SLI or Crossfire

alitwo1zero

alitwo1zero

alitwo1zero

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Joined
5 Mar 2006
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2
Location
UK
Hi all,

Due to the ever more woeful looking specs of my current PC (see my sig - bought nearly 3 years ago before going to uni btw =P), im looking at building a new one.

However, I need some help deciding on what dual graphics card setup to buy, SLI or Crossfire. Ive always been a fan of ATI gfx cards, but I also like Nvidia's motherboard chipsets.

As I understand it, if I'm to buy two 7900GT's / X1900's, performance is going to be limited to my CPU regardless which cards I buy (and which CPU).

Primarily, I use my PC for gaming & usually play FPS, driving games & the odd other thing, (egs - FEAR, Farcry, UT, NFS-MW, WoW). As ive found, regardless how big hard drive you buy, IT WILL GET FULL! So, i guessed something around 1tb will keep my lust for downloading random junk happy for a good while.

Im looking at spending a total of around £1600, pushing up to £1800 if I really have to. This is my budget just the box & the stuff in it, I have a 17" Sharp TFT, but it will soon be tuning into 2x 20" TFT's. Another influencing point is a dual screen setup: is this possible with either SLI or Crossfire, as I will be soon upgrading my monitors too. I have a Creative X-Fi Platinum already, so no soundcard is needed, nor will the onboard stuff be used.

Im not looking for overclocking parts, nor suggestions to buy opterons & OC them, since I'm not really into blowing up 300 quid gfx cards & cpu's - id rather buy it fast, rather than mess about in an attempt to make it faster.

Oh im also not buying Intel stuff =P

Proposed specs are something like this:

FOR SLI
2x XFX GeForce 7900 GT Extreme Edition 256MB
Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe

FOR CROSSFIRE
Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe
2x Something, please suggest =P

THE REST
2x Corsair Memory VS2GBKIT400C3 PC3200 2x1GB CAS3
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+
Arctic Freezer 64
4x Samsung 250GB S300 7200RPM 8MB (SP2504C) (RAID 0 or 1, I forget which, the faster one =P)
Antec P180
Tagan 530W TG530-U15 PSU

So, what you guys think? SLI or Crossfire? & what about the rest of the spec, any changes?

Cheers,
Al.
 
well, the Crossfire system is far more unreliable at present, so SLi would be a safer bet if you are dead set on a dual gfx card setup..However you could be cutting edge and go for a crossfire setup (personally I would try dual x1900xtx's if I had the money).

rest of the system looks great, although u might wanna get the most powerful PSU going and get a 600w'er.
 
get yourself one of the X1900XTX and dont bother with a 2 dual card set up.
The rest of the spec you have written looks good. I know you say dont oc the proc but I would knock that 4400 up just a little for even better performance. As for raid imho it does not make a huge difference. Raid 0 is the fastest (read last comment) but if it goes wrong you lose the lot. Raid 0+1 has back up.
So if I was you I would have:
Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe
ATI X1900XTX
2x Corsair Memory VS2GBKIT400C3 PC3200 2x1GB CAS3
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+
4x Samsung 250GB S300 7200RPM 8MB (or Western Digital)
Antec P180
Tagan 530W TG530-U15 PSU

Then down the road if you REALLY WANT TO you can add another ATI card for xfire
 
if you are into your gaming you also might want to consider a serperate "boot" drive for windows and your games from the RAIDed storage setup, this will make your games load much faster - and as was just said minimises the risk of your RAID setup going down the swanee and u being left to reinstall everything :(
 
gary996 said:
get yourself one of the X1900XTX and dont bother with a 2 dual card set up.
The rest of the spec you have written looks good. I know you say dont oc the proc but I would knock that 4400 up just a little for even better performance. As for raid imho it does not make a huge difference. Raid 0 is the fastest (read last comment) but if it goes wrong you lose the lot. Raid 0+1 has back up.
So if I was you I would have:
Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe
ATI X1900XTX
2x Corsair Memory VS2GBKIT400C3 PC3200 2x1GB CAS3
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+
4x Samsung 250GB S300 7200RPM 8MB (or Western Digital)
Antec P180
Tagan 530W TG530-U15 PSU

Then down the road if you REALLY WANT TO you can add another ATI card for xfire
Click to expand...

I agree with this. Get one card and then if you really want a 2nd then get it. Also id go for the new dfi x-fire board thats just being released at the moment. Thats suppose to be the best 939 board ever released and if you change your mind and decide to overclock even a little then you will have no probs with this board. Id also look into getting a 2gb kit of low latency ram such as corsair 3200c2pt as timings are fairly important on a64 systems
 
Thanks for the advice guys, much appreciated. Tbh, Im still stuck with what to get, basically cos an X1900 XTX is around the 400 quid mark :( (I want one with a reasonably quiet fan on it, since ive heard the normal one is rather bloody loud =P). But, when it comes to buying it, I might just think 'sod it' =P
 
As you will see from my sig i went for an X-fire setup with X1900XTX's, only reasons i picked Xfire over SLI is that i got a slightly cheaper deal on the cards and they can do AA+HDR which SLI cant.

If you go SLI/Xfire get a better PSU. 600W Min and must have a very strong 12v rail (i had a nightmare getting a PSU that would power my system and in the end got an FSP Epsilon 700w which is running perfectly).

The X1900XTX arent actually very loud at stock. Its only when you start to overclock them and need to turn the fans up to full 24/7 that they get noisey. When im running with my graphics cards at stock the loudest part of my system is my DVD drive.
 
save me starting a new thread to ask this,

if i was going to get a dual core opty and overclock it, what would be the best single nvidia card to get? i was thinking about SLI but i'm not going to have anything bigger then a 19" tft and i've learnt from the forums that SLI only comes into it's own with large resolutions and when using SLI you can only use single display, which means i couldnt get a second monitor.

so, i'm going to overclock and it'll have watercooling so i'm thinking 7800 or 7900 GT, but i'm not sure how much memory i'd need on the card to unleash the power of an overclocked dual opti
 
If you're going for crossfire/SLI i'd be wanting to protect it, atm it looks as if the fsp sparkle are pretty reliable, seeing as they're used in the top overclockers pre builts and the 700w one should be able to sort out anything. Edit: just noticed that barney recommended them aswell, but even if it is overkill lower %age used = lower temps.
 
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