sli or crossfire?

[xxxsonic1971]

I want multi-gpu in me new rig because they look nice, i dont want to spend more than £160 per gpu, i heard about amd micro stuttering, do nvidia sli have this problem? Iwill be using 1080p monitor.

 

[Rroff]

Micro-stutter ocurrs on both to various degrees - most of the time its not a problem - but there are some cases where its noticeable - generally under these circumstances:

User error
Drivers not properly supporting a title
Using 2 GPUs that are too low performance on their own to hold >30fps with the settings your using.

However there is also the 2 different approaches take by the 2 different vendors - AMD consider higher performance to be of more value to their customer - your likely to see overall more instances of micro-stutter but probably also slightly lower overall input latency - whereas nVidia believe its better to have smoother rendering performance even if that means a slight hit in the raw FPS numbers but it can sometimes come at a slight increase in input latency.

I usually reccomend using SLI/CF with mid-range or upper mid-range cards, where one card on its own is hitting 40-60fps and you use the 2nd one to top up the framerate to either get a solid 60fps as much as possible or try to get as close as possible to 120fps. In situations where your using a low end card and struggling to get 30fps with just one card or a high end setup that needs Quad SLI just to get playable framerates you won't get great results on either setup with microstutter and other issues being much more common.

TBH at 1080p tho I'd be inclined to reccomend going for the fastest single card you can afford.

 

[spoffle]

Lower end multi gpu isn't really worth it. Get yourself.a single 7950 (from £230) instead.

Both AMD cards can have microstuttering too.

@Rroff, you seem to keep spelling "you're" wrong.

 

[Rroff]

Can't teach an old dog new tricks an all that, been doing it wrong all my life.

PS I have almost no formal English lit education - I've learnt what I know from watching what others do rather than having any understanding of the ground rules, my grammar/syntax is probably terrible. I had an awkward situation once in a job interview where I was asked to use adjectives to explain something and I had no idea what an adjectives was

 

[spoffle]

Haha to be honest that's something I struggle to commit to memory too..

 

[Gregster]

Multi GPu's may look nice but they can be more hassle than they are worth. Heat/power/noise can be the biggest issues....

Other than looks, what else has made you think of going SLI?

 

[Rroff]

Can't see any setup that makes much sense buying at those prices - 7850 2GB CF at ~£160 per card gives you pretty much the same performance as a single 7970 at ~£320 (even some at £299). If your lucky you can find a GTX660 for slightly over £160 but in SLI they are only just a little faster than a GTX680/7970 so not worth it when buying one of those 2 would negate any multi-GPU issues.

 

[spoffle]

It's very likely that our really is just because of how two cards look, which I'm sure we'll all agree that it looks pretty good.

 

[Rroff]

There is something about having a matching pair of GPUs in the case - its almost half the reason I've gone SLI for most of my gaming rigs... that and I've been able to pickup 2 upper mid-range cards for the price of a single high-end one (at the time) that absolutely slaughter the high end card

 

[Rusty0611]

Yeah. The two MSI TFIII cards looked lovely in my PC.

 

[xxxsonic1971]

Two cards look great, i'm not bothered about heat and other issues, just been looking at some 660sli benchmarks- they are rapid!!

 

[Defy Belief]

So youd rather have a setup which is likely to have more problems, be hotter, consume more power because of looks?



Surely performance is more important, do you look at the screen or your tower when gaming?

 

[Tonester0011]

So youd rather have a setup which is likely to have more problems, be hotter, consume more power because of looks?



Surely performance is more important, do you look at the screen or your tower when gaming?

Tower, do you think this is why i'm so bad at games?

 

[Gregster]

Tower, do you think this is why i'm so bad at games?

 

[Martini1991]

I'd be quite tempted by two of these in Crossfire ; http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-185-MS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=411

 

[xxxsonic1971]

So youd rather have a setup which is likely to have more problems, be hotter, consume more power because of looks?



Surely performance is more important, do you look at the screen or your tower when gaming?

I have an antec 1200 with a huge modded side window, i had 5850cf before, they looked great and wern't to shoddy at gaming either lol!