i read in an article that tested multi gpus from ati and nvidia, the high-end graphics cards included radeon hd 3850+, and 8800gtx+ with 9800gtx and gx2. all of thewse graphics cards were tested with sli, tri-sli and quad sli. some of the results were unconvincing, a lot of the multi gpu systems slowed games down in their results. so im just wondering, is sli and crossfire actually better? OR is it better just to get a single high-end graphics card?

SLI and Crossfire are better.

Not just in terms of performance but in scalability (upgradeability) and price also.

It is cheaper to put two graphics cards together in an SLI or Crossfire configuration than it is to get a 'big-chip' type graphics card with insane clock speeds...

The performance of dual-chip or tri-chip or quad-chip configurations is not determined solely by the numbers on the chip (MHz, MiB, etc.) but mainly by the drivers. Some games do not scale well or at all when adding a second chip, or more, and could be down to the programming of the game.

Most modern games support multiple graphics chips and scale well.

Some games favour ATI and some favour Nvidia.

What you should know is that ATI focus on scalability, whereas Nvidia focus on big-chip. This makes Nvidia's graphics cards too expensive to be considered an affordable scalable solution.

Would this be the CPC article a couple of months back? In that article they compared the MINIMUM framerates, which go down as the drivers aren't perfect, and possibly CPU overheads. However the AVERAGE framerate still goes up.

BTW, personally, I think that the current iteration of Crossfire is much better, it's far more flexible.

im not sure, i read about it in a magazine at morrisons when i was bored, it said they compared crossfire and sli in the front cover of the mag

That's probably CPC (CustomPC) then. I'm a subscriber, and felt that comparing the minimum framerates alone was a bad move, as the overhead of splitting up the graphics could cause it to be stuttery in places, but overall you should see an improvement. I think it just goes to show that multi GPU isn't perfect yet.

yes it was custom pc!
my dads too lazy to make custom pcs thats why i end up with laptops

Make em yourself! xP

lol exactly.

out of curiosity, did anyone else who built there own PC have some bother installing windows or do i just suck lol?

You just suck xP

Nah, Windows installation is always annoying, and takes forever, lol.

im sorry i forgot to mention that i dont have any money

I did on an old system with an early adoption of SATA technology, where I needed to load SATA drivers using a floppy disk... Awful. All new motherboards work fine now though. It wasn't a problem, more of just one of those things that you had to do back then.

My friend had problems copying files from CD to the hard drive, turns out it was a faulty Corsair DDR-400 memory module.

Ah, lack of money could be a problem.

Yeah, i had to use a floppy for my RAID array.

wow, just shows, factory installed windows is so much more convenient, any1 try out the packard bell iPower gaming pc?
specs: core2quad 2.4ghz
3gb ram
8600 gs in sli
i played GRAW 2 on it all on high on 1600x1200 and it was a bit laggy
btw this was at pc world

It might be more convenient for some... I personally tweak my Windows XP installation settings for custom regional and language settings, it works much better for me. It's nice to be able to configure my own partitions, or select the drives I want to install on.

My next PC is going to be pretty sweet... keep an eye out for the topic in the next month.

Yeah, partitioning is a big thing for me.

And the 8600GS is what is letting that one down. No point putting two of those in SLI, much better having a single 8800GT or similar card. AKA, it's a marketing gimmik.

This video was released less than an hour ago and is perfect for this topic!

3DGM for the win! Love him... I've watched all his video's now I swear!


Watch this video on Youtube.

He forgot SkullTrail! xP