CrossFire / SLI still just gimmicks

[Nick89]

In my opinion after using two 4870's in Xfire for 2 months, Xfire/SLI are just gimmicks so you the consumer will buy a second unnecessary video card from(ATI/NVIDIA).


I was already getting good frame rates in most of my games except a few, I think the only reason I bought 2 4870's was for the Whoa factor now. I thought that I would get a good performance boost in all my games I've only seen a performance boost in 2 of the 20 games I play and that was my flight sims(DCS: BS, LOMAC).


The lesson I learned seems that its better to get one very high end card instead of two high end cards.

About the only thing Xfire or SLI are good for is breaking synthetic benchmarks.

 

[Disparia]

* shakes head *

Lies lies lies lies lies lies

 

[pbmaster]

It's a common fact that SLi/Crossfire is geared more towards combining several mid range cards to get better performance. Combining two high end cards is just for wow factor or benchmarking.

 

[Nick89]

It's a common fact that SLi/Crossfire is geared more towards combining several mid range cards to get better performance. Combining two high end cards is just for wow factor or benchmarking.

Why would you put two mid range cards together when you could spend the money on a single high end card that outperfroms the two mid range cards.

Instead of getting two 4870 1GB's I should have got a GTX275 1792mb.

 

[pbmaster]

Prices don't always equal out. A friend of mine had a system running two 8600 GTS's and spent less than he would have for a 8800 GTS 320 but got similar performance. Used less power I'm sure too.

 

[newtekie1]

Why would you put two mid range cards together when you could spend the money on a single high end card that outperfroms the two mid range cards.

Well, in situations like the HD4770, where two HD4770s in Crossfire outperform a single HD4890 at a cheaper price, I would hardly consider it a gimmick... It has been this way for a long while now.

Two 8800GSs outperformed a 9800GTX at about half the price when both cards were new.

Also, it is nice to have as an upgrade option. For instance: When the G80 cards came out, I just added a second 7900GT to my rig and got very similar performance for relatively no cost compared to the cost to upgrading to a G80 card.

 

[exodusprime1337]

i feel the same way, i find that sli gave me a performance boost in most of my games, if not all. The thing with sli/crossfire is you go from pure plug and play to having to tweak certain things. I can't remember how often i had to modify profiles with nhancer to make a game run better.

The other thing is this my 2 8800 gts 512s(now for sale 50 a piece btw) equal just about the same as my gtx 285 in many games. But one card is easier to manage and now i can have 3 gtx 285's so when they get cheaper and i need a little more horsepower i'll just add another one and there you go more power... at least that's how i see it.

 

[Nick89]

The thing I keep seeing you guys bring up is "performance increase" that is the problem for me.

I have seen barely any performance increase with a second 4870 in any of the games that I own.

So right now for me it seems like it was a waste of money, this is where my opinion comes from.

I'm glad you guys seem to have such great performance boost's with your second cards.

ATM I'm underwhelmed with the perfromance of my two 4870's.

 

[pbmaster]

Well maybe you're doing something wrong then? This is your first multi card setup, correct?

 

[Nick89]

Well maybe you're doing something wrong then? This is your first multi card setup, correct?

I have no problems with my machine. So I have no idea what the problem could be if there even is one. And this is MY first multi GPU setup but I've been building multi GPU setups for customers for years.

 

[newtekie1]

The thing I keep seeing you guys bring up is "performance increase" that is the problem for me.

I have seen barely any performance increase with a second 4870 in any of the games that I own.

So right now for me it seems like it was a waste of money, this is where my opinion comes from.

I'm glad you guys seem to have such great performance boost's with your second cards.

ATM I'm underwhelmed with the perfromance of my two 4870's.

Part of your problem is most definitely your CPU. A 940@3.5GHz is going to hold back two HD4870s. Your processor isn't much better than my old Q6600@3.4GHz, and that held back two 9800GTXs in SLi...

 

[angelkiller]

Part of your problem is most definitely your CPU. A 940@3.5GHz is going to hold back two HD4870s. Your processor isn't much better than my old Q6600@3.4GHz, and that held back two 9800GTXs in SLi...

Hmmmm. I don't think so. I think a 3+GHz Quad can keep up with 4870's in CF. The resolution is 1920x1200... If you're getting bottlenecked by your CPU, you need to turn the settings up. I think a demanding non-CPU-bound game with lots of AA and AF at 1920x1200 will stress the 4870 CF pretty well imo.

