To Sli or Not to Sli

[VR6Dude]

I read that some people don't think SLI is worth the money. I don't agree, look as this test..

http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/408/1

Here you see that SLI does almost double the FPS. True, only at the higher resolutions (1600x1200 and higher). But I play my games at the highest possible resolution, who doesn't?

[Fanatic]

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

thats wierd... i have a 8800 and my ut2004 purr's like a kitten att max.

[oldkawman1]

I read that some people don't think SLI is worth the money. I don't agree, look as this test..

http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/408/1

Here you see that SLI does almost double the FPS. True, only at the higher resolutions (1600x1200 and higher). But I play my games at the highest possible resolution, who doesn't?

Yes, I SLI XFX 7950GT cards and play at 1600x1200

Here is a benchmark comparison between SLI and single;

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphi...=819&chart=343

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphi...=722&chart=283

Almost no difference on that game at all, only 5 fps. But switch to a different game;

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphi...=722&chart=288

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphi...=819&chart=348

and it's nearly 2X as good for my card. Many cards still are not very good even if you do SLI them. And many more cards in SLI are still not as good as a single better card. If you SLI many cards it may have been cheaper just to get the better card. So, SLI may not be the best solution. Look how badly the 8500GT and 8600GT cards are in SLI, a single 8800GTS still has more than double the performance at the same cost point.

[[404]Cham3l3on]

Yeah the whole thing is debatable and very configuration dependent, plus software dependent!

My take on it is....for the somewhat marginal gains in some cases is it really worth a few hundred bucks more of you hard earned money? I mean let's be realistic, you only need a decent frame rate to begin with, I personally would just buy the best single card you can afford. Then in the future (assuming you have a sli capable psu and board) then you can add another if need be.

[Chromatik]

thats wierd... i have a 8800 and my ut2004 purr's like a kitten att max.

Yeah, some have no issues and others are like me

There are threads everywhere about it

http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=558472
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=84358
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=23904

I would really like to be able to play this game again Epic... As long as it doesn't hinder UT3 developement