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Please can you clarify this for me? (SLi)

XtremeGamer

XtremeGamer

XtremeGamer

Associate
Joined
28 Jan 2007
Posts
26
Does SLi actually increase just the processing. The memory stays the same?

For example, if you have two 320Mb 8800GTS, you only have 320Mb memory not 640?

So you would be better with a 8800 GTS 320Mb x 2 in SLi VS. a single 768MB 8800GT:

-Better in terms of speed that the GTX
-Worse in terms of memory that the GTX

Just asking cause I have seen systems saying like, "Two Gigs of Video Memory" when having two SLi'd 1Gb cards.

Any help would be abbreciated :D
 
Two 320Mb cards do not equal 640Mb as each card can only see its own memory. So one card will use its 320Mb and the other card will use its 320Mb.
 
As stated above, the effective memory doesn't double up.

Each card needs to hold the entire texture set in its memory, in order to operate most effectively. So you're really holding two copies of everything.

Also, having used SLI in the past, I would recommend going for the single GTX from a performance perspective as well. SLI is not as good as the benchmarks make it appear (and a pair of 640mb GTSs barely beat a single GTX in most benchmarks anyway).
 
As the above post says, each card needs to store mirror copies of the data, so you only effectively have 320Mb of useable RAM as far as applications and games are concerned...

While there is no doubt a faster single card is better overall than 2 cards in SLI that make up the same performance, SLI is not as bad as some people make out, you won't get roughly double the performance in every game, but a lot of games you will and there will be some games that only run at the same performance as you'd get from one of the cards, but they are a fairly low number of games.
 
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