is sli worth the headache and $$$$?

[pinde]

i've been considering buying the sli mobo and one 6800gt. later another one, in order to keep up with future games. however i was reconsidering the idea of spending $900 of gpu's and 200 for mobo. the reasoning is that after 5-6 months when i am ready to buy another 6800gt there might be the whole diferent generation cards out there and even two $900 gpu's wont keep up with $500 new gpu. in short, is the play and visuals are so improved with sli that an average guy like me can see the difference and be proud of $1200 spent on the sli setup? or is it just the same as runing 6800 ultra on neo2 platinum?

 

[gobucks]

i wouldn't expect much of a boost coming down the pipe in the next 5-6 months. After all, the big core changes only occur like every 18 months or so, since it goes new core -> refresh -> refresh every six months. The first refresh is paperlaunched for now, with real availability probably in january. Anyways, my point is that i wouldn't expect anything twice as fast as your 6800GT for a decent amount of time, so the upgrade path is still viable.

SLI is nice, but not crucial. I got it because the A8N-SLI came out first, and i got it for $201. Since that's only like $10 more than the cheapest PCIe board, i figured what the hell. I got a 6600GT, and it'd be nice to throw in another for like $50-75 in a year, especially if all we have is stupid refreshes. If, on the other hand, the next gen stuff is awesome, then i'll go for it, since both ATI and nvidia will have SLI and PS3.0 by then, so i could just see if SLI is a good upgrade next time. All in all, i think PCIe is worth it, and since Ultra boards just aren't that much cheaper than the good priced SLI ones, it'd just try to find a good price on an SLI just in case.

 

[pinde]

i guess it makes sense. as much as we try we'll never have the best system up to date. unless ofcourse we have unlimited budget. building a comp drives me nuts. as i am "upgrading" from laptop pentium3 1100ghz (don't even know what gpu i have). ))) so in a sence i want and expect a miracle from my new build.

 

[pinde]

bump