** SLI ** users please report in

[N2gaming]

Greetings Everyone,

I am in the process of doing a serious upgrade very soon since my last upgrade was about 1 1/2 yrs. ago. I guess I'm old skool as my mobo is an AMD with a 939 cpu.

So after looking around now it seems that I will be going over to the INTEL platform instead of AMD which I have been building for a long long tome

Anyway, while doing my research it seems that I have beens reading a lot of post's, well maybe not a lot but there are some posts that talk very negatively about doing the SLI thing.

So, for those of you that do SLI are you happy with it or is it really a gimmick??? just wondering as years ago with the 3DFX cards ( old skool stuff) SLI worked great so it would seem to me that it should work now.

If you like using SLI could you be kind enough to list your mobo and the pros and cons of it as I probably will be getting one fairly soon if you guys say its worth it, if not please post why...

Thanks for all of your assistance.

Jake

 

[gregor7777]

MB - MSI K9N Diamond
CPU - 4200+ @ 2.7GHz
GPU's - 2 x 7800GTX

Pro's - clearly faster performance than if I just had one 7800. Maybe 1.5 times the performance depending on what application we're talking. Fun to look at 2 video cards in my system, it's a novelty.

Con's - heat....these puppies get damn hot.


Con's, but not mine - Cost. Usually, unless you're buying the top end of a generation, the fastest card will equal your SLI setup for sometimes 3/4 the cost. An example would be buying 2 7900's right now. For the cost, an 8800GTS 640 would still beat them up and not cost as much.

I got mine for free so I can't coment there, but I probably would have got a single 8800 GTS 320 if I was spending my own money.

 

[PCTC2]

eVGA 680i-AR (Soon to be replaced with the A1 revision)
Q6600 B3 @ stock
2x 7950GT

PROs: Single 7950GT card faster than 8600GTS SLI. Almost 1.8x FPS in some apps. It was a cheap upgrade path from a single 7950GT I had laying around. ($170 for second vs $300 for new 8800 GTS). Great board to overclock RAM. Actual use for the 680i I bought 7 months ago.

CONS: Hot chipset (All nVIDIA chipsets are HOT). Using all of the PCIe/PCI slots so the cards do not get airflow and get HOT. Board cannot OC a quad-core. Needs to be A1 revision to even attempt a quad OC. Board is also faulty (second board known of in the this forum to have fault Voltage Regulation circuitry and have a vDroop of ~0.1v). Once I get a new revision, this should be a PRO.

 

[lupi]

I'm running dual 7900gs. Only paid ~235 total for both when the 8800 gts was still over the 600$ mark, so no complaining here.

 

[aguilpa1]

Dual 8800GTX 768MB here.

Work great! The only downside is cost but the GTX series will OC to the speed of Ultra GTX so there is a bonus to that. Performance is top notch in all situations.

Evga 680i SLI : E6400 @ 3.6Ghz (H2O) 450x8 : 8800GTX x 2 SLI 649/2052
2GB XMS2 Dominator 4-4-4-12 900 : XFi Fatalaty : 150GB WD Raptor
500GB Seagate 16MB x2 : Eheim + Danger Den : Lian Li PC V1000 (black)
BFG 1Kw PS : 37" Westinghouse 1080p 8ms : XP32b

One of my GTX's had a bad voltage regulator from the beginning. It ran fine with included drivers but when I tried to update then I began getting low voltage alerts and the card went into safe mode and killed performance for everything. I RMA'ed. Warning Evga gives you a "requalified product" not a new card. The only good thing is its still under lifetime warranty so if it screws up than send it back again, they should send you a new one to begin with.

I bought the Evga 680iSLI board because it was advertised as being 100% compatible with Evga GTX's and Dominator memory with special features for both and the dual 16X PCIE buses with an 8X in the middle. While the features are nice I have found that doing manual OC settings is still the best way to get max performance and stability. I am very happy with the board and that E6400 C2D while cheap is a massive OC'er. I will be sorry to see it go when I replace it with a Penryn Quad in the near future. If you get this board get Patriot 4-4-4-12 Extreme memory. It works better on this board than even the more expensive Dominators.

 

[PCTC2]

Welcome to AT Forum Aquilpa1!

Your system was/is/will be very similar to mine. I had my E6400 @ anywhere between 3.2 and 3.733GHz (466.67*8) on air. My board is the reason why i had to drop the OC. The 680i is a great board but both me and Aigomorla have had faulty VRM and have had to RMA. It's great at OCing RAM but it has a hard time booting above 500FSB. I have the same RAM, I have the X-Fi Platinum, and 500GB Seagates. I still need my Raptor and my watercooling system.

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@ N2G
The ASUS P5N-32E Plus 650i SLI is another good choice if you decide to go SLI. Even though it's 650i, it supports dual x16 PCIe links.

eVGA is a great brand b/c of their RMA services, upgrade options, and good products.

SLI is an interesting technology. It has great promise, but it does have some drawbacks. You'll want to download nHance and make sure your SLI is set to AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering) b/c SFR (Split Frame Rendering) uses more CPU. It's really better only if it's a cheaper upgrade path, or if you want 2 of the top of the line cards (8800GTX's). Otherwise, you're just better off with a single 8800GTS 640 or 8800GTX/Ultra.

 

[N2gaming]

Hey, thanks guys!! really very eye opening as I was led to believe that it is highly problematic but it seems to work well. Btw, Aquilpa1 and PCTC2 you guys have some freaking serious hardware going there

Right now i am using an Nvidia GeForce 7900GTX so all of my games are playing great, I generally play all FPS especially the more serious one like the Rainbow 6 serious and of course my newly beloved ones, GRAW and GRAW-2

So anyway, maybe I'll just wait and get a 8800GTX in a couple of months....however, I'm really not good at waiting to do the upgrade thing, at all

 

[PCTC2]

well, if you wait a few months, then the new nVIDIA G9x chips are coming out (9800 GTX/GTS) series is coming out. It will supposedly kick major FPS butt.