Look here. As you will see, as the graphics settings and resolution are turned up, the slower the CPU has to run in order to max out the graphics card. So turning up the graphics settings makes the game more GPU bound, which needs less CPU to run.

 

[Nick89]

Part of your problem is most definitely your CPU. A 940@3.5GHz is going to hold back two HD4870s. Your processor isn't much better than my old Q6600@3.4GHz, and that held back two 9800GTXs in SLi...

Hey newtekie I just looked at somthing with GPUz.

 

[newtekie1]

Hmmm...thats odd, I wonder why the second card is not running at 2.0?

 

[Nick89]

Hmmm...thats odd, I wonder why the second card is not running at 2.0?

Maby this is the reason why i'm getting sudstandard performance with Xfire, I've never had a problem like this however.

 

[DaMulta]

I always go better frames rates with two cards over one....

Also use your 2ed card for eye candy that you could not have before with just one card. It's called Super AA, and it's really kool.

 

[newtekie1]

Maby this is the reason why i'm getting bad perfromance with Xfire, I've never had a problem like this however.

It would make a difference, but I don't think it would limit your performance that much. You should still be a noticeable performance increase.

I always go better frames rates with two cards over one....

Also use your 2ed card for eye candy that you could not have before with just one card. It's called Super AA, and it's really kool.

Definitely, that is one thing I miss about SLi...

 

[angelkiller]

Maby this is the reason why i'm getting sudstandard performance with Xfire, I've never had a problem like this however.

What happens when you take the top card out of your system? Will the bottom one revert to PCI-E 2.0 16x? It would be interesting to run a quick benchmark of 1 card in the top slot vs one card in the bottom slot.

 

[Nick89]

What happens when you take the top card out of your system? Will the bottom one revert to PCI-E 2.0 16x? It would be interesting to run a quick benchmark of 1 card in the top slot vs one card in the bottom slot.

Unfortunatly I dont have time tonight, I have to goto work tomorrow.

 

[newtekie1]

Just looks through the manual for your motherboard, and it says:

PCI-E1_16X Support 8GB/s (16GB/s concurrent) bandwidth
PCI-E2_16X Support 4GB/s (8GB/s concurrent) bandwidth

That to me indicates that the first PCI-E slot is supposed to run at 2.0 x8, and the second slot run at 1.1 x8, as those match the bandwidths stated in the manual.

 

[Nick89]

WELL I think i'm justing going to get a 790FX board This POS that I'm using will not apply BIOS options that I set! I just set the CPU multi to 18 and CPUz and OCCT still say its at 17.5 and my CPU is running at 3500mhz still... WTF. None of the HT settings work.... this board is pissing me off.

Just looks through the manual for your motherboard, and it says:



That to me indicates that the first PCI-E slot is supposed to run at 2.0 x8, and the second slot run at 1.1 x8, as those match the bandwidths stated in the manual.

More reason for me to get a new board. My wallet already hurts. Would my CPU work in a AM3 board?

BTW nice post count: Posts: 7,500 (5.54/day)

Looks like this is that winner: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131361

Next pay check.

 

[PCpraiser100]

More reason for me to get a new board. My wallet already hurts. Would my CPU work in a AM3 board?

BTW nice post count: Posts: 7,500 (5.54/day)

I'm sorry but it will not work with the AM3 sockets, the AM3 socket requires a ddr3 controller in the CPU to work. Typically, this a good opporotunity for your AM2+ CPU, as the motherboards for the older socket should have lower prices by now.

 

[Nick89]

I'm sorry but it will not work with the AM3 sockets, the AM3 socket requires a ddr3 controller in the CPU to work. Typically, this a good opporotunity for your AM2+ CPU, as the motherboards for the older socket should have lower prices by now.

Like this one:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131361

 

[goldfries]

Nick,

the gains are there BUT it depends on the game (how it treats CF) and the setup.

in my tests, the HD4830 and HD4770 crossfire could rival the performance of the HD4890!

http://www.goldfries.com/computing/hd4830-and-hd4770-in-crossfire-a-worthy-setup/

but the Crossfire setup is limited to 512MB RAM while the HD4890 had 1GB RAM.

test was done 1680x1050 but on higher res, I think the HD4890 would have the upper hand.

just a personal experience to share, it's not something just for "breaking synthetic benchmarks."

 

[Yukikaze]

I've had a serious performance increase when I went from a single 8800GT to two of them, especially when I forced/used AA/AS. I do not have two HD4870s, but rather one HD4870X2, but from everything I've seen neither SLI nor CF are gimmicks, but rather offer good performance increases.