SLI running on games

[dtp4life]

A friend told me that some games that are coming out run better with say 1 6800GT then if you made it SLI and had 2 6800GT. He said that the games will perform better but some games when using 2 cards show glitches and other anomilies (BF2 Demo). Is this true?

 

[Homerboy]

no

 

[ryanv12]

Well, the glitches would just be attributed to the fact that the BF2 demo was not a finished product. It has a lot of bugs that many people have been experiencing with different hardware. I imagine when BF2 comes out there will be a good SLI profile for it.

 

[Funkertosh]

Yes and no.

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20050524/index.html

At low graphic settings the single card will beat a SLI setup.
Crank everything and SLI will really get to flex.

Per Tom:

In older games such as UT 2004, the higher CPU load caused by SLI management holds back the 3D performance at lower resolutions. Even when switching to higher resolutions with FSAA and AF turned on the GeForce 6600 GT SLI setup fails to show much of an advantage. A single GeForce 6800 GT is usually faster.

SLI really gets to shine in modern games that make extensive use of shader programs such as Doom III and FarCry. In this scenario, the 3D1 can often outpace a GeForce 6800 GT even with AF and FSAA enabled - unless you're planning on playing at 1600x1200. Here the 6600 GT's limited framebuffer size of 128MB becomes a bottleneck, slowing these cards down. Another problem with SLI is that it doesn't work with every game. In the worst case scenario, this can result in an SLI setup offering lower frame rates than a single-card system.