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How Reliable is Crossfire/SLI v Single-GPU?

Rezident

Rezident

Rezident

Soldato
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I’ve avoided SLI/Crossfire in the past because of the hassles (games not supporting it, drivers, cost, heat, noise, etc.) but I presume ATI and Nvidia have been fixing the issues and the growing number of people with Crossfire/SLI (including dual-gpu) setups seems to indicate the situation is improving.

The cost and heat I can deal with and I presume Nvidia/ATI do their best (within reason) to sort the drivers, so remaining issues include:

Noise: My case keeps most parts quiet but I’ve heard the 4870X2 and GTX 295 can get very noisy, with the GTX hitting over 53 decibels. How bad is the noise?

Games: Do most major games now support Crossfire/SLI? Do any games not? Also, are games released without supporting it and you have to wait a month or two?

Microstutter: This is my main concern. How much of a problem is this for people who notice it? Has it improved? Is it a hardware or software problem (or both?)
 
I've had several multi-gpu setups in my time and to be honest I think they get a bad image from people who don't really know what they're talking about.

These days the vast majority of new releases are supported and people with problems tend to be in the minority.

With regards to noise, you need to choose carefully but a pair of sapphire 4890 vapor-x cards would be pretty quiet and very fast.
 
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I'm going for x-fire soon vapor-X's

I had an SLI set-up with 7800GTX the day they came out, had going it going till Nov last year. Never had any problems with them.
 
Had a couple of crossfire setups in the past (2900XT's, 3850's and 4850's) and have used an ATi 3870X2 as well.

On the NV side i've used dual 7800GT's, 7950GX2, 9800GX2, GTX295 and presently have dual GTX260's in SLi.

All solutions worked without a hitch although i did get a little microstutter using early drivers with the 3870X2 and dual 4850's.

gt
 
SLI generally works pretty well... I still get the odd little problem but its not very often.

Games generally don't have to specifically support multi GPU for them to function in SLI but sometimes you don't get full performance without an SLI profile.

nVidia drivers lately have been ahead of the game, can't really comment on crossfire as its been a few monthhs since I last had much experience but the driver updates for specific games could take 1-2 months back along.
 
Just when xfire with 2 HD 4870. Been using it for a 2 weeks now and so far so good. Dont really notice the noise increase unless Im playing a game such as Crysis but that was the same when i had a single card also.
 
I wont ever use a single gpu setup agian, I love the fact I can play 2560x1600 res in every game and my system just smiles at it :D
 
im running 2 4850 in crossfire, both at x16. all my games work in crossfire.. most of the games i see 100% extra in crossfire.

but the dx10 games i get flickering objects, like on the trees.

as for noise, my 2 are very quiet even while gaming.
 
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You can run into serious heat problems placing two 200 watt plus GFX cards in a small metal box.

Not all games support dual cards, some will actually perform worst. Scaling is very subjective, but to get any half decent performance games need to written with two cards in mind. Crossfire seems to scale better but SLI has more titles. SLI motherboards are also usually crap.

You can get some half decent boosts by adding a second card but performance is still very hits and miss and Dual cards setups are still buggy, don't be kidded into thinking it will be plain sailing.
 
=VTA=MANFACE said:
I'm going for x-fire soon vapor-X's

I had an SLI set-up with 7800GTX the day they came out, had going it going till Nov last year. Never had any problems with them.
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Yep I have one Vapor-X and am very happy with the noise (or lack thereof), I don;'t think a second one would bo too loud.
 
Rezident said:
I've read that microstutter on the 4870X2 is better than it was on 3870X2, which would also suggest the situation is improving.
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Yeah, as i said it was most probably the early revision drivers.

TBH i had fun with all the solutions and found the performance boost to be worth the cost in most cases (2900XT on a P35 excluded :D).

gt
 
my experiences
gtx280 sli = some setup i had to do to get it to work properly, but was at a lan and the guy next to me helped me out a lot as hed gone thorugh it all before with his setup, wasnt too complicated though.

with 1 gtx 295 = it worked out of the box perfectly, no issues with anything.

2 gtx 295 = much mroe complicated, certain games get micro stutter etc. I have resolved these through driver tweaking on teh games profile though, although it did mean about a day of sitting there, changing a setting, testing it out and repeat. Now I know what I'm doing iwth the settings its pretty quick and easy even if a game has major problems at first.
 
The current multi-GPU implementations are never going to be as reliable as a good single GPU and generally will only be fully optimized for the top few games that get used in benchmarks.
 
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im still using my 4870x2 ive had since the day it launched not had a single issue with it in terms of performance.

Other than having to RMA it wich OCUK turned round in a couple of days :P

I will say thatthe noise is quite loud under high load.
 
jigger said:
Not all games support dual cards, some will actually perform worst. Scaling is very subjective, but to get any half decent performance games need to written with two cards in mind. Crossfire seems to scale better but SLI has more titles. SLI motherboards are also usually crap.

You can get some half decent boosts by adding a second card but performance is still very hits and miss and Dual cards setups are still buggy, don't be kidded into thinking it will be plain sailing.
Click to expand...

Your info is a bit dated - well aside from the fact SLI motherboards are crap coz thats still true.

=VTA=MANFACE said:
I run a DELL & HP 24" Dual set-up, I take it, this will benefit it ?

What's it like in ARMA 2 ?
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Arma 2 gains almost double the average framerate - within 1-2fps... however it seems to make the laggy feel in Arma2 worse if anything - so if your noticing the laggy input in ArmA2 going SLI won't help.
 
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