Advantages of SLI/Crossfire board???

[seymourman]

I dont plan to use 2 video cards in a system I am building, now or later. But are there advantages to using an SLI or Crossfire MOBO? Feature set? Newer technology?

I am trying to decide on the new board for my system.

 

[seymourman]

I guess there are not any

 

[Goalkeepr]

I'm in the process of putting together a new PC and I went with SLI and one 7800 GT.

Then in the future, instead of upgrading to the latest and greatest video card, I can get another 7800 GT (which will be much cheaper by then) and run SLI. Long term, it's going to be better for me that way.

 

[mdchesne]

you can really only benefit from an SLI board if you have the money to get the top two cards at any given time, and sit with them in SLI for 2 or three years. then upgrade again.
If you only plan to get one and then another down the road, your best bet would be to just upgrade to the next best card at that time and skip the SLI altogether. after a year, the boost in performance from getting another card to put in SLI would be so minimal compared to spending an extra $100 for the next gen card, it wouldn't be worth it.
That's why I went with single x16 board.

 

[Goalkeepr]

I'm not so sure. Note that all of the assumptions below are totally made-up.

Say Card A costs $300 today and gives me an arbitrary performance value of 100.

Card B will cost $300 next year but will give me a performance value of 150.

If next year, Card A costs $150 and gives me performance of 150 when SLI-ed with my first card, that's more cost effective for me.

In other words, next year I would rather spend $150 than $300 to get the same performance.

This is, of course, assuming that I don't sell Card A, which I know that I won't... I'm lazy that way!

 

[vanvock]

Originally posted by: mdchesne
you can really only benefit from an SLI board if you have the money to get the top two cards at any given time, and sit with them in SLI for 2 or three years. then upgrade again.
If you only plan to get one and then another down the road, your best bet would be to just upgrade to the next best card at that time and skip the SLI altogether. after a year, the boost in performance from getting another card to put in SLI would be so minimal compared to spending an extra $100 for the next gen card, it wouldn't be worth it.
That's why I went with single x16 board.

This fellow is right. I'm in that situation now.

 

[seymourman]

Folks, my intention is not "to SLI or not SLI, 1 or 2 video card, upgrade sort of thing.

The intent of my question is that most new hot boards from ASUS, DFI and whoever seem to be SLI or Crossfire boards. These boards might or not have newer chipsets, added features, or eliminated some quirkiness from previous versions of boards?
So what I was really asking was even though I dont plan to be using the SLI function of a board would there be advantages or disadvantages to purchasing a MOBO with SLI/Crossfire. For example the new ASUS A8R-MVP sure seems nice.

 

[Diasper]

Advanatge - you can stick any PCI-E type card in there including 1x or 4x PCI-E

So if the PPU does take off you can just plug it in there. With PCI-E lanes yet being limited there aren't many boards shipping with 4x PCI-E which looks like it's going to become the next standard - at least it is planned with the PPU.

That said the PPU may never take off

 

[Continuity28]

Typically the SLI motherboards have the broadest feature set of the enthusiest motherboards today. For example, compare DFI Ultra-D to SLI-DR or SLI-DR Expert. Theres a lot of added features besides SLI support. Most companies do this, it seems.

I run SLI myself, but you need to look at individual motherboards and not just take my word for it, compare an SLI board from a company vs another and see what fits your desired feature sets. Look at things like hard drive RAID controllers, ethernet controlers, USB ports, better sound chips, possibly cooling designs (like heatpipe technology on the newest Asus SLI motherboards). These types of things may be desirable to you - and they have nothing to do with SLI.

 

[Skott]

In ASUS's case its that they fixed past problems with their new 32x Deluxe model and they also added the 32x ability.