Quad and dual SLI Crossfire

AaronW · 28 Apr 2006 at 23:48

Would you notice the differance from a high end single setup to a quad or dual SLI / crossfire?

sunlitsix · 28 Apr 2006 at 23:50

depending on the resolution, yes.

AaronW · 28 Apr 2006 at 23:50

sunlitsix said:
depending on the resolution, yes.

What about 1680 x 1050?

Cyanide · 28 Apr 2006 at 23:54

Even at 1440x900 I notice a big difference when I crank the AA up on most games.

Darkwave · 29 Apr 2006 at 00:00

Quad SLi = pointless bottlenecking.

Defcon5 · 29 Apr 2006 at 00:12

Exsomnis said:
Quad SLi = pointless bottlenecking.

Possibly not if your playing at insane resolutions and force all settings to the highest they go

Darkwave · 29 Apr 2006 at 00:14

Defcon5 said:
Possibly not if your playing at insane resolutions and force all settings to the highest they go

Do resolutions go that high?

kdd · 29 Apr 2006 at 00:14

Defcon5 said:
Possibly not if your playing at insane resolutions and force all settings to the highest they go

Yes quad sli is intented for monitors like the dell 30" widescreen effort.

Energize · 29 Apr 2006 at 00:25

Wouldnt be much usefull for anything else though as every cpu bottlenecks just 2 cards

Darkwave · 29 Apr 2006 at 00:53

kdd said:
Yes quad sli is intented for monitors like the dell 30" widescreen effort.

SLi/Crossfire is more than enough for that, see the post above mine. Even the FX-60 is knocked sick by the bottleneck in a dual-card system, quad SLi is crazy e-penis extension for people with waaay too much money.

kdd · 29 Apr 2006 at 01:08

Exsomnis said:
SLi/Crossfire is more than enough for that, see the post above mine. Even the FX-60 is knocked sick by the bottleneck in a dual-card system, quad SLi is crazy e-penis extension for people with waaay too much money.

Well that's that sorted then.

muppet · 29 Apr 2006 at 09:37

Would the cards be bottlenecked with a phyics card fitted

[ui]ICEMAN · 29 Apr 2006 at 09:51

Exsomnis said:
SLi/Crossfire is more than enough for that, see the post above mine. Even the FX-60 is knocked sick by the bottleneck in a dual-card system, quad SLi is crazy e-penis extension for people with waaay too much money.

Wrong I'm afraid, having the luxury of both systems I can tell you Oblivion isn't playable at 2560x1600 on an FX60, 2x7900GTX SLI, it is however more than playable on the quad setup. At 2560x1600, in some games, trust me, the CPU isn't what's holding you back, if it was then when overclocking the FX60 to 3ghz, there'd be a performance gain, there isn't.

Darkwave · 29 Apr 2006 at 10:00

[ui]ICEMAN said:
Wrong I'm afraid, having the luxury of both systems I can tell you Oblivion isn't playable at 2560x1600 on an FX60, 2x7900GTX SLI, it is however more than playable on the quad setup. At 2560x1600, in some games, trust me, the CPU isn't what's holding you back, if it was then when overclocking the FX60 to 3ghz, there'd be a performance gain, there isn't.

Ah that's cool then.

I'm stuck at a lowly 1280x960 but it looks pretty enough and a single card can push it easily. Can't understand why someone would spend so much. :confused:

Whatever floats your boat though, eh?

[ui]ICEMAN · 29 Apr 2006 at 10:03

No I 100% agree with you, its a lot of money, even a single graphics card setup these days at the top end is vastly overpriced but if performance is what you want/need then unfortunately you just have to spend the money. My biggest mistake in reality was buying the Dell 30", yes its fantastic but you leave yourself open to some major issues at native resolution in some games.

Should also mention that I review hardware too, sometimes it's easier for me to get my hands on stuff by actually buying it, particularly some of the rarer things.

Darkwave · 29 Apr 2006 at 10:03

Yeah, I've heard how much power it takes to push one of those 30" monsters. Makes my X1800XT have a stroke just thinking about it.

kdd · 29 Apr 2006 at 12:02

I would imagine quad sli will be bought only by people to whom the money is a drop in the water so meh tbh. If you shelled out and bought one on credit or saved up i would say you were crazy.

ihatelag · 29 Apr 2006 at 14:58

kdd said:
I would imagine quad sli will be bought only by people to whom the money is a drop in the water so meh tbh. If you shelled out and bought one on credit or saved up i would say you were crazy.

Hehe, although some ppl (like myself) are buying one card every month/2 months for the setup.

Hopefully by August I will have the full set up. Indeed, I want to have flawless graphics at the highest of resolutions + also I do some 3D work which is quite demanding too...which would be nice to get that working efficiently too.

Zefan · 29 Apr 2006 at 15:01

I'd only ever go SLI (Dual or Quad) if I was using a fatty TFT or a CRT @ huge resolutions, otherwise there is little point.

Energize · 29 Apr 2006 at 16:41

[ui]ICEMAN said:
Wrong I'm afraid, having the luxury of both systems I can tell you Oblivion isn't playable at 2560x1600 on an FX60, 2x7900GTX SLI, it is however more than playable on the quad setup. At 2560x1600, in some games, trust me, the CPU isn't what's holding you back, if it was then when overclocking the FX60 to 3ghz, there'd be a performance gain, there isn't.

As scaling graphs have shown even 200mhz more gives a few fps extra in oblivion. Oblivion is cpu limited with sli, which is why there is barely any avg or min fps difference between 640x480 and 1600x1200 on a decent gpu.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2747&p=4

Here it shows cpu-vs gpu performance as you can see increasing the cpu clock speed makes a difference on crossfire.