Originally posted by Barbarbar

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Barbarbar

There's plenty of examples where buying SLI will save you money and give you a better performance than the single card solution. Another example was buying 2 GTX560 Ti cards, instead of a  single GTX580. They were cheaper and performed quite a deal better.

You might as always, run into issues. Some uneeded hassle with drivers and new games, mostly it will work fine after some new drivers has been released.

And then microstuttering, which is something people don't see at all, or people start screaming and shouting about as soon as they realise it. For me, I need to monitor the FPS, if I see in drop up and down 59-60, then I realise there's some microstutterting going on. And that's that, basically.

Once you spend more on the case, power supply, and motherboard to handle two GeForce GTX 560 Tis in SLI, they weren't still chepaer than the GeForce GTX 580.  Today, even ignoring the other costs, the two GTX 560 Tis would be more expensive than a single GTX 580.

Performance will vary from game to game.  In a game where SLI works as intended, yes, the SLI setup would be better, but probably not drastically so.  In games where SLI doesn't work as intended, the single card would be better.  A single card will work right far more reliably than an SLI or CrossFire setup.

Microstutter is more noticeable as the frame rates get lower.  If you're getting 100 frames per second, it will look very smooth whether it's from a single card or SLI/CrossFire, unless you've got some hitching problems or something.  If you're getting 30 frames per second from an SLI/CrossFire setup, then the microstutter is likely to be a lot more noticeable.  It actually varies wildly from game to game and from card to card.  But sometimes 30 frames per second from a single card would be a little better than the same average frame rate from an SLI/CrossFire setup, and sometimes it would be vastly better.

Allright, I'm a bit drunk now. Been watching Italy kick Germanys behind, but I'll respond cause I believe I have a few points.

Case? No, you don't skimp on the case because you are buying a GTX 580. Who are you talking to? Your own theoretical self as usual.

And the motherboard. What would you advise for anyone going for a GTX580, or a GTX 670. Asrock Extreme, Asus Pro or whichever MSI solution. They can all handle both SLI and Crossfire. You surely don't want to advocate some micro atx board all of a sudden do you?

Where is this Quizzical board that is a perfect match for a topend GPU, that can't handle a 2 GPU solution

And with regards to the PSU, I'd get a 750 Watt somethingg of decent quality, regardless of whether I´'m going GTX560 Ti in crossfire, of GTX 580.

So at the end, the facts remain. SLI will give you a better performance when the game allows it to. And they were at launch cheaper to buy than a single GTX580. And it seems to me that they still are.

They would without a doubt be the best buy, if it was not because we are dealing with PC solutions, where one tech advance isn't automatically met by the industry as a whole. Just like Quadcores weren't necessarilly the best, because the industry didn't really care to take advantage of them.

That is also a fact.

 

If you want an SLI setup, then you have to worry about getting airflow between the two video cards so that the top card doesn't fry.  For a single video card, you only have to worry about it physically fitting and have adequate total case airflow.

Any modern motherboard has the PCI Express slot to handle a single video card just fine.  If you're getting an AMD processor and know you only want a single card, then you can get a 970 chipset, rather than paying an extra $30 or $50 or whatever for something with a 990FX chipset to handle SLI or CrossFire.  Intel has recently taken the odd stance that they'll only allow you to overclock if you pay extra for a chipset that can do SLI/CrossFire, but motherboard manufacturers don't always implement it that way.  Furthermore, Intel didn't always do that, so they might cease doing so in the future.

For a power supply, 650 W is easily enough for any single GPU system, apart from perhaps a GTX 480 in a system where you're also going to overclock the processor.  To get two GTX 560 Tis in SLI, you'd want more like 850 W.

The reason prices have risen on the GeForce GTX 580 is that they're discontinued and mostly gone.  Prices were under $400 for a while when Nvidia discontinued the cards and effectively put them on clearance.  You're correct that they're more expensive now; I hadn't checked to make sure they're still available.  Also, the first card you linked isn't a GeForce GTX 560 Ti; the GTX 560 without the Ti is a different card and significantly slower.

Also, while quad core processors will eventually be ubiquitous (they're in a handful of tablets and cell phones now, and coming to netbooks soon), multi-GPU systems will always remain a narrow niche for gaming.  For that matter, we're headed toward a world in which a large fraction of gaming computers use only integrated graphics.  Kaveri might get laptops there as soon as next year.  The first AMD APU with video memory built into the same package as the APU will be the one that does this; I'm just not sure if Kaveri will be it.  For desktops, it's only a few years further away.  Discrete video cards won't disappear in the foreseeable future, but people will mostly stop buying $100 cards because they'll be slower than integrated graphics.