When you say S3D, I guess you were talking about HD3D. That's AMD's version of stereoscopic 3D. I'm a big fan of 3D Vision, which is Nvidia's version of stereoscopic 3D.
A lot of us have Crossfire and SLI setups. We are well versed on how they perform. I personally have 680 SLI. While SLI is pretty decent, I'd definitely trade it in for a single 780ti, even if 680 SLI has more FPS. Some games run better than others in SLI, the same with Crossfire. I previously had 6950 CF.
I believe SLI and CF are only worth it when you are getting ~40-50% more FPS than the single card option. When I got my setup, there was no single card option. I also would not figure a Titan into that equation, as that is priced beyond reason.
I am with you on the performance pool increase I'd expect from a dual gpu solution. Thankfully the games we like, generally have dual gpu support, hence the good experience we had so far.
We are using Tridef on HDTVs. 3D vision is very bad with such a setup.
BTC tanked today, you might see some pretty desperate people on ebay. Check around, many to be had for <350 and some for 300 ish. And it's only going to get better over the next few days as people realize what a hole they put themselves in.
A 290 will perform just as well as 270CF but without the issues of CFX.
That's some mighty good information. Thanks. If we can get good 290 for the money of two 270s, we are certainly going that way. There's no point going dual gpu, if the money/performance ratio is the same for single gpu, even for second handed products.
3D gaming works like crap when you have poor frame time delivery. Avoid SLI/CFX until you can't move up in single gpus any further
Rome Total War II took 6 months to get an SLI profile. He'll call you and complain on the next game "Why do I get such bad frame rates?" 270(x) has GCN 1.0 crossfire issues. Even with the "fix" it still has poor frame times in certain cases.
Seriously don't waste your time with dual cards until you've hit 290 or 780. Who cares if you get more FPS when 1) they are less smooth due to poor delivery times, 2) it involves heavier load on the CPU, 3) Can be completely non-functional, 4) isn't your machine. Ask yourself "Why do I want more FPS?" It's so the game is the most fluid and convincing. Single GPUs are veritably smoother (until you are talking about performance levels above what a single GPU can deliver)
If you cant get a 290 or 780 (Have you checked used prices?) then go to a 770 or 280x. If he's serious about 3d gaming then I'd get the 770 as nVidias 3d Vision is the current best 3d gaming standard.
Unfortunately I have found that out the hard way and the problem was not the gpu, it was the cpu, or Tridef for that matter. Sometimes Tridef puts such a great burden on the cpu, but it's OK most of the time.
In any way, when the system performs adequately to provide a steady 60fps, 3D gaming is marvelous, even with dual gpu. Check the video I uploaded earlier.
To put another perspective on it, Tomb Raider with very high settings runs like crap on 460 SLI, 1080p. It runs fine on my 7950 CFX though and that's due to the increased performance pool.
I and my friend find gaming very smooth with dual gpu. Truth be told we don't play every game under the sun (no MMOs for example), but so far our experience is pretty decent.
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