To Sli or Not to Sli

[Th3 ProphetMan]

SLi usually gives more headaches (due to drivers especially). Also...

Going SLi from the beginning will end up leaving you with two mid/high range cards and no upgrade option. Starting with a high range, and adding another later on will give you a better final PC

I would buy the best card i could get with the money you want to spend, then when you have some money leater on, get another one, and you may get it for 50 or 70 bucks less.. Not only higher performance but also might get a better price in the end

[KriLL3.8™]

Fixed :P the sli will only allow one output from both cards.

No no no, your third card has 2 ports, thus 4 monitors.

[RoadKillGrill]

No no no, your third card has 2 ports, thus 4 monitors.

You can only use 1 of the 4 ports on the SLI enabled cards at a time.

Might be able to use 2 ports on the super large monitors 30'', have not been able to test those. Even then thats only one monitor.

[KriLL3.8™]

You're sure you can't use both ports on the primary card in SLI?

[Body_Counter]

I was just talking to Brizz who was at this event at Epic's place playing UT3. He was playing the game on a system with the 8800 GTS. To be short on details I think you are all going to be very surprised at how well the game will run on such a high end videocard. In fact Brizz said that he had almost everything maxed out and it never dropped below 60. Having two of these things isn't going to make the game any more enjoyable for you. It would be a complete waste of money. Save it for something else.

lets hope brizz gave you some correct informations... such a great performance at everything maxxed out sounds too nice to be true

[Ziobono]

I have an ATI X1950PRO and im not sure to buy a 8800GTS....my card go better with ut3 but have no dx10. What shall i do? remind that the new card costs about 400 E

[kelthuzad]

In fact Brizz said that he had almost everything maxed out and it never dropped below 60

'Almost' sometimes makes a huge difference

[KriLL3.8™]

I have an ATI X1950PRO and im not sure to buy a 8800GTS....my card go better with ut3 but have no dx10. What shall i do? remind that the new card costs about 400 E

The step isn't large enough to warrant it imo, either save up for a GTX or Ultra, or wait for the next series of cards from Nvidia.

'Almost' sometimes makes a huge difference

My 8800gts runs UT2004 everything at max 500~ fps, if I go into the Nvidia settnings and force 16x AS and 16x AA the FPS drops to 40~, what is maxed out in your opinion? (I run at 8x both btw, 100~ frames capped to 60 with vsync)

[TensorWM]

you can only benefit from SLI if you're running a resolution higher than 1280x1024

[KriLL3.8™]

you can only benefit from SLI if you're running a resolution higher than 1280x1024

That's not correct fyk.

[TensorWM]

That's not correct fyk.

how is that not correct? whats the most performance you can see from SLI at that resolution? 10 frames?

http://www.hothardware.com/articles/...Update/?page=3

ask anyone on the nvidia SLI forums. they will tell you the same thing.

http://forums.slizone.com/index.php?act=idx


the performance gain with SLI is a much bigger result at a resolution like... 1600x1200 rather than 1280x1024. look at the Half life 2 benchmark. if you compare the 8800 GTS SLi vs 8800 GTS @ 1280x1024, its only a 10 frame increase.

now... compare it at a higher resolution at 1600x1200. the performance gain difference with SLi is a good 20-30 frames.

again, my point being, you will benefit from SLi at a resolution higher than 1280x1024 much more than anything below that.

[oldkawman1]

You're sure you can't use both ports on the primary card in SLI?

Yes, go look at the windows SLI FAQ on the nvidia web site. Switching to SLI mode will disable the 2nd monitor. It's also in the LINUX readme and Xconfig section of the manual.

[oldkawman1]

I have an ATI X1950PRO and im not sure to buy a 8800GTS....my card go better with ut3 but have no dx10. What shall i do? remind that the new card costs about 400 E

Your good to go. That is a top ATI card. See how it works with the game and decide if you need to upgrade after you play the game for a while. Prices will drop after the new year.

[Chromatik]

that card should run UT2004 max'd out? why doesn't it?

Issues with stutter make UT2004 unplayable. Same goes for UT2003. No other games are effected and it only seems to be Nvidia 8 series cards. Apparently it's a driver issue.

UT (the original) runs like butter though. Being about 9 years old it better

[oldkawman1]

you can only benefit from SLI if you're running a resolution higher than 1280x1024

How much you gain depends on the game as well as the resolution, check out the benchmarks at 1024x768 on Battlefield

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphi...=819&chart=335

and then at 1600x1200

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphi...=819&chart=338

almost 2X gain at lower res.