It;s been a long time since I've revisited this question:

[mwmorph]

I commented how relatively useless SLI and Crossfire were when it came in vouge in 2004/2005 since new generation high end cards tend to be faster than SLI/Crossfire last gen cards with less heat, lower power and noise.

Now, 4 years later, how does everyone feel about this? I still don't believe in multi card rendering (My new PC build I did last month still only has 1 PEG slot) since with decent resolutions most people play at (1280x1024, 1680x1050), a single $300($200 now after MIR) HD4870 1GB card will perform well enough to run every game at high settings without the need for a 700W+ PSU with 4 PCI-E 6 pin power connectors.

I haven't exactly followed SLI nor Crossfire development but when it came out in 2005, 2 video cards increased performance on average 50% more than a single card for 200% of the price, 200% of the energy usage, 200% of the heat generated, 200% of the noise and it didn't even work in every game.

Does anyone have any opinions about those modes? How does everyone feel about SLI and Crossfire? Is it still generally accepted that Crossfire is less mature and compatible than SLI? Does anyone out there run SLI Way or Crossfire X(seriously what insane resolution do you game at 2560x1600)?

I understand the future is probably multi-gpu on a single card applications (Whoo welcome back ATI Rage Fury MAXX and Voodoo), so is there still a place for Dual card single GPUs in the marketplace?

 

[aka1nas]

The argument regarding upgrading is not as relevant anymore as GPUs aren't advancing quite as fast as they used to (they're hitting the same brick walls CPUs hit a few years earlier wrt to leakage and power consumption). We're back to getting a lot of incremental models where they mostly up clockspeeds or add a few more shaders, with new micro-archs spread out a little further apart.

SLI is a lot more mature now(I can't personally speak for Crossfire), and they have worked out most of the major downsides(i.e. you can have multi-monitor and SLI running at the same time finally).

There have also been a lot of disruptive models like the 8800GT that provided enormous bang-per-buck in an SLI setup compared to the top-end models.

 

[alcoholbob]

Monolithic designs are hitting a wall, 65nm to 55nm was a 30% reduction in size but they barely managed to do anything other than ramp up clock speeds. They aren't looking for a new high end SKU until 40nm which is a 50% reduction in size. But even with miniaturization there are limited returns. Intel has already realized that the path to the future is parallel computing.

I think GPUs will eventually go this way as well. But for now X2 cards are the cheapest option, certainly easier to do than trying to cram 2 cores onto 1 board (like 3dFX did with Voodoo 5), either way Scan Line Interweaving will be the main engine for flagship products from now on is my prediction.

 

[TheInternal]

For higher end gaming at high res (1920x1200), about the only option a few years ago was to do SLI (which I did). From what I read, it sounds like the current gen ultra-high end have now eliminated the NEED for SLI/crossfire to achieve the high resolution gaming on most current titles.

However, the hard core gamers are going to be the ones that would invest in a 30"+ ungodly high res screens, which still DO require multiple GPUs to fully power. I'm a burned out gamer that's broke, so I don't see myself doing that anytime soon (though I sure would love to go with a 30" and SLI/crossfire config if I could afford to).

I guess the other plus to SLI/crossfire, especially with AMD's variant that allows dissimilar cards to split rendering tasks, I see it being a better way to allow end users to do incremental upgrades as they can afford too. It also allows (theoretically) for some nice performance gains if you can catch a lower end part on sale to run two of in order to outperform a higher end part of higher cost.

The other reason to run SLI/crossfire (which was also my case when I first did mine) was for a silent build. Generally, you couldn't buy the high end gaming cards in a fanless configuration, and instead had to get midrange cards and SLI em to get similar performance. I think this may still hold true for fellow silent gamers that don't want to hear their computer while they game, watch movies/hulu/netflix, or surf the web.

All speculation and opinion, of course.

Once multitouch gets fully implemented, that will most likely have massive impacts on the whole GPU market in ways that I can't predict, admittedly. I'm guessing multitouch monitors will be desired to run at high res and larger sizes, thus necessitating cards that can at least do 2d well.

 

[Elstumpo]

I just read a review of 2x 4830 in crossfire that looked pretty good, but still had some downsides.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articl...rossfire_14.html#sect0

 

[lavaheadache]

Originally posted by: Astrallite
Monolithic designs are hitting a wall, 65nm to 55nm was a 30% reduction in size but they barely managed to do anything other than ramp up clock speeds. They aren't looking for a new high end SKU until 40nm which is a 50% reduction in size. But even with miniaturization there are limited returns. Intel has already realized that the path to the future is parallel computing.

I think GPUs will eventually go this way as well. But for now X2 cards are the cheapest option, certainly easier to do than trying to cram 2 cores onto 1 board (like 3dFX did with Voodoo 5), either way Scan Line Interweaving will be the main engine for flagship products from now on is my prediction.

dude SLi now stands for scalable link interface.

 

[Tempered81]

I was pretty happy with my sli. It has plenty of options if you like that kinda stuff.

If you want some quick'n'easy gaming don't bother with cf / sli. If you want power & options, go for it.