[seeking]

I've done some research but I'm still unclear on what it actually does. I'm guessing that it takes two graphic cards and makes them perform as one. If this is correct does the power double or do you only benefit from a fraction of the card's power?

I was wondering because i'm looking to build a new computer and what I'd love to do is buy a graphic card in the 200-300 range so that down the road I could eventually buy another one and combine the two without having to put up 500-600 dollars right off the bat.

Any suggestions for a good graphic card that is SLI or Crossfire compatible that is in that 300 range would be appreciated as well.

 

[Ultisym]

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/introduction-to-sli-technology-guide#1

http://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/software-technologies/crossfire

 

[Cavey00]

General rule of thumb is to go with the single, more powerful card. It will cause you less headaches in the long run. The performance is nice in games it works with though, that's for sure. There are people that will tell you that they've never had any issues with it but from personal experience, including my current setup, I would heed the single more powerful card advice if possible.

 

[Ultisym]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cavey00

General rule of thumb is to go with the single, more powerful card. It will cause you less headaches in the long run. The performance is nice in games it works with though, that's for sure. There are people that will tell you that they've never had any issues with it but from personal experience, including my current setup, I would heed the single more powerful card advice if possible.

I have actually not had any significant issues with SLI in years but I would still recommend going with the "single most powerful GPU" rule of thumb. Typically I would recommend crossfire or SLI when someone already has a pretty nice GPU and wants more GPU but doesnt want to spend the money on the latest greatest tech. I made an exception to the rule and went straight to SLI 970s though just because of the price. Two 970s for a little more than the price of a single 980.

 

[rdr09]

i own 2 290s for my 4K. they are like one big card. very smooth for 4K gaming. they do get hot but mine are watered. must be the XDMA.

 

[Cavey00]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ultisym

I have actually not had any significant issues with SLI in years but I would still recommend going with the "single most powerful GPU" rule of thumb. Typically I would recommend crossfire or SLI when someone already has a pretty nice GPU and wants more GPU but doesnt want to spend the money on the latest greatest tech. I made an exception to the rule and went straight to SLI 970s though just because of the price. Two 970s for a little more than the price of a single 980.

I wouldn't call my issues "significant" per say. Just putting my personal experience with two 670s on certain games. FFXIV, which really doesn't need the power of both those cards anyways, will crash my entire pc in any given session. I also experienced stuttering with certain effects enabled in games (Metro 2033 and FFXIV). None of these issues are experienced with single card, although the performance isn't as nice. I need to note that this is on Windows 8.1 and I'm not getting an error when it happens.

I've used SLI in the past but it was a long time ago. 8800 GT cards, just to put that into perspective. I think I only had one issue with a game, but the performance difference with those was huge. F.E.A.R. was just amazing.

 

[Wasupwitdat1]

I can't say for sure what the additional cards affect but I have 3 GTX680s in SLI and I've seen my scores increase in Valley Benchmark. I play Battlefield 4 on Ultra settings with no issues when before I could only run Medium settings with two cards, and I couldn't even run on Medium settings stable with one card. My cards are water cooled and I do use the new EVGA PrecisionX 16 software to overclock them quite high. I have them installed on an ASUS Z97 WS board with a 4790K CPU and extra power connected to the PCIe lanes. I have 16GB of 2666 MHz DDR3 that is running @ 2666 MHz. A 1200W PSU. I'm happy with the performance of this machine because I've never seen anything like it. It took a couple of months to get this system tweaked so it runs stable but I haven't had a crash in a couple of months now so I think I'm golden. Anyway, I think you need to look at the resolution you run too. I use to have three 1920 x 1200 monitors in Surround and I only got about 40 FPS. I recently just started using a single 1920 x 1200 monitor and I have it configured to 1920 x 1080 and now Fraps reports almost 200 FPS in Battlefield 4 in Windowed mode. Very clear and smooth game play now. So yes there is some benefit to multiple cards and I don't think there are many problems associated with doing it. Price point on what you should buy is based on what you want to spend, and what you think it would be worth to you for that moderate gain.