• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

SLi, Is it cost effective.

I think its gross waste of money. But if you cant think of anything else to spend £300 on then go for it.
 
Im not planning on going SLi myself. Not atleast until after christmas if atall. The makers of crysis mentioned that a 4GB of ram would be more effective on the performance of the game rather than an additional GPU.

I guess games in the future are going to need it mind.

Oh i remember my first pc had a nice voodoo 3 in it. None of this SLi malarky !
 
From what I have heard, the performance gain doesnt justify the money. By the time the prices on the cards are low enough to justify going SLI, there is a card out that will do the same job as the 2 older ones together. The only reason to do it is so you can say "I have 2 8800 GTXs. Arent I rich?"!!
 
It should be looked upon as an indulgance and not a cost effective performance boost across the bored.
 
Damien. said:
Is it worth going SLi, if you have the money obviously. Are the performance increases cost effective etc.
Click to expand...

The performance increase is not worth the extra that you pay for that second card unless you game on a 30inch screen.

One GTX and will handle most games when playing at a res of 1920x1200, you might have to turn the AA or AF down a bit but at that res it dosent really make a huge difference anyway. Its only the no sense people that have to get the best performance all the time.

Their's quite a few people out their which basically think if you have one 8800GTX (for example) and then add another your going to get double the performance but in reality you get far from that.

So yeah, its not a good investment to be honest. Spend the money upgrading another part of your system if need be.
 
Actually SLI isn't the waste of money most people of these forums say it is. For what it's designed for, (i.e. increasing minimum framerates and turning all the eye candy up) it's actually very good especially with the more demanding titles. Older games give less of a benefit but all of the 30% at most nonsense is from those who've never tried it tbh. I had good results with 6800, 7800 and 7950 SLI systems and they're great once you've set them up correctly. Considering the other (mostly) pointless stuff people waste money on for gaming systems (RAID arrays, QX cpu's etc) I don't see it as a waste even at 1600x1200, you just get more aa/af. Considering a lot of people build their machines mainly for gaming I can't see anything else you could spend the money on that would even come close to providing increased framerates and a smoother gaming experience.
 
Last edited:
Arcane said:
Actually SLI isn't the waste of money most people of these forums say it is. For what it's designed for, (i.e. increasing minimum framerates and turning all the eye candy up) it's actually very good especially with the more demanding titles. Older games give less of a benefit but all of the 30% at most nonsense is from those who've never tried it tbh. I had good results with 6800, 7800 and 7950 SLI systems and they're great once you've set them up correctly. Considering the other (mostly) pointless stuff people waste money on for gaming systems (RAID arrays, QX cpu's etc) I don't see it as a waste even at 1600x1200, you just get more aa/af. Considering a lot of people build their machines mainly for gaming I can't see anything else you could spend the money on that would even come close to providing a smoother gaming experience.
Click to expand...

Fine, but especially at that res, in 99% of scenarios it would be more cost and graphics effective to sell the first card and get one superior card than it would be to buy another identical inferior card.
 
I can think of only two instances where SLI would make sense.

1. You want/need the absolute fastest graphics capabilities. I'd guess this would be 2x 8800 ultra at the moment. Then there would be no other way to get that power other than SLI.

2. You have a graphics card that you are reasonably happy with. At some point you manage to 'drop on' another one for a good price off a mate etc and just think well why not.

Other than those reasons i can't see why people build an SLI system
 
Last edited:
Good points :). though for me, SLI isn't really about being cost effective, lets be honest, PC gaming is expensive compared to the other alternatives out there! SLI is about having the best you can get. I understand many people don't have the means (or wish) to pay out that kind of money but I do, it just gets tiresome listening to the same mis-information being put out.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom