - so why this isnt the default setting I have no idea.
3) Obviously its up to ATI to increase its OGL performance, but showing just one benchmark result from Nvidias favourite game is bias. If you want to make it fair, wack in a farcry / other DirectX (more popular) benchmark to boot.
4) There is a clear blues sky difference between optimising the drivers and make it shimmer than optimise the game so it doesnt give any image quality difference. This is why I say default benchmark settings should be nvidia - HQ / ATI - AI on standard.
Wacking AI to advanced prolly gives similar IQ to nvidia and boosts performance quite a bit, but you can see there is a slight IQ decrease in quality. You will never been able to do a fair comparision from two quite different cards, but at least level the playing field.
 
..and so the fanwar rages on ;)

Seriously though.

If you got the cash go for the single high-end card. It'll be easier to sell the high end card in 6 months on the 'bay rather than the two out-dated 7600s in my experience anyway.
 
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