To sli or not to sli

Thedog45 · 26 Mar 2008 at 12:16

Hi todays my birthday and the missus wants to buy me something

so as the title says should i go with a 2nd bfg 8800gt oc? will i notice an improvment in games like cod4 and FSX which already play great on the one card and will my setup bottle neck the cards.

easyrider · 26 Mar 2008 at 12:21

If our games are already running great...then why bother?

What Res?

OspreyO · 26 Mar 2008 at 12:23

Personally I don't think SLi is worth it.

Thedog45 · 26 Mar 2008 at 12:24

1080X1050 but was thinking of upgrading monitor to 24" in the near future

easyrider · 26 Mar 2008 at 12:27

Your Cpu is pretty slow by todays standards now.

Get her to buy you a

P35 mobo
C2D
DDR2

-)G(-Sawyer · 26 Mar 2008 at 12:28

at that res dont bother but on 24" you will be able to use more AA + AF

Thedog45 · 26 Mar 2008 at 12:32

easyrider said:
Your Cpu is pretty slow by todays standards now.

Get her to buy you a

P35 mobo
C2D
DDR2

i had thought along those lines what can u recomend that will perform better than my current setup and what prices.The card was £150ish delivery inc but i might be able to get her to strech a bit more

and maybe throw some cash meself

AgedIdiot · 26 Mar 2008 at 14:06

Just tried Sli - over the weekend - not impressed.Have sold the second card I bought.

Crysis with it was a joke .Got less than with one card BUT I understand that it might not be the cards fault .(was strange in that in other games such as Half life 2 Ep 2 it worked very well)

More importantly unless you are gaming at 1900x1200 or above then what is Sli going to add to your gaming experience? (will use more power, make more noise and produce more heat)

Wait for next gen and get a more powerful single card was my choice ; in the end and I believe this to be the better option.

If need to buy now then

Get her to buy you a

P35 mobo
C2D
DDR2

Agreed

Ben M · 26 Mar 2008 at 14:41

at your res, definately not. and you'd be cpu limited anyway, I suspect you possibly are already.

i'd do as easyrider suggested myself.

maybe a psu as well, due to the whole "hypers go bang" thing.

TheMagic1an · 26 Mar 2008 at 14:48

You would see a improvement no doubt, but it's not really worth it.

I agree with easyrider and upgrade the whole system to a C2D or even a quad which would be more worthwhile.

Thedog45 · 26 Mar 2008 at 16:03

Ok guys thanks for all the replies.
I gonna wait a week or so and add some cash myself and get me a nice bundle from ocuk with quad core cpu ect n a new psu also ive got a couple of 7600gt ee and an old case and put them all together with my current gear and sell to raise cash for a couple of nice hard drives and hopefully a bluray drive

intel here i come lol havent used those since my p4 1.6 6-7 yrs ago.

NathWraith · 26 Mar 2008 at 18:51

dont sli it mate, you dont want anymore nfail in your system

ozzyDe · 26 Mar 2008 at 21:22

don't do it SLI an other crackpot idea to get more money out of us and as you can see I am one of those crackpots and it cost me way more than it was worth
why not get a nice lap dancing stripper for your birthday it will get your pules rate up a lot higher than SLI could.

davecarter · 27 Mar 2008 at 10:00

ozzyDe said:
don't do it SLI an other crackpot idea to get more money out of us and as you can see I am one of those crackpots and it cost me way more than it was worth
why not get a nice lap dancing stripper for your birthday it will get your pules rate up a lot higher than SLI could.

Ditto, gonna stick with SLI for a while as have invested too much time and money in it but you would be better off getting the best single GPU that you can afford

gurusan · 27 Mar 2008 at 10:07

Instead of a new GPU, why not upgrade your platform to C2D?

Perfect_Chaos · 27 Mar 2008 at 10:48

Thedog45 said:
Hi todays my birthday and the missus wants to buy me something so as the title says should i go with a 2nd bfg 8800gt oc? will i notice an improvment in games like cod4 and FSX which already play great on the one card and will my setup bottle neck the cards.

i will be the minority here and say it is a good performance increase.

you will get 50%+ more speed in most games of today

not a total waste, while its not 100% your money's worth id say its worth it by a good 70%.

Much quicker than a GTX and as good or almost as a 9800 GX2, and for the price of 8800 GT's today its easily worth the price for the increase of fps.

I got mine in november, so it really depends when new next gen cards come out.. if we know for sure a single beast is coming in a couple of months then just wait for that.

gurusan · 27 Mar 2008 at 10:54

A single 8800GT is plenty fast, the slowest thing in your system is your cpu setup

OspreyO · 31 Mar 2008 at 01:50

Might be of interest.
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1363/1/page_1_introduction/index.html

-iceblade^ · 31 Mar 2008 at 03:36

E2160 or E2180
Gigabyte P35 DS3L.
a bit of extra money can cover the ram.

It'll go a lot further than another card will. I have almost the same system, and it flies, not to mention the chip is a close to legendary overclocker... easy choice, IMO