sli, xfire? basic help please

djinuk205 · 2 Sep 2009 at 14:20

im looking at building a new gaming rig soon however the latest when i was building these was agp 8x, now i see there is sli and xfire, whats the diff and are they really worth it and needed to get a decent spec machine?

95thrifles · 2 Sep 2009 at 14:22

SLi is for NVidia, xfire is for ATI, it allows you to use 2 cards in conjunction to boost performance
but no its not necessary and in fact the best advice is when building a new machine get the single best card you can afford, if you think you might need more power later then get a mobo and psu that would allow for additional card at a later date

djinuk205 · 2 Sep 2009 at 14:30

wkd, thats what i wanted to hear, so im guessing most mobos now days are capable of twin cards.

tuppers360 · 2 Sep 2009 at 14:37

yes they are but really depends on what you want to do?

djinuk205 · 2 Sep 2009 at 14:42

tuppers360 said:
yes they are but really depends on what you want to do?

dont quite understand, they are all capable but it depends what i want to do? as in what i want to use the pc for or ... :S

95thrifles · 2 Sep 2009 at 14:57

not all boards do both xfire and SLI, some do only one or other, some older boards dont do either but Im not aware of any new boards like this, just make sure when you come to buy you dbl check everything or even do a spec thread in here

djinuk205 · 2 Sep 2009 at 15:24

ahh i see, so im guessing mobos in essence are either ati or nvidia based really.

Namak · 2 Sep 2009 at 15:26

or in the case of i7s and i5s both.

Just to make it really confusing though there is an i7 board and I imagine there will be some i5s that are just ati.