Why i laugh at the thought of SLI or CF:

[n7]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articl...r-hd2900xt-1024mb.html

They couldn't even get SLI to work in Vista.
LOL nVidia.
Reviewers can't get it working in Vista...wow, great job :laugh:

And while CF did work, it only did in some games.
In others, it did worse, or barely better.
Or sometimes a lot better.

But still, ridiculously inconsistent performance.

So sad IMO.

Dual cards is like throwing away money...so little return back, so much more spent

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: n7
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articl...r-hd2900xt-1024mb.html

They couldn't even get SLI to work in Vista.
LOL nVidia.
Reviewers can't get it working in Vista...wow, great job :laugh:

And while CF did work, it only did in some games.
In others, it did worse, or barely better.
Or sometimes a lot better.

But still, ridiculously inconsistent performance.

So sad IMO.

Dual cards is like throwing away money...so little return back, so much more spent

They have to have specific dual GPU profiles for a particular game for it to do any good. yet, I agree...waste.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

as long as there are chumps willing to pay for it, great, that should mean more money for R&D

Of course I think SLI/CF could be more "practical" if they tried to move it in the way Matrox tried to sell the Parhelia with its TrippleHead surround gaming. Only instead of one card running 3 monitors, you'd have one card powering the central monitor and the 2nd card powers the side monitors for massively extended FOVs (the side monitors wouldn't need maximum FPS, so you could probably get away with one card...and besides, they could always promote it to have 3 cards running 3 monitors for those with even more money to blow). It would be much easier to get game developers to play along with such a feature than trying to get more performance out of two cards for one monitor.

 

[terentenet]

I don't know what they've done wrong, SLI works in Vista x64 for me, using 163.44; Not with great performance improvements, but it works.

 

[aka1nas]

They used the absolute WORST Nvidia driver for SLI(162.22). SLI works fine in Vista 64 with either the 158.45s or the beta 163.44s.

They also played up the one MS SLI/Crossfire hotfix and didn't mention that it only affected Dx10 games.

 

[sandorski]

I thought about SLI/CF once and my wallet laughed at me. Never thought about it again.

 

[Ackmed]

When I had SLI and CF in XP, both worked great. Very few games had problems. Both work well today, from reviews Ive read. Apparently some NV drivers are better than others for Vista/SLI. I do with NV would simplify their driver names. Its too confusing, and too many betas all the time. Consumers dont know which is the latest, or the best. Calling names because you dont think its a good idea to spend cash on two cards, is pretty immature, and not needed.

Some people like higher framerates, and have a high resolution LCD. I got a 2405FPW the first week it came out. No single card could come close to keeping up with it for me, so I got SLI. In my main game, BF2, SLI helped out a lot. Not everyone is a budget gamer, some of us enjoy higher frames, and better graphics. Even today it helps. FS has an article about the Quake Wars demo, at 1920x1200 with 4xAA/16xAF, a single 8800GTX gets 55fps, with SLI it gets 80fps. With a GTX 640 its 45fps vs. 70. At 2560x1600 a single 8800GTX gets 35fps, SLI it gets 61fps. GTS 640 is 25 vs. 46. No you dont get 100% increase, but its not expected. Whats expected is more frames, and thats a very sizable difference. Not everyone has the same needs, wants, or budget. Typically its those who have low end systems, make fun of those with higher end systems with SLI/CF. Such is the case in this thread.

http://www.firingsquad.com/har..._performance/page5.asp

 

[ayabe]

The sad part is that AMD is now spending resources on quad CF which will have even lower market penetration even if it works well.

Why invest so much in technology that hardly anyone wants?

Edit:

I saw this in the article and my eyes bugged out:

"As a matter of fact, AMD pins its hopes of beating the GeForce 8800 Ultra on a tandem made out of two ordinary Radeon HD 2900 XT working in CrossFire mode. At an official price of $399, a pair of such cards can prove to be as fast as the Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra and even cheaper for the end-user."

Not cheaper, not even close you can get a quality Ultra for ~$600, that's ugghh $200 cheaper without the MB. They get into again at the end of the article.

"A CrossFire tandem made out of two ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT cards is quite a different thing. Costing about $800-1000, which is comparable to the price of a GeForce 8800 Ultra, this configuration outperforms the Nvidia solution across a number of applications."

It's not comparable, at all, we're talking $350 difference here with a mobo.

Just a confusing premise all around for this review.

 

[CP5670]

I used SLI for several months in 2005-06 in XP and found the game compatibility to be something of a joke. It works well in most of the popular games that are commonly benchmarked on hardware sites, but has quite a few problems in lesser known or older games. That vsync/stuttering glitch in many games alone makes it useless for me, as it makes many games look choppier than the framerate would have you think. It's a pity, because the multi-GPU concept has a lot of potential if it actually worked like a single card from the end user's point of view.

 

[dandragonrage]

ayabe: Not to mention a six trillion watt PSU

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: aka1nas
They used the absolute WORST Nvidia driver for SLI(162.22). SLI works fine in Vista 64 with either the 158.45s or the beta 163.44s.

They also played up the one MS SLI/Crossfire hotfix and didn't mention that it only affected Dx10 games.

That's just it.

They used the latest official nVidia driver.

Now you say the latest official nVidia driver is the worst one out there for getting SLI to work?

I dunno about you, but i see something very wrong with this picture.

 

[aka1nas]

It wouldn't be the first time that Nvidia released a buggy WHQL driver.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: ayabe
The sad part is that AMD is now spending resources on quad CF which will have even lower market penetration even if it works well.

Why invest so much in technology that hardly anyone wants?

Edit:

I saw this in the article and my eyes bugged out:

"As a matter of fact, AMD pins its hopes of beating the GeForce 8800 Ultra on a tandem made out of two ordinary Radeon HD 2900 XT working in CrossFire mode. At an official price of $399, a pair of such cards can prove to be as fast as the Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra and even cheaper for the end-user."

Not cheaper, not even close you can get a quality Ultra for ~$600, that's ugghh $200 cheaper without the MB. They get into again at the end of the article.

"A CrossFire tandem made out of two ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT cards is quite a different thing. Costing about $800-1000, which is comparable to the price of a GeForce 8800 Ultra, this configuration outperforms the Nvidia solution across a number of applications."

It's not comparable, at all, we're talking $350 difference here with a mobo.

Just a confusing premise all around for this review.

Nobody takes the mobo into consideration because they are assuming the user buys a mobo already with CF in mind. That's all.

And dandragonrage: don't go overboard here...you could crossfire them with a 750w PSU of good quality.

 

[Matt2]

My personal experience with SLI was pretty good. I had 7800GT SLI and at the time it was pretty much the best bang for the buck setup one could buy. I got better than 7800GTX 512mb performance for about $200 less.

It seems Vista sent SLI into total regression.

 

[Bateluer]

I dislike SLI/CF because you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the next generation of high end cards will have more features, higher performance, and possibly a lower power draw. Not much point in dropping 800 to 1000 dollars in video cards every year.

 

[Sonikku]

Originally posted by: ayabe
The sad part is that AMD is now spending resources on quad CF which will have even lower market penetration even if it works well.

Why invest so much in technology that hardly anyone wants?

Because that's where the BIG margins are to be had.